This is it, kids. The last WWE PPV before COVID hit and everyone stayed at home to enjoy WWE do some sports entertainment from an empty Performance Center to kick off some of the saddest WWE shows in recent memory.
Daniel Bryan Danielson defeated Drew Gulak via technical submission that saw Gulak pass out while Bryan held him in the LeBell/Yes/No Lock. A solid opening contest, but that shouldn’t be much of a surprise with Bryan Danielson in the match.
United States champion Andrade defeated Humberto Carillo to retain the title in a perfectly acceptable TV match that was added to fill time on the show. Nothing wrong with that.
Smackdown Tag Champs The Miz and John Morrison defeated The New Day (Big E and Kofi Kingston), The Usos, Heavy Machinery (Otis and Tucker), Lucha House Party (Gran Metalik and Lince Dorado), and Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode in an Elimination Chamber Tag-Team Match to retain the titles. I am never a fan of any tag match with the total amount of participants hits the double digits because they end up being a mess to follow. There’s a few cool moves here and there, but the rest of the match was a blur and quickly forgotten about.
Aleister Black (a.k.a. Malakai Black of House Of Black fame) defeated AJ Styles with an assist from a teleporting Undertaker, who pops in to goozle AJ, allowing Black to get the win. Yes, this is how we build to Undertaker matches at Mania these day; he pop ups and goozles some jabroni and now that jabroni wants revenge or something. This was a 20+ minute match that was 40 minutes too long. Deathly boring. Almost fell asleep. Awful.
RAW Tag Champs The Street Profits defeated Seth Rollins and (Buddy) Murphy via Kevin Owens popcorn distraction to retain the tag titles. Contrast to their Blood Money match, which was nice and short, this was long and boring. It seems like they were overcompensating for not having much time at the other show by making this longer than necessary and saying very little. Yeah, not a fan of this one. Sorry.
Sami Zayn, Cesaro, and Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Intercontinental Champion Braun Strowman in a 3-on-1 handicap match that saw Sami pin Strowman to not only score the win for his team, but also capture the IC title in the process since that was on the line. Apparently, Strowman signed a contract that not only pit him against three men, but also his title would be on the line as well. This is supposed to make Strowman look fearless, but only serves to make him look like, as Bret Hart would often call the late Sid, “a big stupid dummy.” Why anyone would willingly sign a one-sided contract that puts them in a compromising position and come off as a total fucking geek… dude, this whole thing is just fucking stupid and it makes Strowman look like a total dumb fuck. Sadly, it’s far from the only time that this would happen.
Shayna Baszler defeated Natalya, Liv Morgan, Asuka, Ruby Riott, and Sarah Logan in the main Elimination Chamber match to earn a Women’s Championship match at Wrestlemania (I think it was her and Becky for the title, but I could be wrong)… because instead of booking another Evolution PPV or whatever the case may be, we’ll throw the women a bone and put them in the main event Chamber match… and it sucked. This was just a thing to build up Shayna as the next big challenger to Becky at Mania and whoever else filled the slots were cattle to be mutilated by this next big thing. It only went twenty minutes, but felt longer because there were large periods of time where NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED. This match was a boring, deathly affair that was not only a complete waste of time, but also a total waste of six talented women who deserved FAR better than what they got here. Sure, they got the main event slot… but the main even slot of a four hour slog that turns out to be the biggest slog of them all is not something to be proud of.
This show was a complete waste of time and I did the right thing five years ago by skipping this one entirely. It’s not awful, but it is boring and that it is the greatest sin of them all.
I need a palette cleaner for next week.
Later.
dtm666 