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We’re three weeks into good episodes of Monday Night RAW. WWE is pushing the Elimination Chamber PPV (mainly the men’s Chamber match) very hard on the road to WrestleMania, and it’s bringing out a lot of good. There’s some bad as well, and we’ll get into that in a bit, but it was another easy episode to watch and felt like well under 3 hours instead of well over 3 hours. I’ll take that and I’m hoping the consistency sticks around. Here’s what I predicted last week:
- Six-Woman Tag Team Match
They did a regular tag with Alexa teaming with Mickie against Absolution, but the idea was the same. Alexa wants Mickie with her in order to help neutralize the team that will be in the match against them. Mickie’s no idiot and recognized that immediately, but Alexa is still trying to earn her trust. It won’t work, but she’s trying.
Meanwhile, Bayley and Sasha wrestled each other instead of being part of the six-woman match I expected, and Bayley won! That was pretty awesome, especially in her hometown. The last time she wrestled in San Jose she lost the title to Bliss, so this was good. It was a very good match, too. My only problem with the build to the women’s Elimination Chamber match is that other than Alexa trying to get Mickie to help her, there’s no build. It’s just a bunch of women who are going to be in the match hanging about and wrestling meaningless matches.
Why not do a Beat The Clock challenge next week on RAW to determine the entrance order? It’s difficult to pull off because they don’t have many women on the roster, but they could make it, or something like it, work with a little bit of effort. I’m just asking for anything. It just continues… the women aren’t as important as the men. Their match exists.
The men’s match is worth having 7 different matches to set up the participants and entry order over the course of a few weeks. None of that has been done for the women. That sucks.
- Tag Team Turmoil Announced
I almost thought they were going to actually do it this week, as Michael Cole was heavily playing up that the tag team division on RAW is crowded and hot. It’s not, but at least they’re trying to make believe it matters, so I’ll accept it as a decent effort. In any event, Gallows & Anderson lost to The Revival, giving Dash & Dawson the win in the rubber match between the teams. I still have no idea where they’re going, and there’s only one episode of RAW left before the Elimination Chamber PPV. There are no challengers for the champions. I wonder if they’re going to do one more match between these two teams, giving the winners the title shot next Sunday. We’ll see.
- Elias vs. Braun Strowman
Close, but not quite. Thankfully they didn’t have a match, but rather an extremely entertaining segment that saw Braun breaking a bass accidentally (he couldn’t play it anyway) and singing before taking down Elias and then destroying the instrument across the Drifter’s back. It was an effective segment, and it didn’t make Elias look bad, because he didn’t get owned by Strowman in a match, but rather he was surprised that Braun made an appearance the way he did, and then he couldn’t overcome it, which led to his demise. It built towards the match and was entertaining. Good stuff here.
- Nia Jax & Asuka are forced to team up
Asuka didn’t appear on this week’s episode and was instead featured in a great video package running down the numbers of her two and a half year undefeated streak, similar to the Royal Rumble “by the numbers” videos they do. That’s an effective way to use time and works much better than having Asuka either defeat a local talent or another one of the women in the Chamber match. Nia did end up taking out Sasha and Bayley from behind, trying to play up that she can do the same as Asuka.
I wouldn’t call a sneak attack the same as winning two straight matches, but she’s a heel so it’s fine. It did play up the impending renewal of the rivalry between Sasha and Bayley, though, as I expected they would do. Bayley won and after the match they had a very tense staredown. Nia Jax attacking them leaves a mystery in place, which is good.
What were they going to do? Shake hands? Was Bayley going to offer her hand, only to have Sasha turn it down? Would they fight? We don’t know thanks to Nia. And the good thing is that any of those things were completely plausible outcomes, but there’s no need to rush into them. It was a great tease.
- Finn Balor qualifies for the Elimination Chamber match
Well, I was right about this. Finn did qualify for the match, but instead of winning the four-way and taking the sixth spot in the Chamber, he co-won (I guess) the match with late entrant Seth Rollins, and the two men will be taking the sixth and seventh spots in the Elimination Chamber. The five-way match was a really fun main event and I was excited that they were actually ending on a cliffhanger. It was a very bad cliffhanger, but at least it was something. The issue here is that it makes zero sense. Matches don’t end like that. Ever. Matches have one winner. That’s how it works.
It’s why, when two guys have another man in their respective submission holds during a match and that guy taps out, the referee has to waive it off, because both men can’t win. The same exact principle applies here, except it’s even stronger because this match was to determine which ONE man would earn the ONE remaining spot in the Elimination Chamber match.
Instead, they went extremely lazy and shoehorned Seth into the match by just letting both men in and having the match be 7-men instead of 6. I could go on and on about what a terrible story it is. It makes the ref look like a moron, and it makes Angle look like an idiot as well.
Letting Rollins into the four-way match in the first place was a terrible decision, because it’s just lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy all around. The 7-man Elimination Chamber match is probably going to be really, really good, but the story that got Seth and Finn into it is really, really bad. And that’s a shame, because all of the rest of the build for the match has been great.
Overall, I went 1 out of 5. I’m giving myself half a point for Braun vs. Elias and half a point for Finn because he did qualify for the match, but Rollins did as well. Here’s what I think about next week, the final RAW before the PPV:
#5 Tag Team Turmoil Announced
Darn it, I’m sticking with this one. Michael Cole talking about how hot the tag team division is right now, even though it really isn’t, it makes me think that they are going to do something with multiple teams instead of just involving a couple. They might do Revival vs. The Club one more time with a title shot on the line, but I think instead, all of the teams are going to get a shot. Either that, or they’ll do something on next week’s RAW that involves all of the teams, and the winner gets a title shot. I’m still holding out for tag team turmoil.
#4 Seven-man Chamber called historic, not a compromise
WWE is all about “moments”. They love to “create history”. They also purport to loving to tell stories, but that often takes a backseat to the moments and “historic” events. The 7-man Elimination Chamber match was not the original plan, but instead of properly weaving it together as a cohesive story, WWE has chosen to sledgehammer it into a shoe it doesn’t fit.
They ignored the shoehorn and went right for the brute force. Seth Rollins had nothing to do going into Elimination Chamber due to Jason Jordan’s injury. It’s not clear what he was going to do next Sunday (team with Jordan in Tag Team Turmoil maybe?), but being an entrant in the EC match was not in the cards.
So, instead of earning an opportunity, he begged to be given an opportunity, Granted, the other men who were in the qualifying matches didn’t earn their spots in those matches because they were just created by Kurt Angle. It’s still shoddy storytelling, but we’ll move past that.
The issue is that in lieu of actually trying to give us a good story, WWE is going to focus on how an Elimination Chamber match with 7 guys instead of 6 is a big deal. It should be a compromise due to the referee being a moron, or even better, not happening at all, but it is happening. They might not use “history-making” or any term like it because that’s for the women’s match, but it will be billed as the “first-ever” 7-man Elimination Chamber match. It’s frustrating. Use good storytelling to sell your show, not cheap gimmicks.
Please. I’m begging for it. Of course, this is the company that makes gimmick matches a series of set yearly events instead of saving them for important occasions that fit a well-told story, so why should I expect anything else?
#3 Back to stage one for Apollo Crews
Apollo Crews is an amazing athlete. He’s a really good wrestler and although he may not be the best talker, he has a lot of natural charisma and the Titus Worldwide gimmick has helped in that department as well. In January, he and Titus O’Neil got a couple of victories over Sheamus & Cesaro that earned them a Tag Title match.
They were unsuccessful because they were just a short-term distraction during the longer-term story of Sheamus & Cesaro vs. Rollins & Jordan. Crews has been overperforming at every turn, doing what is asked for him, but doing it better than anticipated. He was given a spot in the qualifying matches for the Elimination Chamber, but it was essentially out of necessity. It was either Apollo, Titus, Goldust, Axel, or Dallas. That, or you dig into the tag ranks to pick up some guys.
There wasn’t much to choose from, so Apollo got a shot. He had a very good match with The Miz and looked like he belonged in that company. He also had a great showing in the last chance fatal five-way match this week, and almost came away with the victory on a number of occasions.
Next week (and moving forward, I’m sure) it’ll be back to the grind. He will do something with Titus as one-half of a tag team, and he’ll either be left off of the Elimination Chamber card completely or he’ll participate in a multi-team match (Tag Team Turmoil?). The other “last chance” losers will probably face each other in some way. They’ll either announce a Hardy vs. Wyatt match for the show, or maybe a confrontation.
Maybe they won’t announce anything at all, but they still have some sort of confrontation at the show anyway. Either way, they will be featured. Every one of the men in the qualifying matches, both winners and losers, will be featured on the Elimination Chamber PPV except for Crews. He was a pawn, sure, but he earned an opportunity to move to a higher level. It won’t happen, though, and he’ll more than likely be fodder for the Andre the Giant Battle Royal.
#2 Random matches for the men
In a departure from what they have been doing for the past few weeks, I have a feeling that WWE has expended their creative juices for the build to the Elimination Chamber match.
Outside of the bad finish to this week’s RAW main event, everything leading up to the match has been great. On the final episode of RAW before the show, in what should be the final push to get people invested to watch, they won’t have anything interesting to present. Rollins vs. Elias, Balor vs. Miz and either Braun vs. Roman or Cena (probably Roman) will take place in order to hype up the show.
They might do a Miz TV episode to set up the matches, or they’ll be announced and Miz will stir the pot in the segment. In any event, it won’t be very interesting. The only interesting thing they had left in the arsenal was coming to a decision about what to do between Balor and Rollins, and they decided to announce it randomly on Facebook instead.
#1 The women get some time to shine
This may end up being a situation where I’m optimistic and it falls apart. Maybe they will do a six-woman tag match, which was my initial thought. I’ve been wrong about that a lot lately, though, so I’m going a different way.
Alexa Bliss will continue to try to earn the trust of Mickie James. It will get tenser between Sasha and Bayley, as they team up and lose to Sonya and Mandy due to miscommunication, but fall just short of actually coming to blows. Asuka will be back on TV to confront Nia Jax in a face-to-face just 6 days before their match.
They are going to give the women’s Elimination Chamber match a harder push this week to drive home how historic and important it is, and that will involve the women getting a good amount of TV time. Don't be surprised to see the women close the show on this one.
Along with playing up the possibility that Nia Jax may be the first woman under the WWE/NXT banner to defeat Asuka, the women will be prominently featured on RAW. Maybe they’ll get a spot on Miz TV (Asuka & Nia, or maybe the 6 participants in the Chamber match) and Miz will sit out and they’ll do Braun vs. Cena and Roman vs. Balor.
No matter how they go about it, I’m pretty confident that the push for the two women’s matches at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view will be a strong one.
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