10 Most Extreme Rules In WWE History
1. The Extreme Elimination Chamber Match
WWE’s December to Dismember event in very late 2006 was an absolute mess in almost every conceivable way, certainly long before the main event.
The Extreme Elimination Chamber main event match must have seemed like a no-brainer - have the already intimidating Elimination Chamber set-up augmented by weapons - but nothing worked as it was supposed to.
Prior to the match, ECW Original Sabu was stretchered off following ‘a backstage attack’ (in real life, Terry Brunk failed a drug test), and Hardcore Holly took his place. Bob Holly is and always has been a far better hand than anyone’s given him credit for, but this was nonsense. Sabu’s reputation was such that no one would have bought one of the most fearless, stoic wrestlers in the world being unable to compete unless his legs had fallen off: the crowd chanted “BULLSH*T”, and they were right.
It got worse. Heyman’s pick to win the match and the Big Show’s ECW title had been CM Punk, the clear rising star, but Vince McMahon had his heart set on the rookie behemoth Bobby Lashley, and Punk would be the first eliminated instead, barely getting any offense in at all and eliciting more crowd displeasure.
Holly went ten seconds later, but so poorly laid out was the match that he kicked out and was sent home anyway. Even the announcers called that one out for being screwed up. Next out was Rob Van Dam - and the crowd was more than rumbling this time, as this left an overweight, sluggish Big Show, the clearly ‘roided up Test and human cucumber Bobby Lashley to finish the match. Lashley would end up taking Big Show’s ECW title to the sound of complete indifference.
As a showcase for ECW, the main event was a colossal failure, burying the C-brand’s most over babyface in CM Punk, kicking to the curb the two ex-ECW mainstays in Sabu and RVD, and pushing three men the crowd couldn’t care less about.
As for ‘extreme’? The table couldn’t be used properly within the confines of the Chamber and was abandoned inside Lashley’s pod. The crowbar and the barbed wire bat were next to useless: the chair was the only international object that worked as intended. What a waste of everybody’s time.