10 Most Hated Wrestling Matches Involving Beloved Wrestlers
5. The Extreme Elimination Chamber (WWE/ECW December To Dismember 2006)
WWECW was a massacre of the licence, keeping company with the worst material in WWE history, and the ‘Extreme’ Elimination Chamber match embodied everything that was wrong with the ECW revamp.
No, we don't mean Kevin Thorn.
The Chamber was made “extreme” by including weapons in the pods – a barbed wire baseball bat (which we all knew wasn’t getting used to full effect), a steel chair, a crowbar, and a table. This was emblematic of the WWE’s misguided belief that they could tag “extreme” or “ECW” onto something and call it done. Tazz’s insistence that “the biggest weapon is the chamber itself” didn’t fly either.
The talent carrying the ECW spirit with them into the Chamber were Rob Van Dam and CM Punk. Bobby Lashley, Big Show, Test, and, to a lesser extent, Hardcore Holly were not ECW main eventers. Fan-favourite Punk was the first elimination, followed soon by RVD. The crowd flooded the arena with “bulls**t” chants and were nonplussed when Lashley won. As WWE wanted to forget this just as much as the fans, the sanitised stinker didn’t affect Punk’s rise or Van Dam’s extreme reputation.