10 WWE Elimination Chamber 2020 Impulse Reactions
AJ Styles gets killed by The Deadman and Shayna Baszler kills five women dead.
Often, your writer might try and get the jump on getting this traditional post-WWE pay-per-view piece by constructing the introduction a few days before the event itself. As long as the Network exists so too does WWE's superservice era, and there's typically a full card of matches and stories justifying said matches even if they decide to chuck a few more on the pre-show for the supposed subscriber boost.
This wasn't the case as of Friday afternoon.
Some repeat performances from the prior week's SmackDown were promised, as were the New World Order on a Moment Of Bliss because that's a sentence, but Elimination Chamber was going curiously underserved even with two titular matches on the show itself. By the end of the show, only Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak snuck on, and even by showtime on Sunday the company had only added The Viking Raiders versus Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins on the Kickoff.
Was this a babyface move before WrestleMania to give so many stars the night off, or a simple case of mismanagement after last Thursday's Super ShowDown blew through everything they still had to do before the 'Show Of Shows'?
It was both - it's WWE, it's always both - but the organisation has been entertaining in spite of factors before. Would the last stop on the fabled "Road" be littered with potholes, or promise?
10. The Viking Raiders Vs Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins
There was lots of WrestleMania talk on the Elimination Chamber Kickoff, not least because much of the pay-per-view the panel were tasked with covering felt pretty skippable. It brought forth the potency and power of the 'Show Of Shows' even in this content-heavy era...and hung over this opening clash like this year's absolutely glamorous sign.
The commentary team noted how Hawkins and Ryder had won the Raw Tag Team Championships at last year's event (though didn't talk about how the Viking Raiders lit up NXT one night earlier just weeks ahead of their cursed main roster call up), which was presumably to explain ahead of time how the duo could get so much offence in on the floundering Erik and Ivar.
An elongated heat sequence was the sum total, in truth, before a miscommunication gave the advantage back to the big lads who polished off Ryder with The Viking Experience. This sure was a match - something the four might not get outside of the Andre in one month's time.