4 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Elimination Chamber 2020

by Scott Carlson

1. A Hard-Hitting, Technical Brawl

Drew Gulak Daniel Bryan Elimination Chamber
WWE.com

That might be a contradiction of terms, but watching Drew Gulak versus Daniel Bryan, that might be the best way to describe Elimination Chamber’s opening match.

The rivalry was set up by Gulak giving advice to other wrestlers about how to beat Bryan, leading to jobbers doing better than they had any right doing. This led to Bryan challenging Gulak, and thus we got a match Sunday that vacillated between mat-based and technical, and rapid strikes and throws.

Bryan hit a vicious Dragon suplex, but Gulak nailed a German suplex that had the ugliest landing imaginable for D-Bry. Gulak hit a reverse superplex into the Gulock, but Bryan reversed out of that into a LeBell Lock until Drew passed out. Bryan showed respect for Gulak afterward.

As an opener where the outcome never really was in doubt (did anyone really think Bryan was going to lose to someone who literally hasn’t won a televised match since September?), this was pretty solid. It also made you scratch your head about why they’ve been jobbing Gulak for six months now if he’s got the goods like this.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.