6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Elimination Chamber 2024

by Scott Carlson

1. An Over-Delivery In Every Sense

Nia Jaxx Rhea Ripley
WWE.com

If someone had said at any point between 2015 and September 2023 that Nia Jax would main-event a stadium show PLE and it would be good, they would have been checked into a facility for monitoring.

But here we are in February 2024 and Nia and Rhea Ripley headlined Elimination Chamber with their Women’s World Championship match – and it was shockingly really, really good. They didn’t try to get too cute with the action: Jax dominated with headbutts, leg drops, splashes, and a few Samoan Drops. She also employed submission holds like a Stretch Muffler and a Torture Rack. She put Rhea through a table too for good measure, thwarting the champ’s plans.

Ripley – normally the powerhouse in any match – had to rely on speed and more high-flying moves to try to knock Nia off her feet. She kept trying to overpower Jax, but it wasn’t until the finish that she succeeded in lifting her off the ground, which whipped fans into a frenzy as she retained with an improbable Riptide.

By keeping things relatively simple and just delivering on those basic moves and the space in-between, Jax and Ripley had a good, engaging title match that utilized the fans’ built-in investment as fuel. They didn’t have to deploy a bunch of gimmicks to suck fans into the match, and they knew that and used that to their advantage.

Great job all around. Happy to have been dead wrong about Nia – her return to WWE has been nothing short of incredible.

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

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.