6 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Elimination Chamber 2018

One guess who's going to WrestleMania.

ronda rousey triple h stephanie mcmahon
WWE.com

When you go into watching a PPV and know the outcomes of nearly every bout beforehand – not because you saw spoilers, but because you used common sense – it tamps down your enthusiasm.

And WWE’s Elimination Chamber was just that: we knew what the result of the men’s chamber match was going to be, were relatively confident of the ending of the women’s chamber match and even figured that the Raw Tag Team Championships would be staying put.

What did provide a huge pleasant surprise was seeing how the contract signing for Ronda Rousey went down, providing an interesting twist and immediately giving the rowdy former MMA fighter a legit top-level feud for WrestleMania.

As for the men’s chamber match, fans got a super-deflating ending, with one monster doing the heavy lifting, and the expected winner doing what no one else collectively could: stop Braun Strowman. In old WWE, that would make Roman Reigns look superhuman and be the next Hulk Hogan. In 2018, it meant that Roman was viewed as a guy who got his spot over someone who did most of the work and is the man fans want in the main event.

Still, despite Elimination Chamber being relatively innocuous, it left something to be desired as a PPV.

So what did the trick? Let’s get to it..

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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.