7 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Elimination Chamber 2025

1. Where’s The Blood?

WWE Elimination Chamber 2025 Kevin Owens Sami Zayn
WWE

Given what happened at the close of the show, there’s a very simple, plausible answer to that question, but it still needs to be asked…

Why would you book an unsanctioned match between lifelong friends/rivals Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and not have any blood? The announcers made a big show of talking about the referee wearing gloves from the outset because of the likelihood that one of them would get busted open. Then they broke out a barbed wire-wrapped chair, with KO driven face-first into it… and nary a drop.

One could make the argument that they booked no blood in the unsanctioned match to make Cody Rhodes bleeding later resonate more, but if that’s the case, maybe don’t book barbed wire spots into the Owens/Zayn battle. Throw in a few more car crash spots or brawling in the crowd to up the brutality without the expectation of someone being busted open.

Don’t book something with the promise that it’s going to be one of the most brutal matches ever and then just have a really good plunder match. It’s a bit of a letdown that undercut the hard work both men put in during the match.

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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.