WWE: 10 Best Elimination Chamber Matches

7. Summerslam 2003

Triple H defeats Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Chris Jericho, Shawn Michaels, and Randy Orton to retain the World Heavyweight Championship http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2couJtlry34 The ending to this match is infamous, which is why it€™s not higher up on the list, but everything leading up to the ridiculous ending was good enough to warrant its inclusion on this list. However, I feel we should address the 300-pound sledgehammer in the room when we talk about this match. Let me take you back to 2003, which was the height of Triple H animosity generated on the Internet. I€™d argue it€™s for good reason. The biggest problem with Triple H in 2003 wasn€™t that he supposedly held people down, it€™s that he was seriously injured and refused to give up the World Title, because in WWE€™s minds, they needed a long reign out of Triple H to bring legitimacy to a World Championship that was just introduced. Around this time, Trips had a serious groin injury, serious enough that he was wearing girdles as wrestling gear rather than his normal trunks. The original main event was supposed to be him vs. Goldberg one on one for the World Title, and Goldberg was going to win. However, due to the injury, there was no way that Triple H was going to be able to work a full match with Goldberg, so WWE called an audible and set up the second-ever Elimination Chamber match to allow everybody else to do the heavy lifting. So we get to the match, and leading up to Hunter€™s entry (at number 6, the last spot), it was pretty good. We got a continuation of Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho€™s rivalry with them entering at 1 and 2, and we got some flashes of what kind of main event player Randy Orton would be in his first ever main event at the ripe old age of 23. And Kevin Nash was in there as well, I think? Anyway, when Goldberg came out at number 5, he tore through everybody with amazing ferocity. He eliminated internet darlings Jericho and Michaels, and nobody there in Phoenix that night cared. The Elimination Chamber match was supposed to be about carnage, and Goldberg gave it to them. The time was absolutely right for Goldberg to win the World Championship. However, Triple H only got in one offensive move, a sledgehammer shot to the face, which was enough for him to beat Goldberg and retain the World Title. The crowd was absolutely killed dead. The reason, I suspect, was that somebody had convinced Vince that Hunter had to drop the belt to Goldberg one-on-one for the title switch to have any sort of legitimacy. So they put off the one-on-one match another month until Unforgiven, where about 100,000 less pairs of eyes would be watching, and even less people would care. By the time Trips eventually dropped the belt, Goldberg€™s credibility was completely ruined, mostly because of his Elimination Chamber. His title reign ended up being a bust, and the belt was back on Hunter before the year was out. But again, I stress that the audacity of the ending should not take away from the excellence that preceded it.