Elimination Chamber takes center stage this coming weekend as the last PLE stop on the Road to WrestleMania is guaranteed to have a big impact on The Showcase of the Immortals. It's a fitting time to look back on the history of what has become a near-quarter-century institution on the WWE landscape.
Thirty-six Chamber matches have occurred to date with two more set to join that catalog. For all the passage of time and different faces who've made their way through this particular WWE battlefield, a surprising truth emerges. The original Elimination Chamber match is still the best of all time.
The Roster For The First Elimination Chamber Match Was Perfect
The Elimination Chamber has more often than not either seen a world champion put his or her title on the line or had WrestleMania implications with the winner getting a world title shot at the biggest show of the year. As such, the bout tends to be filled with big names.
It's debatable whether the first Elimination Chamber had the most star-studded field of competitors of all time. It's undeniable, however, that the match represented a combination of big stars, well-respected talents, and performers who played very different yet complementary roles.
Triple H and Shawn Michaels were the surest main eventers, not to mention that they had a world-class rivalry with one another underway. Add into the mix Kane as a big man base, crucial to a lot of the spots of a multi-man match like this. Then there was RVD, still an ahead-of-his-time athletic spectacle, in the hunt for his first world title. WWE was still putting the pieces together on Booker T, but two and a half years into his run with the company, he had become one of the top athletes on the roster. Rounding out the field? None other than Chris Jericho, quite arguably in his prime and on a short list of the best all-around wrestlers of the day.
These talents were well-suited to establish a new gimmick match and, indeed, delivered at the highest level when they came together at Survivor Series 2002.
The First Elimination Chamber Arrived At A Perfect Ending
There are those moments in wrestling history that went on to shape an era, like Shawn Michaels winning his first world championship at WrestleMania 12 in a victory that cemented his place as a defining main eventer for WWE for two years to follow, not to mention his "second act" after four years away from the ring.
By contrast, Michaels's fourth and final world title victory resulted in a reign that lasted less than a month. HBK would remain a top-level act for much of the following seven years, but this title win itself was less a watershed moment than a quintessential feel-good triumph for fans to relish for the victory itself.
The first Elimination Chamber delivered that moment of satisfaction and vindication as top heel Triple H dropped the title to a beloved legend who was still fresh off returning to the ring just three months earlier.
The moment's all the more remarkable in consideration that it came just shy of the forty-minute mark and with a pin on The Game, who'd been badly hurt earlier in the match off an RVD frog splash gone wrong from the top of a Chamber entry pod. This element of unplanned near-catastrophe only adds to the story of a unique moment in wrestling when veteran hands worked together to preserve the magic moment planned despite nearly insurmountable obstacles.
The Elimination Chamber Is A Tricky Match To Diversify And Improve Upon
The original Elimination Chamber match was excellent. One reason why it remains the best version of this gimmick match, though, also relates to the match format itself.
While bouts like the Royal Rumble have enough different variations on entries, stories to tell, and high spots possible to remain thoroughly entertaining spectacles time and again, the Chamber is simply more limited. The structure can't quite compare to Hell in a Cell or War Games. The six-man format struggles to keep up with the Rumble, War Games, or even traditional Survivor Series elimination tag matches. For whatever combination of reasons, Elimination Chambers rarely compete with multi-person Ladder Matches like Money in the Bank.
Yes, there have been other good and arguably even great Elimination Chambers. Ultimately, though, it's one of WWE's less inspired annual spectacles. Most years, the match tends to be more engaging for its WrestleMania implications than the action inside the specialty cage itself.
Will WWE ever pull off an Elimination Chamber match that tops the original outing? Only time will tell. For now, though, a combination of the right talents, the right storytelling, and precisely the right booking for the debut bout seem to have realized the gimmick's fullest potential.
