Last Thursday, Ring Side Rant did their weekly podcast on Stadium Rant’s YouTube channel, and I talked about the worst Elimination Chamber matches in WWE History. Now, my microphone in that podcast was horrible, and I sounded like I was underwater. I want to apologize for that, and to make up for it, I decided that I would write about my worst and favorite chamber matches of all time. In this piece, I want to talk about the five worst elimination chamber matches that have ever occurred in the match stipulation history.
SummerSlam 2003‘s chamber had a ton of memorable moments. Goldberg dominated and gave Chris Jericho one of the nastiest spears through the chamber pod. Memorable moments happened, but that all was tainted when Triple H won the match. One sledgehammer shot to Goldberg and pinning him mid-match. That was the perfect time for Goldberg to win the championship, but WWE messed it up. Honestly, it was the moment that killed Goldberg’s WWE career in his first tenure, as he never recovered. It was a terrible booking move to end a chamber match. There is a reason why the Triple H championship runs from 2002-2004 was labeled the Reign of Terror.
I am not a fan of most of the tag chamber matches, excluding one. Out of all the tag team elimination chambers, I hate the one they did in 2015. Let me ask this immediately, why is the New Day allowed to have 3 members compete when every other tag team only has 2 members? How the hell does that even make any sense?
Also, this match exposed the horrendous tag team division as it included the Ascension, Los Matadores, Prime Time Players, The Lucha Dragons, and Tyson Kidd & Cesaro. Excluding the New Day and Tyson Kidd & Cesaro, the other tag teams were not good. Also what made me lose brain cells was when tag teams were breaking up pinfalls that would have eliminated the competition. It was sloppy, boring, and an unnecessary match to have at the time.
Man, the 2020 Chambers are very weird, and honestly, I didn’t love either match on the show. The Men’s chamber was okay, but I hated the Women’s Chamber in 2020. A big reason why is that it was so predictable that Shayna Bazler was going to win the chamber. She was just debuting on the main roster and planned to challenge Becky Lynch at WrestleMania 36. Even when she came into the match to dominate, it was so boring, and it killed the pacing. It was made to build Shayna Bazler as the next big superstar in WWE, but it didn’t work for me. This match also looks worse with time the moment Bazler lost to Becky Lynch at WrestleMania 36, and she never recovered since that match.
I couldn’t do the worst elimination chamber matches without mentioning the December to Dismember PPV. December to Dismember was a PPV for the ECW brand that was a sloppy mess. The original match went like this: Sabu, RVD, CM Punk, Bobby Lashley, Test, and Big Show.
Now let’s get into the 4 pillars of BS regarding this match. Sabu was written on for the show due to an “injury” and replaced by Hardcore Holly. Yes, the same man who tore his bicep and taped it up to finish a match, was written off due to an injury that is BS#1.
BS#2 The two people that the fans wanted to have won the match, RVD and CM Punk, were the first two participants eliminated. Which did not make any fans happy, and the boos just kept coming. Heck, even Paul Heyman didn’t like it, as he wanted to have CM Punk win the match, but Vince McMahon vetoed it. BS #3 did not have Hardcore Holly last long, which makes writing off Sabu for him make less sense. BS#4 was having a green and raw Bobby Lashley win the ECW championship, forcing and rushing his push that didn’t feel organic. This match is one of the main reasons Paul Heyman lost his job in WWE. What an awful Chamber match, but it is not the worst ever.
There is no question here, the Intercontinental chamber match was terrible and a sloppy mess. At least in the December to Dismember chamber, there were some cool spots, including Test’s elbow drop, and we even got Big Show bleeding in the match. This match was a bore and was immediately messed up when Mark Henry’s pod broke. He had to enter the match way earlier than originally planned, and a stressed Dolph Ziggler had to call a new match on the fly. By the way, Mark Henry was not originally going to be in it, but thanks to an injury to Rusev, he was inserted.
To make things worse, Ryback won the match, and he got the anti-pop. Nobody cared because Ryback was already ruined thanks to terrible booking. This match was so bad that WWE didn’t even do an elimination chamber in 2016, and it was replaced by Fastlane PPV. That’s how awful it was, and thankfully, WWE did it again in 2017, and it’s still going on to this very day. Lesson learned: mid-card titles should not be defended in the elimination chamber, as that should strictly go for the World Titles.
So those are my top five worst elimination chamber matches of all time. Do you agree? What are your five worst chamber matches ever? Let me know in the comment section and don’t forget to give the article a like as well. Also, check out more WWE content on Stadium Rant.com as well.
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