The Road to WrestleMania is ramping up for the WWE, and the next stop is the Elimination Chamber.
In the last month or so, there have been a collection of title changes, including Drew McIntrye finally taking the WWE title from Cody Rhodes, two new Royal Rumble Winners in Roman Reigns and Liv Morgan, and one massive retirement, once again at the hands of Gunther, newly announced WWE Hall of Famer, AJ Styles.
The card only has four matches currently, with the long-running nature of the men’s and women’s chamber matches sure to take up the majority of the runtime.
Let’s take a look at the landscape of the WWE heading into one of its biggest PLE’s of the year.
Punk’s Homecoming vs Balor’s Opportunity
One of the two singles matches on the night will see CM Punk defend his World Heavyweight Championship against The Judgement Day’s Finn Balor, in possibly one of the most predictable matches in WWE history.
It is almost a 100% guarantee that Punk will win this one in his backyard of Chicago, as the WWE is already advertising and having promos between him and his WrestleMania opponent, Roman Reigns. While it would be a shocking upset for Balor to win, there is no real plan for after.
With that said, the current Balor push has been electric, with his amazing homecoming match against Punk in Ireland a few weeks ago giving fans a chance to shower him with love, and hear his old theme music again, which he has kept. What this turns into for Balor is unknown, but it could lead to him finally splitting from the Judgement Day in the near future.
Women’s Dream Match Finally Taking Place
Since her highly anticipated return in September, AJ Lee has gone after the Women’s Intercontinental Champion Becky Lynch. Six months later, after AJ cost Becky the title, and the two faced each other in a Mixed Tag match and the War Games match, the two will finally face off one-on-one.
AJ skipped down to the ring a few weeks ago and convinced Lynch to give her a title shot. Lee is very much in the head of ‘Big Time Becks’, which has made this build fascinating. This match is a must see on Saturday night, and oh, it’s not just me saying it either.
Stacked Chamber Matches
Both the men’s and women’s chamber matches are loaded from top to bottom, and both are set to impress with generations of talent being showcased.
On the men’s side, the field includes the established superstars in Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton and LA Knight, along with the younger stars, in Je’Von Evans, Trick Williams, and Logan Paul, with the winner set to go on to WrestleMania to face WWE Champion Drew McIntyre.
Paul was only added on Friday when he beat Jacob Fatu in an emergency qualification match after Jey Uso was attacked to begin the episode.
Guys like Evans and Williams, along with Paul, likely won’t win the match, however, will certainly add high flying and excitement elements to this fan favorite match.
Regardless of the result, SmackDown recently has seemed destined for a multi-man match at Mania featuring four to six of the guys mentioned, which could be a massive hit. That seems like the best option available at this point, as opposed to Cody Rhodes and Drew going at it for what feels like a tenth time in the past year.
The winner of the women’s chamber match, between Tiffany Stratton, Rhea Ripley, Asuka, Kiana James, Alexa Bliss and Raquel Rodriguez, will face Jade Cargill at WrestleMania.
Ripley seems like the obvious choice here, especially after she and Iyo Sky lost the tag-team titles to the ‘Irresistible Forces’ of Lash Legend and Nia Jax on SmackDown. Stratton and Cargill already had an underwhelming feud, Asuka will likely be in a program with Kairi Sane soon, and James, Bliss and Rodriguez just don’t seem to fit.
Either way, this match promises brutality, and that’s what the chamber is all about.
Mystery Elements
On top of these matches, there are a few mystery narratives that the WWE is running with that could come to a head on Saturday.
The ‘masked man storyline’ in which, yes you guessed it, a masked man attacks people, has been going on far too long. The original masked man turned out to be Austin Theory, which has turned out to be quite underwhelming, and there has been another since then who has been attacking members of the Vision.
On Friday’s SmackDown, Logan Paul unmasked the mystery man, and it was someone that nobody, commentary team included, recognized. Presumably there will be another version tomorrow that attacks Paul, but this narrative should end as soon as possible.
The WWE also recently introduced a large crate in the backstage area that says not to open until Elimination Chamber, and there is no telling what that will entail either.
To see how these storylines will unfold, tune into the Elimination Chamber PLE live on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. ET.