Bang For Your Buck PPV Review: The 2014 Elimination Chamber PPV

WWE World Heavyweight Championship Elimination Chamber Match

Sheamus vs. Christian vs. John Cena vs. Cesaro vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton (C)

What Nick Wants to Happen: A match that doesn’t make me angry that The Shield and the Wyatts didn’t close the show, and doesn’t make me wonder why I am going to plunk down 10 dollars a month to see approximately 10 PPVs/Live Specials a year that are roughly this good or slightly worse.
What Will Happen: Randy Orton retains, likely through debatable Authority interference with Daniel Bryan, setting up — along with the Usos/NAO match — a reason for Vince McMahon to come back give a rub to both groups by pretending he’s still in charge of the company, because he’s in fact still in charge of the company.

While the match may have been slightly scatter-shot, it found its way once every single combatant was in the chamber, and the palpable tension of the closing 10 minutes or so highlights precisely why the Daniel Bryan “wait and see” game has been so frustrating for dirty Daniel Bryan fan boys and so much fun to watch for those of us in the real world, where there’s significantly more money to be made in the chase than the catch. Anyone who sees this as a missed opportunity clearly didn’t see the broadcast cut to seemingly every single person in the crowd that was actually upset by the result of the match. Some of that is a need for instant gratification, but a significantly larger part of it comes from a shocking inability of most wrestling fans to see the forest from the trees.

There’s literally only one thing a professional wrestling show is attempting to do: get you to watch the next one. Now, of course, there are people who will not watch Raw tomorrow to “protest” the “burial” of Daniel Bryan, but for the most part, normal adults will continue to watch the show and those of whom that didn’t have their credit card out to buy the Network following the Wyatt/Shield match will almost certainly buy the 6-month subscription to see what happens next with Daniel Bryan. The idea that what happened on Sunday wasn’t best for business stems from precisely the type of naivete that makes the WWE such a wildly successful company even outside the context of things like “brand name recognition” and “innovation”. It goes beyond “as long as your watching, they’re winning”. It’s that the naivete that thinking Daniel Bryan’s coronation likely being pushed to the biggest day on the WWE calendar isn’t what’s best for business that gets you to spend 60 dollars on the off chance you can “will” the company into doing so.

There’s a speech that begins my favorite episode of the West Wing, 20 Hours in America. In it, President Bartlett tells the story of a man who gets his car stuck in the mud,

“A farmer comes along and says he’ll pull the car out of the mud but he’s going to have to charge 50 bucks ’cause this is the tenth time he’s had to pull it out of the mud today. The driver says, “God, when to you have time to plow your land, at night?” The farmer says, “No, no. Nighttime is when I fill the hole with water.” [Crowd laughs.] We need to find energy alternatives. We’re getting our cue. We’re getting it right now. The Republicans are busy. They’re trying to convince us that they care about new energy and that they’re not in the vest pockets of big oil, and that’s a tough sell. I don’t envy them, ’cause their only hope is that we don’t notice that they’re the ones who are filling the hole with water every night, and I think Americans are smarter then that. I think we noticed.”

Replace certain words, and you’ll have a pretty accurate representation of the last six months of booking in the WWE. Except for one serious difference: The WWE Universe hasn’t noticed yet who is filling the hole with water every night. Or that in this case, it’s them.

Match +1.0

Bottom Line

It’s easy to say this was a two-match card, and nothing outside of the big two was any type of revelation, this was definitely a card that had a lot more going for it than most people would assume. Big E., Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, Titus O’Neil and Daniel Bryan all brought their characters — or at the very least, the crowd’s perception of their characters — to an entirely different level. While not every match was worth the price of the PPV — and the Diva’s match was easily the worst PPV match since SummerSlam’s mixed gender clusterkerfluffle, you’d be hardpressed to find anyone who wasn’t happy with at least the Wyatt/Shield match at a level that made them happy they spent money on the last PPV for the foreseeable future.

Overall PPV 3.7 | Match Avg. .52828 (.53 if you’re nasty)

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