Two big moments marked Elimination Chamber, the ending featuring a dirty finish, and a shockingly clean ending to a match earlier in the night.
Brock Lesnar, The Rock, Triple H, Batista, Randy Orton, Daniel Bryan. That's the list of people who have pinned John Cena cleanly in the middle of the ring over the past decade. The entire list is former WWE champions and future Hall of Famers. Elimination Chamber added another name to the list Sunday night: Kevin Owens.
Yes, Kevin Owens beat John Cena cleanly, in the middle of the ring, after hitting him with the pop-up powerbomb for the second time in the match. It was a fantastic match between the two, featuring multiple false finishes and both competitors pulling out all the stops.
It even featured some winks toward the longtime Kevin Owens fans, as he teased doing both of his finishers from his independent days (the package piledriver and the F-Cinq) before turning them into other moves. Finally, Owens was able to catch him with the powerbomb for the second time, and Cena was pinned.
This was nothing short of shocking. While it was clear that the WWE (and specifically Triple H) were very high on Owens, nobody expected a perfectly clean win. For one, it didn't seem to fit Owens' character. While he certainly can hold his own, he's not against using some cheap tactics to gain advantage in matches if he needs to.
Most assumed that if Owens won, it'd be through some sort of cheap method, maybe hitting a low blow before beating Cena. What they did was have someone, in his first main roster match, go over the biggest guy in the company.
This puts Owens in a really odd position. He's fresh out of NXT. In fact, he still holds the NXT title. Yet, he just showed that he's as good as, if not better than, the top guy in the company. Logically, why would a Finn Balor be able to provide a fight for him if John Cena couldn't get the job done?
And where is there for Owens to go? He did what Bray Wyatt couldn't do, what Ryback couldn't do, what Sheamus couldn't do. Hypothetically, with just one main roster match under his belt, and barely 6 months in NXT, he should be higher up the totem pole than all of those guys. Clearly though, you can't put him right into the title picture, which a win like this hypothetically should propel him into. So he's in an awkward position.
The WWE put all questions about Kevin Owens to rest on Sunday. They clearly believe in him. Can they now navigate him through the tricky waters for the next few months? That answer is yet to come.
The Rest of Elimination Chamber:
**As mentioned before, the night ended with a classic "Dusty finish". For those who don't know, a Dusty finish is a match that ends on a swerve, usually involving a referee reversing a decision. This is usually done to allow the crowd to pop for a face challenger winning, and making the challenger more sympathetic, while the heel champion retains his title. It's called a Dusty finish due to Dusty Rhodes using this often when he was a booker, including for his own matches.
On Sunday night, the Dusty finish was used to perfection. At the end of the Dean Ambrose/Seth Rollins match, Ambrose came off the ropes toward Rollins. Rollins pulled the ref in the way, and Ambrose collided with him. After a quick back-and-forth, Ambrose was able to hit Dirty Deeds, he covered Rollins, and a second ref came down to count the pin. Ambrose's music played, he grabbed the belt and started celebrating. However, the original ref came to, and said he was disqualifying Rollins for intentionally pulling him toward Ambrose. Of course, this means that Rollins retained the title by DQ.
After the announcement, the rest of the Authority attacked Ambrose, which brought out Roman Reigns, who had been banned from ringside earlier in the night by Triple H. The two of them cleaned house, Ambrose picked up the belt and left with it.
Dusty finishes are generally referred to with derision, as there was a stretch where it became massively overused. However, when used sporadically, and well, like it was Sunday night, it created a fantastic moment. The crowd, and the internet, popped for Ambrose winning. Most people knew the reversal was coming, and they still let themselves buy into it briefly.
The outrage from the crowd when the ref made the announcement was loud, and it elevated Ambrose even more. If there was any doubt where he belonged on the card, he's now very clearly in the main event. It also fit perfectly into Rollins' character weaseling his way into wins. With Money in the Bank just two weeks away, it made perfect sense to quickly move to the rematch there.
**Ryback finally won a title for the first time in his career on Sunday as he won the Intercontinental title. It's amazing, considering how hard he was pushed in 2012, that he had never won a title to this point. He completely bypassed the mid-card, including both the Intercontinental and US titles on his way up, and then never was able to grab tag gold when he spent time in the tag division.
Ryback is still quite over, so this is a good spot for him. It wasn't a great match overall, and it didn't help that Rusev was not able to compete (Mark Henry took his spot) when much of the build had revolved around him and Ziggler. However, the crowd popped when Ryback was one of the final two, and continued cheering for him til the end. Will Ryback be the one to raise the prestige level of the IC title? We'll see. It's good to see the big guy get rewarded for his work though.
**The New Day retained in an entertaining tag team title chamber match. The match started off slowly, as everyone was feeling out exactly what they were doing. In an odd decision, the Lucha Dragons were kept relatively grounded, until Kalisto climbed up the side and then the roof of the chamber, before falling on a number of competitors.
It was a weird spot that reminded me of Homicide having issues climbing through the Steel Asylum in the first Monday Impact back in 2010. The match got better as it went on, and teams got their chance to shine. The New Day, in a wrinkle, were able to have all three members compete. But the stars of the match might have been the Prime Time Players. They were the final team besides The New Day and looked better than they have ever looked before. It was a nice bit of elevation for them. However, The New Day won as they should.
**Nikki Bella retained her title against both Naomi and Paige. The divas followed right after tag match, and it seemed like they stacked more wild spots than usual, possibly because of the match they followed. This included a tower of doom sequence which felt odd after we saw one in the match before, and a relatively crazy spot when Naomi tried to do a reverse hurricanranna to Paige that seemed to almost end disastrously. We'll see where this goes from here. Naomi still seems to make sense as champion, but the question is when?
**Neville beat Bo Dallas in their encounter. Bo actually was able to get a good bit of offense in, and looked more brutal than he had since his return, while also mixing in some of his comedy spots while begging off. This was a pretty standard match that made both wrestlers look a little better, and was finished off with the Red Arrow.
**A surprise pre-show match featured Stardust beating Zack Ryder. This wasn't so much about the match, but more a way to hype the feud that is developing between Stardust and actor Stephen Amell, who is best known for playing the Green Arrow in the TV show Arrow. Amell was mentioned countless times throughout the night, and JBL even claimed that Stardust had changed the name of the CrossRhodes to the Queen's Crossbow, a shot at the character Oliver Queen that Amell plays. There are rumors that Amell and Stardust will face off at Summerslam, and this just served to fan those flames.
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