Retro 3 Things We Hated And three Things We Loved

With the Elimination Chamber match, and its eponymous PLE, returning this weekend, it is time to return 24 years for the match that began all of it.

WWE Survivor Series 2002 in Latest York City’s famous Madison Square Garden, played host to the debut Elimination Chamber match. Removed from the padded cube of lights and sounds that it’s today, the unique structure was all-black, and product of a punishing steel that clanged against the bodies of the primary six-men to grace the chamber. 

While the Elimination Chamber debut is well probably the most historic thing in regards to the ’02 Survivor Series, it was removed from a one-match show. The so-called “SmackDown Six” wrestled in a triple-threat tag team match that continues to be talked about in hushed, reverent tones today, plus the show also featured a trainwreck elimination tables match that saw The Dudley Boyz reunite. It wasn’t an ideal show. There was time-killing a plenty, a couple of too many Saliva performances, and no set to talk of, as an alternative letting the Chamber take center stage.

Without further ado, let’s travel back in time and check out one of the best and the worst from the 2002 edition of Survivor Series

There is no such thing as a “worst match” on this show. It is a wildly economical, yet substantial show. There is a four-minute match that sees Brock Lesnar get betrayed by Paul Heyman, nevertheless it results in a WWE title change and it’s too short to get in its own way. They get in, they do what they gotta, they get out. The remaining of the show is an exciting marathon of motion.

I’ll speak more in regards to the foremost event in a bit, but everyone showed as much as Madison Square Garden, prepared to indicate out. Jamie Noble and Billy Kidman have an incredibly tight Cruiserweight Title match, one among the primary of the burgeoning division. There may be a Women’s Title Street Fight that’s the thing of legends. Victoria and Trish Stratus wouldn’t have the legacies they’ve without that match. The Triple-Threat Tag Team Elimination Match is pretty much as good as everyone says, after which some. Even the presence of Chris Benoit cannot fully deflate the proceedings.

Every title match saw a title change. Every match met a certain standard. It is the sort of show that cannot be run on a regular basis, but once you get it right, it’s good as gold. It is a shining example of what the Ruthless Aggression era would have the option to perform.

Survivor Series 2002 has a novel set. There’s LED boards on the standard Latest York Knicks entrance, and a barge of pyro out in the midst of the audience. It looks goofy as hell, irrespective of how good this show is. Wrestlers must awkwardly rework their entrances, the administrators have to transform camera angles, so that they have a shot of the pyro barge, and the audience is kinda sitting around while pyro goes off in the midst of them. It makes the show kinda appear to be a warzone. Sometimes it really works, but plenty of the time it looks low-rent.

I do love the mental image of Rey Mysterio just hanging out under the barge as pyro goes off, waiting for his entrance.

Madison Square Garden has all the time been a difficult venue for elaborate sets, but as previous and future outings in the sector would prove, there is a completely happy medium between WrestleMania X-7 and the pyro barge.

I admittedly like saying “pyro barge,” so there’s that.

The opening six-man tag team tables match is a reasonably nifty inversion of Survivor Series’s traditional elimination tag match. It’s probably one of the best match that 3 Minute Warning had of their short time as a WWE tandem, and the novelty of seeing Bubba Ray and Jeff Hardy on the identical team in a tables match, with D-Von coming in for a surprise save, is essentially an Avengers Team-Up 10 years early.

This match is just electric. Tables explode into debris, Jeff Hardy jumps off a balcony, The Dudleyz reunite after being split up by the WWE Draft, to neither man’s profit. The Dudleyz should never have been split in the primary place, however the MSG response to D-Von helping Bubba Ray win the match almost makes the months of Reverend D-Von value it…Almost.

Like I said, not a single bad match. All of the matches are good.

Nonetheless…

The space between the triple-threat elimination tag team title match, and the foremost event, appears like it takes hours. Randy Orton injury updates, Scott Steiner debuting and beating up Matt Hardy and Chris Nowinski, Eric Bischoff smacking the chamber with a nightstick and yelling, “Reinforced steel! Chain! Bulletproof Glass! It appears like it’s never going to finish, after which the elimination chamber entrances take perpetually.

The thing about pacing is, should you let up on the gas just a bit of, everyone will feel it twice as hard. There’s loads of entertainment in those couple of minutes between the foremost event and the remainder of the show, nevertheless it feels countless.

The Elimination Chamber never got higher than this primary match. There have been fun inversions, there have been memorable moments, however the sheer brutality of this primary match has never, won’t ever, and will never be replicated again.

The chamber itself is all solid steel, in a way that the gang can hear. It’s six of WWE’s best on the time, handed a structure nobody has used before, and shortening their careers within the name of getting the match itself over. I’ve seen the match one million times and it still makes me wince. Whether legend or fact, the concept that Triple H is wrestling the whole thing with a crushed windpipe is incredible. The match builds to Shawn Michaels cleansing house and overcoming the percentages, and does so masterfully.

Even the second and third best Elimination Chamber matches borrow from this one. It’s the ur-text of the match, and still as exciting because it ever was. Survivor Series may not be a one-match show, however the one match that closed the show did so with fire and fury.

The match is nice, the winner is correct, however the 2002 Elimination Chamber began probably the most frustrating periods in WWE: The lengthy two-year feud between Shawn Michaels and Triple H.

The 2 would go on to Armageddon, where they might attempt to have the best match of all time, 3 times in a row, in a laborious 3 Stages Of Hell Match. Triple H wins, starting a reign of terror that also haunts him to at the present time. They’d then have their Last Man Standing Match at The Royal Rumble, a very divisive bore that saw each men fight to a no contest. Then Michaels inserted himself within the Triple H vs. Chris Benoit World Heavyweight Title feud, which then led to the infamous Bad Blood 2004 Hell In A Cell match. 

There’s just plenty of bad wrestling that follows the Elimination Chamber, and it’s hard not to observe the show, and once more see all of the promising pieces which are about to get knocked off the board in favor of very long Triple H promos, and countless aura farming from Evolution.