I actually loved how WWE began off the night in chaos moderately than with a ton of in-ring promos with one guy interrupting the following. While we did sadly get the second half of that (though I actually thought it was pretty good tonight, because of Je’Von Evans and Trick Williams), the beginning of the show was finally a win in my book, and it only got higher from there.
I used to be within the camp of believing Jey Uso shouldn’t have been within the Elimination Chamber, but after all, what could anyone have done when Bronson Reed went down together with his unlucky injury on Monday. I believe WWE recovered well, with a backstage angle where Uso was taken out. It began on social media a couple of minutes before the show went on the air, then when “SmackDown” began, it began with the chaotic scene of Uso being loaded into an ambulance together with his cousin, Jacob Fatu, already at his side.
The present rumor is that the WrestleMania match for the Undisputed WWE Championship shall be a triple threat involving champ Drew McIntyre, Cody Rhodes, and Jacob Fatu. I figured Fatu would just be added into the Chamber mix to in some way get us to that title bout, but we did actually get a qualifier essential even match pitting him against Logan Paul.
I can not even necessarily say that I dislike Paul being within the Chamber match. The Chamber needed one other heel, so it was sort of a must, and I do like Paul as an athlete. I assumed actually having a match to find out the ultimate entrant was a very nice touch, for once, and Aldis didn’t just put Paul, who asked him first, within the match.
Paul didn’t win clean, after all, and in the long run, had help from McIntyre, only furthering the champion’s story with Fatu. That also leads me to imagine that in some way the ‘Mania match shall be a triple threat, though tomorrow’s Chamber match may get messy if each Fatu and McIntyre get entangled.
I also liked the backstage segment where Sami Zayn confronted Fatu about being right there when Uso was taken out. It plants the seeds that perhaps Zayn was the one to take out each Fatu, who was beat down last 12 months, and Uso. And, truthfully, WWE has a story wide open. In the event that they want Fatu as a heel, he may very well be revealed as Uso’s attacker, and in the event that they want him to be babyface, they’ll go together with another person. I actually liked all of this tonight, and it adds some intrigue tomorrow. It was also an incredible pivot after Reed’s unlucky injury, something I can not say I expected from WWE at this point.
Written by Daisy Ruth