WWE Elimination Chamber 2026: Biggest Winners And Losers

WWE stopped in Chicago, IL last night for the corporate’s first PLE within the United Center for the reason that 1994 edition of SummerSlam. There was a Men’s Elimination Chamber, there was a Women’s Elimination Chamber, there have been title matches, and a man got here out of a box with a bunch of go-go dancers in leather bodysuits. If you must read more about what happened, the outcomes page is here. If you must read what the staff loved and hated from the show, you could find that here.

Now, it is time to discuss who looked “good” and who decidedly didn’t. As all the time, this can not be a literal recounting of winners and losers, as that is already done on the outcomes page, and likewise a extremely boring method to approach this topic. Sure, Randy Orton got here out a winner in each result and appearance, but sometimes winners like CM Punk appear to be losers, and sometimes losers like Je’Von Evans and Trick Williams have the night dreams are manufactured from.

Enough of my bloviating though, without further ado, let me present the winners and losers from the 2026 edition of WWE Elimination Chamber.

John Cena has retired. AJ Styles has retired. Batista has retired. Randy Orton stays.

A number of people had Cody Rhodes pegged to win Saturday’s Men’s Elimination Chamber Match, and while “The American Nightmare” has loads of wiggle room to get back into the WrestleMania WWE Title Match, the official Chamber winner and WrestleMania predominant eventer shall be Randall Keith Orton.

Orton is not any spring chicken. The years are clearly starting to indicate, and like his contemporaries, the sun has begun to set on his profession, but within the photography world, that specific time of day is often known as “Golden Hour,” and Orton was wrestling in that amber glow all throughout the Chamber match. WWE will simply not have every other likelihood to provide Randy Orton his final WrestleMania, so it’s now or never, and WWE has firmly chosen “now.”

It would not have worked with anyone else. Had an other star been wrestling Rhodes in those closing moments, Drew McIntyre’s interference would’ve felt a bit overbooked. But Orton played off his reference to Rhodes perfectly, letting Rhodes maintain McIntyre, after which swooping in with an RKO like only “The Viper” can. He could be a secure selection, but one last Randy Orton victory lap shouldn’t be something I’m gonna complain about.

The Women’s Elimination Chamber Match felt like a tense round of callbacks. The WWE Women’s Division had been auditioning to interchange Women’s Champion Jade Cargill, and these were the six women who made the ultimate cut.

The match was a humiliation of riches and stuffed with incredible talent, nevertheless it did make me feel just a little bad for the champion. Cargill has had a really stop-start run in WWE, and it looks like the total stop might be coming any day now. With Rhea Ripley set to face the previous AEW TBS Champion, it looks like there may be very little in Cargill’s arsenal, each in-ring and politically, that may counterbalance the sheer star-power of her opponent. Cargill has not generated the fan interest that the Women’s World Title scene over on “Raw” has, and it looks like WrestleMania might be the spot where the Jade Experiment ends, especially considering Ripley shall be her opponent.

Trick Williams, Je’Von Evans, and Kiana James are all relatively recent names to the predominant roster. While I’m sure nobody expected them to win their Elimination Chamber matches, the three former-NXT talent proved they deserved the spots in the primary place.

Williams has been greeted by the predominant roster crowd with tremendous energy, same with Evans, and James has been a solid utility player on “SmackDown,” but that does not change the proven fact that the Elimination Chamber could’ve exposed them at any point, as being the rookies they’re, and yet all three competitors got here out of their matches looking like ready, able members of the predominant roster. The transition from NXT to predominant roster is not all the time as smooth as this, and so long as Evans is okay after a nasty head bump from Logan Paul, the longer term needs to be vibrant.

We now have just a little over a month until WrestleMania and I’ve already seen AJ Lee overcome the Big, Bad Becky Lynch. We’re about to recover from a month of bad Donald Trump riffs from “The Man,” as WWE tries to search out a method to do an enormous blow-off moment for the second time in a row.

There is no such thing as a doubt in my mind that Lee and Lynch are going to have to search out a method to turn s*** into Shinola, since the WrestleMania match is certainly going to be a rematch, but I’ve already seen AJ Lee win the title. Lee hasn’t wrestled greater than just a few matches over the past decade, so every little thing about her act remains to be fresh, but Lynch is running out of steam on this Trump parody, and he or she’s stuck with it for the foreseeable future, and so are we.

Perhaps there is a method to pivot here, but considering CM Punk is already tied up with the, you understand, predominant event, it doesn’t seem likely that it will be any type of mixed-tag pivot. It’s looking like we’re stuck finding some type of fragrant stipulation to cover up the stink of leftovers.

I do not think WWE actually knows how WrestleMania will end, but I believe myself and CM Punk are each assuming Roman Reigns is winning the World Heavyweight Championship. Every little thing about Punk’s current run looks like a person who knows his days are numbered, living it up through as many fantasy moments as possible. Essentially, a rather more dignified version of Kash Patel’s recent sojourn with the US Men’s Hockey Team.

Take his entrance on Saturday. En path to what everyone assumed can be a simple victory over Finn Balor, Punk got the announcer for the Chicago Bulls and the long-lasting song “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Project, in order that he could live out his dream of creating an enormous, Michael Jordan-esque entrance right into a world title match in Chicago. Sure it was merely a house show match, but still, it’s more about with the ability to say he did it, than the rest. A number of his matches have felt that way during this World Title run, as if he’s a person who knows he’s just killing time until Reigns shows back as much as work, and you understand what? Good for him.

You may notice that I had to make use of an AEW picture of Danhausen. That is because WWE didn’t trouble to upload any pictures of his WWE debut to the web site.

It looks like Danhausen’s WWE debut was the definition of a half-measure. Sure, he got a full entrance and a military of go-go dancers, but he was given so little to try this the United Center crowd booed the segment in bewilderment. 

And who can blame them? The entire segment was him pointing. Sometimes pyro would go off, but mostly he was just pointing as an ironic Scooby Doo song played within the background. It was the comedy wrestling equivalent of feeding a man to the lions after which being surprised there isn’t any hand left to shake afterwards.

Danhausen is ideal for WWE, and the glimmers of promise in his debut leave me excited for what they will provide you with, nevertheless it’s unimaginable to disclaim that his debut fell flat.