WWE Elimination Chamber 2026

WWE's final premium live event before 'WrestleMania'; 'Elimination Chamber', actually happened a little while ago, but I was once again late to watch it, unfortunately. The truth is, I simply don't have the time to stay up late and watch them live anymore. Plus, I was still a whole week behind on both 'Raw' and 'Smackdown'. Regardless, I still wanted to watch the event - its usually one of the more enjoyable PLE's of the year.

The show began with the women's 'Elimination Chamber' match, which, to me, was one of the most exciting matches on paper. The last few years, the women have been very good come 'WrestleMania' season, and I was hoping for more of the same here. Tiffany Stratton and Kiana James looked great early on; both showcasing their athleticism to great effect. I really wish James had lasted longer in the match. There was a really cool elimination about halfway through the match that I enjoyed a lot, as did the live crowd, who were a little inconsistent during the match otherwise. The final two was as I expected, and they put on a pretty solid back-and-forth to finish the match. I think the winner provides an interesting rivalry for Jade Cargill for 'WrestleMania', and I hope their match delivers on the biggest wrestling stage there is.

This was followed up by the Women's Intercontinental Championship match, with Becky Lynch defending her gold against rival AJ Lee in what is absolutely a dream match for wrestling fans. I expected Lynch to lead Lee through the match, and that's what happened - Lynch has become such a good leader inside of the ring, and it looked very comfortable for both women. Lee seems to be improving with every match, and she has evidently been working her socks off to get back to where she was a decade ago. The drama the two women built with their story was very good, and the match's finish was really fun and memorable. I was definitely a fan.

In the third match of the evening, CM Punk defended his World Heavyweight Championship against Finn Balor, in what I thought would be a good but very predictable match. Punk had a pretty cool entrance in front of his hometown crowd in Chicago, and that set the mood for what would be a fun match. Punk and Balor built the match slowly but steadily, and made sure to take their time to get to each of their biggest moves. Once the match did reach those moments the pace really ramped up, until it reached an intense finale.

We were then treated to one of the weirdest and seemingly most pointless reveals and debuts on a premium live event that I've seen in some time. It just felt like there were so many better and more interesting ways to debut the new wrestler than what they ended up doing.

Thankfully, the show moved swiftly on. It was now main event time; the men's 'Elimination Chamber' match, which I was looking forward to quite a bit. There was a good mix of young and old talent, and it looked to be a fun exhibition of what all six men could do. I actually thought things started off a little slow for my liking, but things did at least pick up as the match progressed. I was a bit annoyed that some of the biggest moments in the match were given to Logan Paul and not, say, Je'Von Evans, but I suppose that's typical of WWE at the moment. Once the match got down to the final three it just became a big mess of interruptions. It was a bit annoying that the final moments didn't even feel like a match until the final three count.

Overall, I thought this was an okay premium live event, which started strong but faded substantially in the last hour. I enjoyed the two women's matches a lot more than the two men's matches, and am honestly more interested to see the women's storylines than the men's, come 'WrestleMania' season. I digress, some of the wrestling we saw was very good, but there were plenty of things I'd have liked to have gone differently too. I hope that 'WrestleMania' is as good as it's being billed to be, but with WWE in the last year or so, you just never know.