WWE Elimination Chamber 2017 Review: Top Highlights and Low Points
WWE Elimination Chamber 2017 brought the titular cage match back to true form, placing it in the middle of the Road to WrestleMania with implications that weighed heavily on the entire upcoming card.
All but one of SmackDown's championships were on the line, allowing potential for some drastic changes that could turn the blue brand upside down before the biggest event of the year.
Looming over the WWE Championship match was Royal Rumble winner Randy Orton, scheduled to face whoever was victorious in the Elimination Chamber match. Was John Cena able to retain his championship, or did his historic 16th title reign fizzle out quickly?
After several pins over SmackDown women's champion Alexa Bliss, was Naomi crowned as the new leader of the division?
How did American Alpha perform when put up against the entire spectrum of tag teams standing in its way to keep the belts in its possession?
Every pay-per-view has its ups and downs, but with this having a massive influence over the most important time of the year in WWE, this event needed to deliver on a great scale.
Now that the results are in, were there more positives than negatives to prove the doubters wrong, or did the cons outweigh the pros, creating more doubt for what's to come at WrestleMania 33?
Let's look back at what happened at WWE Elimination Chamber 2017 and single out the biggest highlights and low points of the evening, presented in order of appearance throughout the night.
Low Point: Pre-Show
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When the best part of the entire pre-show is John "Bradshaw" Layfield falling down doing the Texas two-step, that's sad.
None of the extraneous recap segments—like Becky Lynch in the social media lounge or Sam Roberts and Carmella on the analysis panel—had interesting twists to them.
Even the match itself between Mojo Rawley and Curt Hawkins was something that had no build to it and didn't deliver in the ring to offset the lack of storyline momentum.
It's good that the match took place rather than just having another backstage interview, but it wasn't worth watching, and it's doubtful anybody would have cared had the result been the opposite.
Pre-show hours like this are why many WWE fans don't bother watching them, and you can't blame them for finding better things to do with their time.
Low Point: 2-on-1 Handicap Match
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For a match that involved a high-flying cruiserweight, an athletic powerhouse and perhaps WWE's best seller in the company, this whole segment was surprisingly flat.
To start things off, the spot where Dolph Ziggler jumped Kalisto was particularly weak and didn't come off anywhere near as brutal as it should have been.
Then, Ziggler and Apollo Crews spent a good portion of their match laying down in the ring with headlocks, draining all of the energy out of the segment.
When Kalisto made his return to the ring, it was laughable and not some epic comeback that WWE tried to play it off as.
Crews and Kalisto winning makes sense, although it does nobody any favors. Crews and Kalisto still look weak, and Ziggler doesn't seem stronger for having wrestled both of them.
Even worse, this was capped off with Ziggler attacking the two of them after the match with a steel chair—something that has happened every week they've interacted.
They're in the same position they were in before this pay-per-view, and with fans chanting "Thank you, Ziggler!" while he attacked the babyfaces, it shows this feud isn't working the way it was intended to.
Highlight: Tag Team Turmoil Match
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Following the lackluster match between Dolph Ziggler, Apollo Crews and Kalisto, it was a refreshing change of pace to see something with more energy behind it.
While there weren't many specific spots to point out, the sum of the parts was quite fun.
In particular, the balance between babyface and heel domination played out well—once one team started building up steam, a new one came along to turn things in the opposite direction.
For having six different teams in the mix, all of them had at least one decent moment to showcase their characters and skill—something that doesn't frequently happen with the tag team division.
In the end, the right decision was made to have American Alpha retain the titles while also keeping some mystique to the idea that The Ascension might be prime for rehabilitation.
Where SmackDown goes from here will be interesting to see, so for this match to pose those questions in a positive way is a plus for this event.
Low Point: Carmella and James Ellsworth Backstage Segments
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Multiple times throughout the night, Dasha Fuentes talked to James Ellsworth and Carmella while they watched the event and ate popcorn.
Not a single one of these segments was interesting or worth checking out. They were all exactly the same, with the two saying they didn't like what they just saw and telling Fuentes to go away.
Ellsworth's character has diminished considerably over the past few months since being paired with Carmella, who has lost her moxie by not having anybody to feud with since Nikki Bella.
Unless something of more value is done with these two soon, it might be better to cut the losses and scrap this pairing altogether.
Highlight: Naomi Wins SmackDown Women's Championship
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As a big Alexa Bliss fan, it's tough to get behind the idea of her dropping the SmackDown Women's Championship, but when the flip side consists of Naomi finally winning WWE gold, they balance each other out.
Naomi has been on the roster since August 2010, and while she made an impression in NXT, she lost that season and has spent the rest of her career being overlooked.
Naomi has always been one of the best in-ring performers in the women's division. For it to have taken over six years to win a championship is outrageous, so it's nice to see it finally happen here.
Just as with any new champion, there's the potential for this to go in the wrong direction, with WWE failing to give her a decent title reign, but if the glass is half full, we may be in store for the best work of Naomi's career.
Highlight: WWE Championship Elimination Chamber Match
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Whether you agree with the outcome of the match or not, mostly everything leading up to it was some of the most entertaining content of the night.
This was our first look at the new chamber structure, which most noticeably replaced the grates on the outside with padding.
That was a smart choice to hopefully stave off the injuries that seemed to plague this gimmick in the past, and it didn't take too much away from the rest of the action.
While the cage itself was changed, some of the staples of this match were still in the mix—such as Dean Ambrose being thrown through a pod by Baron Corbin, who was, at one point, the most dominant man in the match despite being the first person eliminated.
It was a smart choice to follow that with Corbin attacking Ambrose and setting up The Miz to capitalize with a pin, as this could set up an Intercontinental Championship match between Corbin and Ambrose at WrestleMania.
The Miz also had another fun moment in the match where he, true to his cowardly heel character, opted to stay within the confines of his pod for an extended period of time out of fear of running into Corbin's mean streak.
Once John Cena had been pinned and a new champion was a definite between AJ Styles and Bray Wyatt, the air automatically changed.
Whether you supported Wyatt or preferred to see Styles win will change your perception of the whole match, but at the least, having a new champion can be viewed as an interesting development, regardless of how predictable the outcome was.
In the end, Elimination Chamber turned out to be an event that was primarily mediocre with some good moments peppered throughout. WWE has a long road ahead to build to a better WrestleMania, but things have looked worse in the past and turned out OK.
Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.
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