After starting their Premium Live Event year by using the Royal Rumble as the latest sportswashing spectacle in Saudi Arabia, WWE returned stateside for its second offering of 2026: the 16th annual Elimination Chamber.
This is far from the first time the Windy City has hosted a WWE show, but for the first time since SummerSlam 1994, it took place in the United Center. Assuming those fans survived the bombardment of paid patriotism, they got to see four matches, including two inside the eponymous cage.
With WrestleMania 42 a little over a month away, Elimination Chamber aimed to solidify the main stories for the biggest super-card of WWE’s year. Whether or not they succeeded is what we’ll discuss today.
Elimination Chamber Hits
CM Punk vs. Finn Balor
If you couldn’t tell from his Chicago Bulls-style introduction, his Blackhawks-inspired gear, or the tens of thousands of fans chanting his name, CM Punk came into his World Heavyweight Championship match against Finn Balor as the sentimental favorite. That overwhelming support would be enough to elevate middling work, and it certainly did so for the solid effort these two seasoned vets turned in.
Balor spent his control segment working over Punk’s ribs in preparation for the Coup De Grace. He eventually hit his signature double stomp, but Punk gutted through, hit the GTS, and scored the clean pin. It’s simple, but effective: the fighting babyface champion overcomes a stern challenge to retain his belt.
Hopefully, this little run showed that Balor should be a fixture at the top of the card, but fans have said that for the last DECADE (!), so there’s a good chance that he slides into his familiar mid-card role. As for Punk, a huge match with Roman Reigns awaits in Vegas.
Rhea Ripley wins the Women’s Elimination Chamber
The women’s Elimination Chamber match featured its share of good and bad moments. We got plenty of trademark WWE overproduction during the entrances. After the opening bell, we saw silly nonsense like Alexa Bliss pointing to the WrestleMania sign instead of hitting Kiana James with her finisher, earning a MIST by Asuka, a pinfall loss, and the crown for dumbest babyface of the night.
On a positive note, James looked impressive (if only she had a better gimmick), Asuka was really good, and, most importantly, we got the ideal winner in Rhea Ripley. The former Women’s World champ pinned Tiffany Stratton and will now face Jade Cargill at WrestleMania. That should be a fascinating match. We know how good Ripley is, but we’ll see if she can have a good match with Cargill.
AJ Lee wins the Women’s Intercontinental Championship
This is a light hit thanks to the underwhelming workrate and the shenanigans that were partly scripted to cover for it. All things considered, this was the best case scenario for a Becky Lynch vs. AJ Lee match. The former Divas Champion looked like someone who hadn’t worked a singles match in over a DECADE (There’s that word again. Man, time flies.) and wasn’t a ring general in her prime, but she did alright with that caveat in mind. And, while Lynch isn’t known for elevating less-polished workers, she shepherded Lee through this one well. The warm reception for Lee in her adopted domicile helped, too.
Most fans expected this to happen at WrestleMania, so the ref bump and the exposed turnbuckle spots likely primed them for a bad finish to set up a rematch. Instead, Lee forced Lynch to tap to the Black Widow, gaining the IC Title. The tomfoolery will give “The Man” something to gripe about for a few weeks. Plus, the title change adds more intrigue to Lee’s presumed rematch with her.
Elimination Chamber Misses
Je’Von Evans’ booking in the Elimination Chamber
Booking pro wrestling is tough, but it’s not that hard. Unfortunately, WWE seems determined to prove otherwise with Je’Von Evans.
Unless you’re a gatekeeping talking head and/or one of Triple H’s washed-up friends, everyone sees how much of a potential superstar Evans is. And it’s not like anyone expected Evans to win; a pin or two and a big high spot would’ve sufficed. Heck, it would’ve just been nice to hear the ring announcer get his name right.
Here’s what actually happened: Evans did the flashy stuff that we see in all of his standard matches, hit a frog splash off one of the pods onto Trick Williams, and got pinned by Logan Paul. By the way, Evans was the first person to be eliminated from the chamber.
Some people will argue that Evans got a decent amount of offense in. And sure, he didn’t get squashed. But given what we’ve seen from him, doing a few athletic moves before getting sacrificed to Paul and his “get him off my TV immediately” heat and getting a “your time will come” head pat from the announcers, epitomizes WWE’s complacent booking.
Don’t worry, though! Evans will be ready in about a DECADE (three times the charm) once he’s passed all of WWE’s “tests”.
The rest of the Men’s Elimination Chamber
Singling out Evans’ booking doesn’t let the rest of the men’s chamber off the hook. Until the closing moments, this match could’ve been an email. Yes, there have been worse chamber matches, but not many. This resembled a standard WWE match with a big cage surrounding the ring. And, the finish reinforced the reality that WWE cage matches exist merely for the structure’s aesthetic value.
In several cases of masquerading the contrived as clever, the refs take their sweet time rolling Trick Williams out of the ring following his elimination. It only takes a few seconds for you to go from “Why is this taking so long?” to “Oh, so someone can run in.” From there, we get a masked man decoy leading to the reak masked man running in and costing Logan Paul the match. It wasn’t as much as Paul cost people who got scammed by his knockoff Tamagotchi crypto game, but it is what it is. Of course, the man revealed himself to be Seth Rollins, signaling a Rollins vs. Paul match at WrestleMania…again.
All of this happens to explain why the cage door remains open for the second run-in of the match: Drew McIntyre coming out to screw Cody Rhodes. McIntyre eats a CrossRhodes and an RKO, but that brief moment after Rhodes hit his move allowed Orton to hit him with another RKO to win the match.
Subverting fans’ expectations isn’t the worst thing in the world, especially when a lot of those fans think the on-screen product is stale. But, the overbooking required to get there made this match an even bigger chore to watch than it already was.
Danhausen’s debut
This is a light miss because, in a vacuum, Danhausen’s WWE debut went how you’d expect his WWE debut to go. It was wacky, silly, and ridiculous…but the Danhausen character is wacky, silly, and ridiculous, so it’s not out of place. The issue was that few fans in attendance seemed to know who Danhausen was, let alone care about this Gobbledy Gooker-esque reveal.
This isn’t to wish ill on a talented character wrestler. Hopefully, Danhausen has a very nice (and very evil) run in WWE, and the chances are good that he can. But this wasn’t the best start.
If you would like even more WWE Coverage from Chris Jeter, check out more of his articles right here on Let Them Wrestle.
