Friday, February 23, 2018

PREDICTIONS: Elimination Chamber (2018)

One of these days, the WWE is going to build a forgiving structure.
I don’t have high hopes for this year’s Elimination Chamber, since most of what’s at stake seems to be set in stone. Fsatlane is going to have a similar problem soon, but at least it makes some things easy to predict.

KICKOFF: The Clerb vs. The Miztourage

This one depends on whether it’s the start to a thing or just gettting four guys on the card. I’m going to guess it’s the latter and say The Clerb wins and hope they go with Strowman beating Miz at Mania.

Matt Hardy vs. Bray Wyatt

Nobody gives a shit, but people do still like to chant “DELETE” and Matt’s due a win back after the debacle that was their Raw 25 match, so I’ll say Matt wins.

Asuka vs. Nia Jax

If Jax wins, she enters the still undefined championship match at Mania and it becomes a Triple Threat. But, if she wins, she also breaks Asuka’s unbeaten streak going into Wrestlemania. And that’s not going to happen. So Asuka isn’t going to lose. She may or may not win, depending on how much WWE decides it needs to protect Nia Jax and what its actual Mania plans are for the women and thepost-Mania draft, but Asuka won’t lose.

Ronda Rousey Contract Signing

Not a match, so not a prediction, but I bet some form of violence will break out and we’ll find out who Rousey’s Wrestlemania feud will start to involve.

The Bar vs. Titus Worldwide (Raw Tag Team Championship)

Toughest call of the night. I’m going with The Bar retaining, because I don’t see them putting the belts on Titus and Apollo (nee Crews) and the latter team has gotten fluke wins for weeks just to earn this shot. But I’m not confident in this pick because, well, the Raw tag team division is a mess. My ideal finish would be The Revival destroys both teams to maybe set up a triple threat or something at Mania, but I’m just gonna predict Bar retaining.

Women’s Elimination CHamber Match For The Title (Alexa Bliss, Bayley, Sasha Banks, Mickie James, Mandy Rose, Sonya DeVille)

A lot of this really hinges on what they’re doing at Mania with Asuka. My gut still tells me it’ll be Asuka/Charlotte. They’ve kept Raw and Bliss out of their mouths for too long for it to be unintentional. If that’s happening, then the finish to Asuka/Jax may set up Jax as the challenger. Jax-Bliss isn’t a Mania match, but  Jax-Banks or Jax-Banks-Bayley or Banks-Bayley could be. All signs point to a Sasha Banks win here. Even if I’ve pretty much invented those signs out of whole cloth. If it’s not Banks, it’ll be Bliss. No way anyone else is getting it.

Men’s Elimination Chamber Match (Reigns, Elias, Strowman, Miz, Rollins, Balor, Cena)

There is a small part of me that thinks the months and months and months of news stories talking about how they’re gonna have Reigns take the belt off Lesnar at Mania is all an elaborate plot to work the marks, andthey’re gonna have Strowman win the Chamber match and put the belt on him and make everyone happy, but this is not a situation where you bet against Reigns because, well, there’s a lot of history behind Reigns. So Reigns. Bonus prediction - Strowman needs at least four guys on top of him to get pinned.

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