One of the big complaints about Elimination Chamber Sunday from those who watched was that it was too predictable. Everything that happened could be seen coming from a mile away. Why should they pay $60 to WWE for something that wouldn’t keep them guessing at every turn? Maybe they do have a point. Why pay to tune into an event where the way the stories play out are apparent before they happen?

That complaint would be valid to me if the only reason anyone tuned into a pay-per-view was to be swerved. Personally, I tune in because there’s a match I want to see, if not more than one match. If I go into the event knowing every single result before it happened, but every match was good to great? Yeah, I would totally feel like my money was spent wisely. I didn’t view Elimination Chamber, but I heard that there was a consensus that both Chamber matches were really good and that the Divas Championship match was the best female wrestling match in WWE in a couple of years, which in and of itself is a small miracle. There were problems with it, yes, but I feel like predictability is lowest on the totem pole after match order making no sense and the utter hokeyness of the Ambulance Match as a closer.

Obviously, there needs to be some imagination and variance in how things play out. If everything was predictable all the time, then of course things would get stale quick. Then again, if the main thrust in the argument is that people are sick of seeing John Cena win all the time, and they paid $60 for/risked arrest for pirating an event where John Cena predictably won, whose fault would it be that they were out that money? That being said, context is key for knowing when to expect when the status quo is going to reign and when there should be a shake up.

Elimination Chamber is the kind of event where no one should have been going in expecting to be swerved. It’s the last pay-per-view on the schedule before WrestleMania. It’s the spot where the final plans for the main event level matches begin to become clear. The swerves and the unpredictable stuff usually is out of the way by the Royal Rumble. EC is the event where fans get two Chamber matches, replete with high spots, scads of violence and hijinks with the most durable substance known to man, LEXAN.

Besides, when given the choice between having an event with a ton of swerves and terrible, short matches or one with predictable endings with great wrestling, most fans would choose the latter every time. It’s a big reason why Vince Russo’s name is spoken among wrestling fans with the hushed tones normally reserved for Lord Voldemort around the halls of Hogwarts. His swerve-heavy television wasn’t nearly resonate as “quality” programming.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no place at all for unpredictability. However, needing it as a prerequisite for good wrestling seems to be a method of watching for those with little to no attention span whatsoever. For me? I’ll take a show where everything is done well, regardless of whether I saw it coming or not, over something where everything that’s done comes out of left field.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by K Sawyer Paul

I’ve long been a defender of the brand split and multiple World Championships. I always thought merging the belts and unifying the rosters would lead to too many guys losing their gig and their card placement, but after watching the last two WWE PPVs, I just don’t see the need for it anymore.

During the Elimination Chamber, we saw a Raw Superstar defend the US Title against a Smackdown guy and Santino Marella challenge for the World Championship … in a match that also had to feature the Great Khali. And the Royal Rumble, while incredibly fun, struggled to fill the ring with 30 big-name Superstars. When Epico, Primo and an Uso made it in, on top of the fact they had several gimmicky entries like Road Dogg, Hacksaw and Kharma, you know the roster isn’t as loaded as it was ten years ago.

And that’s okay! WWE’s been getting back to basics and we no longer have the star overload that the remnants of the Attitude Era left us with. Right now, the only true HUGE name WWE has is John Cena; Triple H is part-time at best, Undertaker works once a year, Jericho is in Roddy Piper mode, and Rey Mysterio is shelved at least three months out of the year. The Rock could pop in and out now and then, Batista might return and who knows, we may still get one last Stone Cold match, but let’s face facts: the 1998-2005 WWE is long gone.

In its place, we have CM Punk, who is on the cusp of something big, and then a bunch of guys who are kinda big, but not really. And that’s all they’ll ever be as long as WWE oversaturates their programming with too many titles and too many brands. It worked when the Attitude Era overlapped the Cena era, but we’re in the beginning of something new now and there has never been a better opportunity to get back to basics.

Yes, it may mean some guys will get shunted down the card, but what difference does it make when the World Championship match is the fourth most important match at WrestleMania? And that’s assuming they don’t come up with some kind of big special attraction like the rumored Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal match. Simply keeping the World Title around and Smackdown as a separate show doesn’t make Sheamus and Bryan bigger deals, it just makes the World Title and Smackdown look lesser. Bryan and Sheamus will no doubt tear it up at Mania, but do you think the Miami crowd is going to be as into it as Rock vs. Cena, Triple H vs. Undertaker or even Punk vs. Jericho? Of course not, and that’s okay, let’s just stop pretending it needs to have a World Title involved to make it a great match. 

So let’s just get on with it and merge the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships and US and Intercontinental Championships. I don’t care when they do it — Night of Champions, SummerSlam, or WrestleMania 29 — let’s just make it happen. It’ll instantly increase the value of the WWE and IC Championships, guys in contention for them will seem like bigger deals and WWE will have to come up with new reasons and stories for guys to feud other than “it’s my turn to get a shot at the title.”

I can’t think of a better way to shake up the program, get people talking and make wrestlers feel like Superstars again.

Razor is a regular contributor to Fair to Flair and the founder of Kick-Out!! Wrestling. It’s pretty difficult to miss him on Twitter, trying to be clever in 140 characters or less. You can also check out Kick-Out’s Facebook and Tumblr pages, because there just aren’t enough social networking sites out there.

Edited by Jason Mann.