WWE Elimination Chamber 2026 Review

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1:00America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home. And not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Still Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at America Cures dot com. Pay for by Farma. Hey, friendos, Steve here Larson and welcome back to going in raw the only pro wrestling podcast need to be listening to on today's episode. We've got your elimination chamber review, a surprising outcome, at least for the men's elimination chamber match as Randy Orton moves on to face Drew McIntyre at WrestleMania.

2:01The big question on our minds, of course, is is it just going to be those two or Cody, Jacob, Sammy, trick, Javon Logan, they're all just fit a 10 man scramble for the title. Why not? That. You know, at the end of the day, make the main event to tonight's show, largely superfluous in terms of determining number one contender, because we're going to have probably minimum four people on this match at WrestleMania, it'll be Randall Keith Orton, who yes, whose victory was fairly surprising. But I guess it's, you know, we had the conversation at one of the episodes this week about Cody kind of need into win tonight, rather than getting into the title match via, you know, lobbying, politicking with Nick Aldeus, whatever the case made me. It's got to earn it, that he would have to earn it and end up happening.

3:06Time to politic. Yeah, time to politic. Yeah. You know, it was, it was interesting kind of turn on things because we saw when Cody qualified, he took advantage of Drew McIntyre's interference, and Sam becoming to help him. Now, I thought something similar might happen tonight, but with, you know, not with Sam again, he was in the match, but with Randy, Randy would end up eating a claymore, and Cody would take advantage or something. Nope, it was the opposite. It was Cody was, was, was, was filling the Sammy roll tonight, Randy doing what Cody did in his qualifier, just taking advantage of the situation, once Cody let his guard down, bank, RKO, three most dangerous letters of sports entertainment got the win. I love the idea. It's, I love the invention, Sammy, because now I'm going to indulge a little bit. I love the idea that Sammy's going to be like, Oh, Cody, guess what? Shoes on the other foot. Look at this. And then Cody's going to politic his way into WrestleMania, and Sammy's going to be left out. Yep. I'd love to see just a Sammy cam on that moment. I, yeah, I don't know.

4:07I've, look, dude, it, yeah, I don't, the writing's going to have to be pretty good. Cody damn good on this one. And is it just going to be Cody complaining to all this? Well, look at Drew McIntyre came down and then I got to take an advantage. It's going to be, oh, I, I, I could have won this match if not for Drew. And Jacob's going to be like, well, I could have won on SmackDown, if not for Drew, I would have won that match. I would have been in the chamber instead of Logan Paul. So put me in match. Yeah, that's what's going to be. He's going to be. Oh, come on. Yeah. They can't just be, I would have won, but you can't do that. They can't, they will. I'm not, look, I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's good idea, Steve. Right. Yeah, I don't, I want to make sure that you're not endorsing it. Not at all. I don't want to see that. In fact, I'd much rather see Cody. They can't, they, you really think that they can get, I hate saying this, they can get that lazy with it. Yeah. Because this is how it's going to be framed as Cody's going to horrible.

5:08Cody's going to go over and nick all this and be like, Drew McIntyre, he's out of control. No. He, listen, listen, because Drew is already on Nick Aldous' shit list several times, including on SmackDown last night. He's like, you're this close from me, just like dropping the hammer on you, Drew McIntyre. And maybe what we saw tonight is the final straw for Nick Aldous, where he just says, Drew, you keep getting involved in stuff. All that Cody has to do is just put the thought in Aldous' mind. He doesn't have to like, so. Oh, so hold on a second, they've announced Cody versus Drew on Friday. Oh. Apparently. Maybe Cody wins the title back there and it is Cody versus Randy, that could, it's entirely possible. What? Yeah, dude, I don't know, I, that's entire, I mean, they're going to have to, they did a lot through a three. They did a lot through a three. You're going to have Jacob thought to get involved in that match. And Randy, it's, it's going to be a huge scrim at the end. No winner. Randy is going to come out, we're going to have this huge foray brawl and Nick Aldous

6:11be like, all right, you guys apparently just want to tear each other apart. That's going to happen to WrestleMania. That sounds more right. That sounds more right. But the show is going to, I can't now, but I was going to say, if they had announced that match, Cody is going to open SmackDown, go up and Nick Aldous, put the thought in his ear. Yeah. I mean, dude, I hate that a lot of complaining is going to get them there. I don't know if you make this dude, it's entirely possible. Look, Cody is going to be closing out night one, one way or the other. Either as champion after winning on Friday because they're like, ah, this true thing is kind of not working. So we're going to send, but yeah, I just feel like it's probably going to be a four-way. They're going to find a way to get Jacob in there. And that's going to be it. I'd be, I'd be kind of surprised if they made it a five-way with Sammie in there. Yeah, no, I think it's more interesting if, as you mentioned, Cody somehow finds this way in the match, even after, you know, what happened to him, same thing kind of happened to Sammie. Sammie's on the outside look at it.

7:11Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I love this for Randy though. I love that this was a great, this was, I thought this was a really good, because, you know, yes, Cody needed to earn this, but we also could use a surprise here or there. Yeah. And Randy winning, especially the way he did where, yes, there was actually some good you know, the, the reference that you made to what happened with Sammie, now the same thing does happen to Cody. I like that. I think that's good. That's how it should be. It's like, oh, it's, you know, throwback, you know, there's a possibility what they could do is have Cody actually win the title back on Friday, maybe Jacob interferes just to get his hands on Drew and it's kind of like, it's not stated as such, but to make good for what happened in the three stages of hell with Cody. And then we get Cody and Randy for the title. And then they do Drew and Jacob, I think that's a possibility to, I think that's a distinct possibility.

8:12If they decide we're not going to do, you know, the multi-man match. Let me ask you this, looking at the roster and all these names, what is a bigger night one match? Let's say, obviously, one thing about what they want to do is sell more tickets. Do they see Cody versus Randy straight up one-on-one as a bigger draw than, you know, there's a lot that they can do. There's a lot of history there, obviously. Yeah. There's also a lot of history with Randy and championship titles. He's got 14. He might be gunning for John Cena's record. Yeah. And so you can tell that story. He's mentioned trying to get 15. Yeah. I'm always a bigger fan of one-on-one. Do they see if they, if they did go with one-on-one, is it a bigger draw for Cody versus Randy than Cody versus Drew? I kind of feel like it probably is. I don't necessarily think one match is more of a draw than the other, honestly. Like I don't feel like I like Drew. I like Jacob thought to a lot. And unless they can crack a really interesting story beyond what they just had, which is

9:14Drew just like messing with people and just come back to bite them, then maybe that would change my mind. I don't necessarily know if in terms of anticipation or marquee value, having the four-way over the one-on-one match between Cody and Orton is necessarily any better. I don't think if you, I think especially for Mania, if you focus on the history of Randy and Cody and make that this few personal without necessarily turning anybody heal, just make it personal. You don't get into it. Yeah. You know, their history. And I think of the options that, in comparison, does Drew just mess with the people now. He's got to contend with that. I feel like a more personal story between Cody and Randy would probably be a more interesting road to WrestleMania than the four-way. I think also, or just a straight, I mean, look, they're doing the match on Friday. Something's going to happen there, obviously. Yeah, either they're going to set the medium match on Cody's winning. But I guess my point was, faced with the option of, do you do just straight up Cody versus

10:19Drew, or do you pivot to Cody versus Randy? If they were just strictly thinking one-on-ones, Cody versus Randy is a bigger match. It is, absolutely. And then- Yeah, okay. That's what I was saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. You know, we've already seen Cody and Drew a couple of times on Pay Per View within the last 365 days and trying to say, all right, this match is the one that's going to WrestleMania and made of it worthy. And then one of the potential benefits of going with Cody and Randy is that you have elsewhere on the card, Jacob fought to and Drew McIntyre. You got a match for Jacob. You got a match for Drew. Yeah. Grant, I just, not Drew defending the title at WrestleMania, which I'm sure will be a bummer for him, but nonetheless, there's already made feud right there. I think they're in, we need to sell tickets mode. Yes. And you're right. I do. I don't think adding people to a match adds Marquiva. I think it dilutes it. I think it, I don't think it adds anything. I think putting a good video package together on a good one on one is the way to go.

11:26As opposed to just all sorts of people, you know, you look at WrestleMania 2000 and what they did with that, you know, you were there for that. You bought tickets for that. Yeah, that was not a, not a fun WrestleMania, no, probably at 10% of the price that they're selling these days. Oh, yeah. I think we paid, we were in the upper deck, but I think our tickets were $50. Mm-hmm. Memory serves. Yeah. You're about halfway up the upper deck and I think it was $50. Yeah, man. 2000, boy. You're 2000. You can buy a lot more with 50 bucks. You got that right. Then you can now. You got the right, you had other surprise in the men's chamber match. It was Seth Rollins. He's back. Yeah. Seth Rollins came back. We did, we actually saw two masked men tonight, three over the past 24 hours because of course last night. We had Bob Smackdown be revealed, it was just a Gibroni from Seth Rollins school apparently. Yeah. I shouldn't call him a Gibroni. I'm sure he has a name, maybe somebody in check. Yeah. I saw what the name was today. And I don't know. Within the universe of WWE, he's a Gibroni. And then tonight there was second Gibroni who showed up and they took him, what?

12:27A diversion. It was diversion Gibroni. They took him, everybody in security took him away. And while they were doing that, Seth Frickin Rollins shows up, but he was under a mass situation completely bodily, look like Seth Rollins. Moving like Seth Rollins, yes. Goes in there, hits a Seth Rollins stomp on Logan Paul who got three eliminations tonight. Obviously, those three were supposed to go to Bronson Reed, but they did a thing on Smackdown where they took Jay out, put Logan in. And he unmasked, sure enough, Seth Rollins, he's back. He's targeting the vision clearly. Do you think Bronn Breaker, is he going to be going after the vision? If Bronn's ready for Mania, you could even wheel out Bronn on the go home to Mania. Yeah. And you got that match made. Yeah, I think that would be the goal. We'd seen Logan versus Seth at Mania before, don't really need to revisit that. No, it's not going to be Seth versus Austin Theory. And Bronson reads the only other guy, I don't even know when he's going to be ready to go.

13:29He's going to be out for a while. Yeah. Yeah. So if we're talking Mania matches for Seth, it's kind of Bronn or nothing, unless they could find a way to write him into the Roman punk thing, which at this juncture kind of feels like an easy shot in the arm. I don't know if that's the shot in the arm. They could look for the sake of, I assume Bronn Breaker is going to be ready for Mania. Even that Logan Paul, and I'm not advocating for this, but given that he is, he kind of does have a fresh coat of paint because of the vision. He's sort of like, you know, in Bronn Breaker's absence, the mouthpiece of the vision stepped up. Yeah. Yeah. You could do that match again. Would it have the impact of a Bronn Breaker, clearly not, but you could do that. They could, I could see them doing that, but you got to think Bronn Breaker is going to be ready by Mania, and that'll end up being the match. It probably will be. It probably will be. Yeah. This episode of Going and Raw sponsored by Tempo, I like to eat well, and I try to my best

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17:40with a cost. Welcome to the upgrade. Welcome to nowadays. Visit trynowadays.com slash raw to get 30% off your order. That's trynowadays.com slash raw or use code raw at checkout. Drink responsibly must be 21 or older. Why have we asked our contractor we found on Angie.com to be our kids legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids. The late of them should something happen to us. Are you my dad now? No, sorry, I do basements. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years, Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie.com. All right, man. So, we got the debut tonight of one Danhausen in WWE. He, in fact, was what was in the crate along with like eight other people. They were all Danhausen dancers and dancer houses, they had the crate up on the stage and

18:47they opened up the crate and then they got the coffin inside. That opens up and then a bunch of dancer housings come out and then he comes out trailing them. And at first it felt like the crowd was kind of like, oh, all right, what's this? And then, and then they started booing him. Yeah, I think a lot of people were hoping to be Chris Jericho. You're probably right about that, yeah, yeah, but no pain maker. No joke. He gave Michael Cole some teepees, some tee, yeah, a jar teeth, which is his thing. He's got a shirt that's up on WWE shop. How do they integrate Danhausen into WWE programming without the reaction that we got tonight? So you know, a lot of the segments specifically on SmackDown with the crate were comedic in nature, usually involving our truth, usually, you know, a catatonic gargano was there

19:51as well, the tag division for the most part. So I kind of think that's it. They might actually team in with our truth to begin truth, 1000 and have them and turn to the tag division. Everybody loves our truth. No one's going to boo our truth. And I think their dynamic comedic dynamic could be really good. That might be the route they go. I think that they need to keep some of his stuff backstage at first and make sure that the writing is on point with the comedy. Because as long as it's funny, as long as it's good, people are going to be into it. That's all you can do. You just got to, yeah, you know, doing their true thing will help. But you can't do what you did tonight again. Just wheel them out there and hope and expect everybody to know who he is and be excited

20:56about him coming to WWE. It was like they took it for granted that enough people knew of Dan Housen and would be excited for him to come to be that like I thought the stuff with the crate was fine. I thought his actual debut was a lot of fun. But you know, when there was expectations seemingly in the building about potentially Chris Jericho being in there, you know, it makes no sense. Jericho and a crate makes no sense. Yeah. Then yeah, it's tough to see those expectations be dashed and then you get that immediate response from the crowd. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I figured I was always kind of on the, I was on the fence in terms of like, okay, well, he's in the crate. If they bust it out live in front of like, you know, on the stage or in the ring even,

22:01then I don't know who's going to know who he is. I don't know how many people are going to know who he is. It's kind of surprising to do it on the stage, I really am. Because you know, I don't think you can come to any other conclusion than the one that you just came to. WWE might have taken for granted that people know who he is, which is hilarious given that it's a company that often loves to just ignore that other wrestling exists. Yeah, I know. I know. They've been much better about it under Triple H. They reference, you know, they don't reference AEW, but they do reference New Japan. They reference, you know, TNA obviously they've got to work a relationship with them. Yeah. They reference Noah. They reference other stuff now. Traditionally, it's like either you're WWE, like they still say, I'm not a wrestling fan. I'm a WWE fan, you know. And so that they would think that people would know who he is in the first place. Or maybe it was just a, hey, let's do something big like this and sort of introduce them in the way that is obviously, hey, here's a new character. He's crazy.

23:01He's kooky. He's comedy guy. It's going to be silly. It's going to take five minutes. And you know, people will be introduced to him. But like the Chicago crowd is like the fuck is this? Yeah. But being short-sighted about what expectations are for the box is folly. Yeah. Yeah. I get from another beast perspective to a degree, having the debut take place on stage in Chicago, which is, you know, usually, like more, they have the reputation Chicago does in terms of being really passionate wrestling fans. And I guess the idea is, oh, Chicago or Philly would probably be the two cities you think we're more likely to be aware of. Dan Housen. But there are also the two cities that are most likely to be critical of whatever to be vocally dump on it. Yeah. Housen, like a cacophony of booze by his treachery imagination. It was a tepid response.

24:02The booze were pretty prominent. Like here's the thing. I could barely hear using my little earpiece because I tried to engage with you obviously in the friendos. And I was like, what the fuck? I'm hearing booze. And on the discussion right now online is WWE just fucking killed them. That's what people are saying right now. So if that's the general sort of a conversation out there, that ain't good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. My thing is this, I am really happy for the guy. It is, in my opinion, going to be an uphill climb. They need to get some good minds to write for him and then you might have something. But you got it because otherwise within a month he's going to be in AAA. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a distinct possibility. Yeah. But yeah, if you get some good comedy writers to do some stuff for him, then they've got a million writers over there and got a figure somebody will know what to do with him.

25:02You think so. Maybe CM Punk's doing the writing for Dan Housen. They're buddies. That could be. That could be. Phil's written TV before. He's written TV. Dan Housen has comic book character. Phil's written comic books before. Yeah. He wrote a drag's comic book. He did. Yeah. If you're tackling a home project, check out Angie.com. From roofing to remodels and everything in between, Angie connects you with skilled pros who do such a good job, you might trust them to do other things. Like pull out your tooth or be your kid's godfather. Don't actually ask them to do those things. Just let them get the job done well. Angie. The one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's ANGI.com. Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires. I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet nibbles after his untimely end.

26:04Huh. Nibbles. Gone too soon. May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff. Nibbles would have loved you like a brother. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. And pros for all your home projects at Angie.com. And then in the women's chamber match, we had rearriply winning. Now this sort of answer to a question that we had. Does WWE feel the same way about Tiffany Stratton as we do? In terms of like, okay, she just came back. It doesn't seem like the reactions are as strong as they would want to immediately push her to the title again. But then I've admitted this. Maybe that's just Steve and his bubble. Maybe that's just me. But I've, you know, usually I'm pretty aware of like the reactions are big. Yeah. Are you with me on the reactions of her since her return? Absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't have the reactions haven't been nearly as vocal as they were prior.

27:11And you know, who knows if that's a situation where they're necessarily listening to those reactions right now. Another aspect of it is she didn't interview lately and I'm paraphrasing, but she was talking about how she was kind of confused why she was getting cheered and how she'd like preferred being a heal. So maybe it's a situation where they're kind of kind of go back to the drawing board a little bit in terms of her presentation and character and kind of get her back on that track as opposed to trying to push her as a baby face. Because I think we can agree the best work she's done so far in the world of wrestling has been as a heal. Oh yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah. And her work was so good as a bad guy. She started getting cheered. Jade versus Rhea Ripley is going to be the match at WrestleMania. They just lost the tag titles Rhea and EO did yesterday on SmackDown. Again going back to all right, what are the biggest names we can we can bust out to sell some tickets to make WrestleMania as big as we can.

28:15We can say that punk versus Roman is the biggest main event in history as much as we want. But that ain't going to move people to buy tickets. You got to put up some matches with some real star power Rhea Ripley's probably top three biggest stars they have her versus Jade at WrestleMania. I feel like we'll see it's basically meant to set up Rhea versus EO probably at Summerslam. Rhea is going to win this match, right? I think there's a distinct possibility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's going to be a real test to see if, you know, to address, I think not only the narrative that does be kind of in a rut right now, try to generate some interest of ticket sales that they'd want to have put the title on Rhea because she's immensely popular. Super popular, yeah. Yeah. You know, and have her involved in high profile feuds, yeah, that makes sense.

29:17Or if they are thinking, well, the brand kind of sells itself to a degree, let's have this match and really elevate Jade to the next level by getting this win over Rhea. But it doesn't seem like they're doing much to build up Jade because she's defending the title once since she's willing. Yeah. That's the big thing, which makes me guess probably a likely thing where Rhea's probably going to get the win. Yeah. I don't know what to deal with that is. How do you have somebody as your top champion on a brand hyped her up endlessly? She's proven that she can have matches and not and pull out matches. You put her with quality people and she can be brought to a good match. We've seen that before. And yet you don't have her defend for like three months. The match with Jordan Grace was a good match. It was. It was widely entertaining yet. You do like a couple of those, you toss in a couple of squash matches and you've got

30:20a title run there. They haven't done anything, which leads me to think they're just, they don't see it. They're waiting it out. They'll put it on Rhea at WrestleMania and then they'll, I'm not going to say start over, but pivot with Jade. Maybe they're, maybe they were just sitting there the entire time waiting to figure out what's going to happen to Bianca because there's a story there. Yeah, I think that was probably a lot of it too. Yeah, so I don't, I don't know what they're doing with Jade Cargill. It's kind of crazy to me, but you know, who knows what's going on backstage. But yeah, it seems like that title just needs like a freshen up and you need a big, a big name to have it and Rhea Ripley is the biggest one they got. Yeah, yeah, yep. You're right. You want to talk about the two matches in between. So we had, we have a new Intercontinental Champion, women's Intercontinental Champion. AJ Lee got the win over Becky Lynch into a pretty overbooked bout, rough bumps and whatnot. Yeah. And then we had CM Punk retain the World Heavyweight Championship.

31:23Finn Balor did not ruin the greatest WrestleMania made event of all time. It's like a cold love to say. Nor did he shit. What a cold pivot to. Oh, put it, it's complicated, put it like that. Yeah, Finn versus Punk was not a terribly engaging bout. No, it was slow. It was, yeah, it was slow. It was very slow. I tried to try to salvage it at the end by picking up the pace a little bit by that point. It was just pretty clear. All right, you're just trying to give the crowd a scintilla of excitement after lulling them to sleep for the previous 15 minutes. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. Yeah, this was not either person's best. It wasn't, it wasn't even, it wasn't even close to being as good as the raw match. No, the raw match was way better. It was actually a really good match. Yeah. Yeah, this was kind of lame.

32:23Punk got a really cool entrance. He got the Chicago Bulls entrance. That was neat. But like it doesn't really advance. I mean, depending what they do with Finn, obviously, but in terms of advancing the story within Judgment Day, he just made all the sense. All right, hey, JD, Dom, stay in the back. I got to prove I can win on my own. And then rather than him being able to show up on raw on Monday, after Dom and JD don't listen to him and try to help him leave him to lose, he just has to walk into the clubhouse, head down like Michael Sarah's character in the rest of the development, George Michael, just the sad, sack piece of shit. Yeah. And has to show his face in the clubhouse. Where's the tension? I'm assuming that'll happen between him and Dom. I could still see him and Dom for the IC title at Mania, probably. Or, or he'll just take a back seat to all that go after the tag titles again.

33:25I honestly don't know. I think that, you know, Finn gets good reaction still. He can still go. We saw that not tonight, but on raw. When he had the punk match, you could slot him in a title match and it's legit. Nobody's like, what's he doing there? But we all know he's a, he's a, he's a depth guy. But for the main event, he's like a guy, he's a utility guy. Basically, you could toss him in any situation and he'll, he'll improve that situation. It just always feels like they're just barely scratching the, it's been 10 years, 12 years, whatever is 11 years, and they've just been scratching the service for 11 years with what Finn Balor can bring to the equation. Yeah, strange, you know, the AJ Lee Becky Lynch match. I thought it was better than the men, than the men's Chicago match. I thought it was better than the men's, the punk match. Yeah. I thought that they're, you know, the moves looked really good. It wasn't nearly as slow and plotting as the men's match. And AJ Lee pulled off the win. I always love this stuff between Becky and Jessica Carr.

34:28I think it's, it's fun. And we had some of that towards the finish. But otherwise, I thought the match was perfectly serviceable. You know, AJ Lee was gone for a very long time. And now I'm doing it. And, you know, I wasn't wowed by her stuff prior to this, you know, our first couple of matches back. But like, this one I liked, I like, I thought it, I thought it was really good. I probably got a credit, Becky Lynch for a lot of that because Becky's just really good. Yeah, Becky is really good. I think it was a match where the kind of overbook nature of it towards the end, especially elevated the excitement level. Yeah, it was a solid belt, solid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was fine. And then AJ Lee walks into WrestleMania as Intercontinental champion, probably get a stip match there with Becky, right? I would think so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and Becky will probably win it back there. Mm-hmm. That would get you. Let's go ahead and dive into it. So some reason I wanted to say, Adam Cole, Michael Cole, well, comes us to the United Center first time they've been in the United

35:28Center very long time. Yeah, usually they run the Allstate arena. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently they said I didn't catch this, but they said this is the first match. Sam Punk has ever had here, but the first episode of collision was there. Rampage, it was rent. No, it was a collision. It was rampage. Oh, I'm sure I, uh, none of the, uh, his first match, because he didn't have a, uh, match. His, his, I just know his debut in AEW was at the United Center. This was the first episode. That was just a promo though. Yeah, I know, but I didn't remember if his first match on collision was at the United Center or not. So I saw it on Twitter, so who knows if it's true, but it was some sort of a six man with FTR and somebody else. So that sounds like a collision thing. All right. I'll check. Yeah. Um, so, uh, anyways, they're the United Center. We have a CM Punk roaming around the streets of Chicago, uh, cold open. And the first match we get is women's elimination chamber. I thought this was match of the night, dude. I thought that the urgency in this match, I thought the intensity of this match had

36:30never let up. There's always cool shit going on. Tiffany Stratton, you know, I've been critical of her, but she is, she is terrific in the ring. And she took a beating in this match. Yeah, she got, she, yeah, um, yeah, can't confirm first collision. You're not in the center. What was the, okay, it was a punk and FTR versus bang, bang gang. That's what it was. Banking in Moa Jill. Okay. Okay. So there you go. So that Twitter post was correct. Was correct. I don't, I just don't remember that. But WWE tonight said this was punk's first match there. Well, again, this is WWE going back to the idea that wrestling gives WWE and WWE is wrestling. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You can't have both ways, WWE. You can't have both ways, man. Try as you might. You can't have both ways. Mr. Sinister here in the chat says, what happened to collision cowboy Steve? It's a week to week thing. And once the next week happens, it's gone. He's not in cyclopedia of collision. No, nor am I a regular watcher of collision.

37:30Hey, look, that was, I thought that was a healthy ambition for me to be a collision cowboy. You know, but best intentions, yeah, as they say. Anyways, no, I thought this match was cool, man. I thought that everybody busted their ass on this match. Yeah, I thought this was really good, dude. There was some good creative stuff as well. We can kind of go through the eliminations here. First eliminated, gosh darn it. I said this is going to happen to predictions. I didn't stick with it. Alexa Bliss first out. She's looking for, she leaps off the top of one of the pods on to everybody else, looking for a twisted. Sorry, looking for a sister Abigail on Kiana, I believe. Oscar hits her with the myth, though, as she's about to hit sister Abigail. Kiana rolls her up and eliminates her. I made the mistake of doing some research. And saw that Kiana, I repent Alexa once in a tag match. That was my mistake. Yeah, I don't know, tell you, man, over thought that's what happens. Raquel had a great showing at this match.

38:32She did. She was dominant for a stretch. She what? Yeah, she did the stack. She did. She stacked Oscar and Kiana, Kiana, yeah, Kiana. Yeah, I don't think we've seen a stack. It's been a while since we've seen a stack. I think we've seen a stack since Roman stacked. I'm trying to remember if they've done anything with like a huge person's stack. Maybe, I don't know. Well, I guess in a competitive match, we haven't seen a stack. No, we have not since WrestleMania. Since WrestleMania 38. So Raquel eliminates Oscar and Kiana after power bombing Oscar onto Kiana, stack some pinsum. They're both eliminated. Later on, Raquel hits a fallaway slam, looking for the corkscrew elbow, tries a Tihana bomb on Tiffany. Tiffany avoids it. And so Tiffany is on Raquel's shoulders, I believe.

39:34Anyways, Rios on top of one of the pods leaps off, take out both of them. And then Tiffany hits Raquel with the prettiest moonsault ever covers. Raquel is eliminated. So it's down to Tiffany and Ria at this point, which is kind of surprising because I thought it'd be a situation where they didn't want two baby faces that were both fairly popular. Obviously, Ria probably more popular than two. As the final two, I figured it'd probably be Ria and Raquel is the final two, but hey, anyway, Ria gets the win. Tiffany's looking for the moonsault. Ria pushes her off the top rope into the pod. That was at least the second, if not third time, that Tiffany got shoved into the pod early on. She takes this awkward fall into one of the pods. And then Ria hits a rip tied to get the W. She is moving on to WrestleMania face, eight cargill, who was watching the entire match from a luxury box. That's right.

40:35So that'll be cool. That's a fresh match up right there. And the cards are really powerful too. Every time they have a face, every time they cross paths, or Jay mentioned her on SmackDown last week, the crowd pops for that. So that's going to be good. After that, we had the Intercontinental Championship on the line, Becky Lynch versus AJ Lee. Again, we had the overbooking stuff at the end here with the ref. This is a ref Jessica car that Becky Lynch has had problems with in the past. I think this Jessica car has it out for Becky Lynch. I think not without her reasons, they've had their tension in the past. I don't know, man. A lot of people are saying Jessica car has it out for Becky Lynch. You're just not saying that, right? Other people are saying it. A lot of people are saying this now. Anyways, so AJ hits Becky with the knockout blood. She crawls to the pin for a two. So Jessica car grabs the the turnbuckle pad

41:38because it had come off. She tries to reattach it. Becky took it off early in the match, yeah. Becky shoves AJ into the ref and then gets a roll up for two. And then Becky going for a roundhouse kick on AJ accidentally hits Jessica car. Doesn't really care much about it. She just sort of shrugs it off. And then she's trapped in a black widow from AJ. She taps with the ref is out. AJ goes check on the ref. Becky attacks her from behind. AJ's booted out of the ring. Becky throws into her the barricade. She grabs a chair from under the ring, slides it inside. Eventually, Becky plants AJ with the DDT on the chair. It's a manhandle slam. Jess comes to AJ kicks out. Becky starts to crash out a bit. The ref presents her from using the exposed turnbuckle and then AJ rolls Becky up for two. AJ hits an arm drag on Becky. And then Becky goes flying face first into the exposed turnbuckle. And then AJ locks her back into a black widow and Becky taps.

42:41AJ Lee gets the win. Yep. Yep, it was a solid bout. There were backstage. All this appears are with the crate. It's a Papa Johns ad essentially. Truth comes in with a box of Papa Johns. Doesn't look like a terribly good pizza. True teddies. Dude, it sounds like Arjun. Just with that one bite, there's going to be a reckoning within our truth's bowels because this pizza looks like I've been sitting there for a little while. Yeah. It's kind of narrowly. It's sad. Sad pizza. The oil from the pepperoni. It kind of coagulated. Yeah, yeah, it turns orange. It was very orange pizza. So after that, we had punk versus Finn. It's great to have Finn's music back. His old music back. Yeah, dude. If nothing else, this feud has brought that old great themes on. Yeah. So punk had a special entrance. He came to the ring with starting backstage. Actually, he just came to the curtain with Alan Parsons project.

43:41Serious, which was the Chicago Bulls entrance theme when they were doing their announcement for the games. That's long would always play. And they had either the actual Bulls PA announcer or so, and you sound a lot like him. You know, do an introduction for punk in the style of. Are you an Alan Parsons project guy? I know this song and I know I and the sky. I and the sky is great. It's fantastic song. It's a really, really legendary engineer. Recording engineer. Did a bunch of videos. If you ever watched the video for Don't Answer Me, it's a really cool video. It looks like a Dick Tracy type animation. Interesting. It's really cool. I caught on Pluto TV once and then I had to load it up like every day for a month. Yeah, that sounds like it was it was it was Lindsey Buckingham. That one song for a while. Yeah, trouble. Yeah, that happened. Some of these videos from the 80s are so just weird. They're like, car wrecks. You got to watch them over and over again. The weirdest part about that Lindsey Buckingham one is like, there's a dude who looks like Tom Petty, but I don't know if it's Tom Petty. It's definitely not Tom Petty.

44:41I know you're talking almost just like Tom Petty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's strange. It is strange. Anyways, a punk's entrance is probably the highlight of this match. They spend a lot of time in rest holds. Namely, Finn had punk in a domino stretch for at least two minutes because he was working over punks in the midsection long prior to that. He was like within three minutes of the match, he's in a fucking headlock on the ground. Yeah, it's just plotting rest hold. I don't know. Like fifth match is are the fast paced ones. Yeah, yeah. And if this is what we got to expect or to look forward to for punk versus Roma, they better add Seth to it. I feel safe in saying the first 20 minutes of punk versus Roman, it's going to be like pick up a book, you know, get on Instagram, whatever. Yeah. It's going to be so plotting. And then that last 15 minutes boy, it's going to pick up. We're going to get a really yeah, ref bump. Then you know the Roman match begins.

45:41It's kind of like a war games. Nothing really happens until everybody's out there. In Roman's case, nothing really happens till the ref bump. Then you got to pay attention. Yeah. So one point punk hits the GTS. Baller rolls out to the floor, and the ends up thin, ends up shot gun drop kicking, punk through the barricade, get some backs in the ring. Punk's looking for a GTS. Baller hits another sling blade, hits a drop kick. Looks for the coup de gras. Punk catches his foot on the way down though, and gets him in a sharpshooter. So Finn makes it to the ropes. Punk drags him back towards the middle, looking for another sharpshooter. Finn blocks it, and then punk just stomps on his head a couple of times, hits a GTS and gets the win. There was like no drama to this match. What's so ever? Yeah. Yeah. And so afterwards Finn extends his hand, punk shakes it, he leaves, and then AJ comes to the ring to celebrate with punk,

46:44and punk had busted his lip open somehow. So he's bleeding a little bit. Yeah, punk over in Chicago, clean. Yep, punk up. Then we had the men's elimination chamber match. I've been refreshing social media stuff to see if there's any info about Javon Evans, because when Logan Paul eliminated him, he hit him with his move, but man, Javon, it looked like he came straight down on top of his head. And I don't, I never know, like if what the rest hand movements are, obviously we've known the X, we didn't see an X, but these days, I think they don't, they kind of only use the K-Paybacks these days, they just get on their thing and tell people what's going on. So there's really no need to do that. But Logan Paul got three eliminations, which probably means Branson Reed was supposed to get three eliminations. But yeah, the one on Javon who went out first, he was the first eliminated. Boy, that was a rough looking move. I hope the guy was just selling, and it's entirely possible that he was just selling.

47:44But man, that was a rough looking move. It did look like memory serves Javon, at least managed to tuck his chin. He kind of had his arm up and he tucked his chin, so I'm hoping that really did, you know, did what he was supposed to do. I hope so, hope so. So yeah, Logan eliminates Javon there with his finisher. Later on, L.A. Knight hits a BFT on trick. Logan hits L.A. Knight with a low blow, rolls him up to eliminate him. And then later on, Cody hits trick with a crossroads, and the Logan throws Cody into the ring post, covers trick to get that pin. So that's his three eliminations. So tricks really slow to leave the ring. And so the first, the diversion mask man makes his appearance. He starts to climb the cage. I'm like, there's a roof on the cage. Can't get in. Obviously a diversion. So security takes him away. And so Seth Rollins has mask man sneaks in, kick, stomp on Logan.

48:44Cody covers Logan to pin him. He's out. Not Dictogo style, but Seth unmasse. You can hear Hayman screaming. Oh my god! Oh my god! No! So Seth looks at Cody and then takes his leave. jumps over the barricade, goes through the crowd. And so they're still taking forever to close this door. This allows Drew to make an appearance. Hits Cody with the title. He looks for a Claymore. Cody avoids that. Drew hits him with the headbutt, hits him shots in the corner. Randy hits Drew with an RKO. And it's one of those RKOs where, you know, who it takes it, it just kind of bounces up. Cody hits Drew with the crossroads. As soon as Cody gets up in the crossroads, Randy hits him with an RKO, covers and gets the win. I will say this for a guy who as of Monday was not slated to be in this match, Logan Paul did a hell of a job. He got wrecked, got tossed through the, his pod

49:48out to the other side. Of course, everybody, you know, in K-Fave, they're all, in character, they're all gunning for Logan Paul. And for him to put himself what he went through, hats off to the guy because he did it, you know, stepped up with less than a week's notice. And where I'm going to the chamber, which is one of the, you know, roughest matches you can go through. Can be, yeah, yeah. We got some, uh, memberships here in chat. We can go through real quick. Yeah. Blind Centaphiles has happy orton one, a ladder match for the WB title. We fun at Mania, but that's just me. I do think it'll be a fatal four-way if not more. Uh, Varek says me and a really close friend just got done running our own watch along for an actual sports channel. Can't thank you too enough for the inspiration. Well, thank you very much for letting us know that. And, and absolutely, that's my favorite thing. People like, I love when people like, we used to watch you as a kid. Now we have our own podcast.

50:49Thanks to you guys. Yeah. It's like, well, I, I know we're old. Totally. We're really old. That's awesome. That's what you're 50. Uh, Fazi here says happy chamber friendos. Thanks for the very good, very not evil podcast. Thank you, Fazi. I feel like the new name for Frendo Club should be approaching 50. Yeah. I think it's a good name for you. It's a good name. Channel, you know, uh, the Billsabub. Remember, the E.B. Asalbub? Not B.L. Asalbub. Billsabub. Oh, man, for a second. I thought actual Lucifer was here. Now, says, uh, they can do punk versus baller every P.L.E. for the rest of the year. Yes, no drama, but God damn it was awesome. All right. Okay. All right. Um, over on the Twitch, we had some subs two or there. I believe. Oh, do we get a raid from Alex? Yes, Alex. Queer of the ring. Graded us. What? Sorry, she's still here. Alex. Hi, Alex. I watched your, I watched your, I watched your WWE 2K 26 vlog

51:50seething with jealousy that you went out there. Yeah. But you know, they want happy about the whole situation. They want the young voices, you know, the relevant dude's approaching 50. Couple of fucking old men sitting here non on a rotisserie chicken or a cheeseless pepperoni and pineapple pizza. Yeah, there's peppers and onions on it too. But yeah. Placed bin in FM. No, a place bin FM. Sorry with the subs as hey, friendos. Hello. Hello, girl Amon just became a channel member as well. Speaking of which, do we have an official February predictions champion? We do. It is David Spies. David Spies. David Spies, I will start working on your prize immediately for the February predictions challenge. Let's do it. As soon as I, I didn't even finish. As soon as I'm done finishing Larson's, which I think I still have to do the December ones as well.

52:51So once I'm done, I look, that is my new, my priority right now is to get these prizes done and out there. And I'm going to come up with the Mania ones. The, I got to do the March ones. But the Mania ones because we're back on the road, Larson, to the biggest predictions challenge ever. Part two. The next one. This is the going to be the last years was the biggest ever. This one for Russell Mania is going to be the greatest. The greatest challenge. This isn't going to be the big, it's going to be the greatest predictions challenge of all time, the WrestleMania edition. You know, I'm looking at the score sheet for predictions today. There's some familiar names on here that had been participating in it a little while. And for example, John Hosey. John, where were you at the rumble? I needed the John Hosey at the rumble because Larson came away from the rumble with the, with the ultimate win. But there's still time, huh? So why does it upset you that I won some of the three time predictions champion now?

53:54Because, because I want some competition for you, that's why. Well, there is competition. Don't you want to, don't you want to go up against the best? I do, absolutely. Well then that's John Hosey. Why are you trying to cut John Hosey out of the equation? Is the bigger question here? No, I'm not. Yeah, I want to, I want to see everybody participate. Yeah, I do too. More the better. Yes, I'm agreeing with you. Okay, well then why are you giving me static for wanting to see that? I'm not giving you static. You're the one giving me static. You're always giving me static. You started the static. No static. Hey, for the biggest WrestleMania predictions challenge, can one of the prizes be snake Larson shirt? If I win. You already have one. You don't need one. Anyways, if you want in on the next predictions challenge, oh boy. Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. It's coming up in March some time. And if you want to do that, click on join right here at youtube.com slash

54:55Stephen Larson. Like all these amazing friendos I've done and we've talked about. Click join or go to patreon.com slash Stephen Larson. Click on the friendo club setup there. And either way you do it, it's $5 a month. It's a great way to help support the show and a couple of old dudes approaching 50. So do that. You also get access to our bonus episodes and question threads. Also right now right now at friendoshop.com. We've got some terrific, absolutely terrific merchandise there. And it is right here. The melty merch drop. Look at this stuff. You could wear this to a bar and and and and and and and not look like an idiot. You wear this and be like, oh, I look at you. We have a basketball jersey for the court. We got a couple of black t-shirts. One that says I watch wrestling for the exploration of interpersonal dynamics between characters. A sentiment that we have echoed many times. Yes, you might heard on the show at least once. A couple of new hats that say friendo are I think friend club in Japanese. And then he had a couple of melty iPhone cases.

55:57I tried to make Samsung Galaxy cases and it just froze up on me. So that's that's a big no way. So get this merch now. Use the code friendo 2026 to get 20% off. Don't pay full price. Do not pay full price. Absolutely not. This is the only merch you really need to know about here. Correct. Oh, so that is correct. So this is the only merch you care about. No, I care about all of it. What other stuff? The melty stuff. Ah, that's right. I thought you were talking about that because you can mention the phone case. Phone case is melty. Yeah, but it's like, come on, it's a phone case. You just pull that out and you pull whatever on there. Who cares? We've got a bucket hat. We've got a basketball jersey. We've got a hoodie. We're going to get a video review for Mr. Dope on the hoodie this week. I can't wait. Parachords and an all over print t-shirt. This is awful. It's great. Nobody should buy this.

56:59And yet people are because it's great, Steve. People are buying this and I don't know why. I don't know these, you know, I don't know what's wrong with these people. There's nothing wrong. Yeah, people are just enjoying some quality merchandise. And what's wrong with that? It's there if you want it. It's there if you want it. It should say. This is your work. You should be happy. The people are enjoying it. I made all this stuff and it's, how do you pronounce it? Aburant. Aborant. How do you say that word? Horrible. I'm not going to tell you because I'm not going to feed into the idea that you think that's the stinks because I think it's great. I'll come on out really. I don't know how do you say aborant. You have to look it up. I ain't telling you. I borrowed. It's awful. I'm not telling you. It's just awful. So anyways, I want to say thanks. It's melty. It's awesome. I want to say thanks to everybody who tuned in to watch our watch along today. What's coming up in March? Like this is a revolution.

58:00Revolution. Revolution. I'm going to do watch along. WPVUs are so long. We're just sitting here. We just sit here. But that's the best way to do. We should do. It's the only paper review next month. We should do a W2K25 MyGM special. The old game? Well, the new one's not out yet. So it's still new to me. You've never played it. So it's new to you. We did MyGM on that. Not a 2K25. We haven't done that since 2K24, dude. Oh, how different is it really? Well, that's my point. Ain't going to be no different in 2K26. I'm saying I don't want to pay for 2K26. And we need some content in March on Twitch. And rather do that than sit here at all sweaty during a W show. We'll see. We'll see. I'll think about it. All right. Yeah, I don't really want to do it either. I'm just saying. There it goes. It's not happening. All right. Thanks for watching. Everybody really appreciate it. We'll be back on Monday for our Rob Review. On Monday, notepad, so be sure to hang out with us.

59:03Hit that subscribe button. Hit that thumbs up. Till next time, we'll see you guys around. Goodbye. Just let them get the job done. Well, Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's ANGI.com. Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires. I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet nibbles after his untimely end. Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff. Nibbles would have loved you like a brother. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years.

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