Stew’s WWE Elimination Chamber: Perth Review

When my alarm went off to wake me up to watch WWE Elimination Chamber: Perth I was in the middle of dreaming that Spider-Man was fighting The Fiend Bray Wyatt. And losing! It was actually a pretty rad dream, but I’m already losing it all.

But yeah, this is early, isn’t it? And right when I turned the show on, Kairi Sane was pinning Candace LeRae. I did not realize there was a pre-show match; we have not had one of those in months! So I guess I don’t get to talk about that match with you all. Sorry!

Let’s fight off the urge and go back to sleep, and let’s cover the 2024 Elimination Chamber instead!

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5:04am: We are kicking off with the Women’s Elimination Chamber match, to the surprise of no one, I assume.

5:06am: It’s apparently Pittsburgh’s own Corey Graves’ 40th birthday. How am I older than Corey Graves? Whoof, that makes me sad.

5:08am: As I watch the entrances to the first match, I’d like to note that I’ve continually seen Instagram Reels and photos of WWE superstars cuddling koalas from the last few days, and I’ve seldom been so jealous of professional wrestlers. It is my dream to someday cuddle a koala. It is my destiny. They are so adorable; they don’t even seem real! I am a grown-ass man, and I’m telling you: I love koalas.

5:14am: Looks like the starters in the Chamber are Naomi vs Becky Lynch.

5:18am: Graves and Cole are discussing the heat and temperature of Australia recently, as I’ve seen podcasting friends from Down Under talking about for the past week-plus. They (Cole and Graves, not my podcast chums) talk about how hot just standing in the Chamber pods would be. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be in there at all.

5:23am: The vocal crowd gets what they want when Tiffy Time comes to the Chamber as the first combatant released from a pod. A new “feature”, I guess, shows each woman’s WWE 2K24 overall rating as they are preparing for the pod to open. Tiffy has the lowest score at a 79.

Can you imagine if, during the NFL opening weekend, the TV broadcasts showed each player’s Madden 24 rating?

Actually, that sounds pretty great. Why AREN’T we doing that? “As you can see, CeeDee Lamb is a 96 in Madden and is going one-on-one on the outside with Devon Witherspoon at an 88. Let’s see who wins this matchup!”

That idea is free, NFL. You can use that.

5:27am: Liv Morgan is into the Chamber next and goes right after Tiffany Stratton, earning some disdain from the crowd.

5:30am: After Naomi hits a Blockbuster from the top of a pod to Liv Morgan, Tiffy rolls up Naomi and gets the first Elimination of the Chamber.

5:33am: Raquel Rodriguez is in 5th, leaving Bianca Belair as the last woman left to enter.

5:35am: And here comes Bianca! With only Naomi having been taken out of the match so far. She goes right after Tiffy, and to the latter’s credit, Tiffany has taken a whole series of big bumps in this match so far. She’s going to be bruised up after this one.

5:39am: Tiffy with a flipping Senton off the top of a pod onto Becky, Bianca, and Raquel. The pro-Stratton crowd loves that. Unfortunately, she soon after eats a top-rope ObLivion from Morgan for the elimination, causing a “Bullshit” chant from the crowd. I love how into Tiffany this crowd is, haha.

5:42am: Damn, Raquel hits a double Tejada Bomb on Becky and Liv, but immediately gets KOD’ed for her trouble by Bianca and gets eliminated. It was a really impressive spot from Raquel before she got jumped and pinned.

5:49am: After a truly sensational endgame sequence that saw each woman left hit a series of great moves and better counters, Liv rolls up Bianca for the three, but she then turns around into a Manhandle Slam from Becky. Becky is going to WrestleMania!

That was a truly wonderful match that got better and better as it went. The crowd’s love for Tiffany. The hard work from Becky. Liv just going absolutely nuts with her offense the whole affair. What a great start to this show!

5:57am: Time for the Tag Team title match between Pete Duane & Tyler Bate and The Judgment Day. And during Bate & Dunne’s entrance, Corey Graves buries their new tag team name, calling it the name of a place his wife would order clothes, wow. I mean… he is right! It’s not a great name. But still.

6:04am: Dominik pulls a Paul Heyman and steals the microphone from the ring announcer to introduce the Judgment Day, of course allowing the crowd to drown him out in boos. That lets the NCR get off to a hot start as they assault Dom and then their opponents.

6:07am: We get these mens’ WWE 2K24 overall ratings, and I guess that’s just a thing tonight. The NCR guys are both in the mid-70s. That’s not great!

6:10am: It is currently mostly dark in Perth, Australia as the sun has gone down there, but on the East Coast of the United States, it is also still dark, the sun not having started to rise here yet. I don’t know why, but that tickles me. Enjoy your sun, Europe, and Africa!

6:16am: Dom gets ejected from ringside after putting Balor’s foot under the rope to save the titles from Dunne’s Bitter End.

6:20am: Damien Priest kicks out of the BirmingHammer–A DOUBLE BURNING HAMMER. Wow. Take that, Kenta Kobashi!

6:21am: And shortly after that, Priest hits a double South Of Heaven into Balor’s Coup De Grace to retain. Post-match, Finn really seems to be bothered by his right thumb, and it has a pretty colorful bruise on it. Hopefully, he didn’t break it or anything!

6:27am: Becky Lynch apparently just Tweeted that you can’t spell WrestleMania without M-A-N, which flies in the face of Bianca Belair telling us earlier that you can’t spell it without E-S-T. We need another wrestler named Stlem to tell us more about spelling our Premium Live Events. Maybe someone named Mersla who simply won’t be denied a main event at Summerslam.

6:33am: Time for the hometown (or home country, I guess) hero Grayson Waller and the Grayson Waller Effect. I wonder if he’ll heel it up by declaring he is a Sydney Boy and hates Perth or something.

6:36am: Seth Rollins stole Velveteen Dream’s old sunglasses. Maybe he was messing around and casting spells from The Darkhold.

6:38am: Austin Theory is bored with the crowd singing Rollins’ song, so he starts counting his abs, haha

6:47am: This is basically a Pop and Chant Bonanza. Sing Seth’s song, chant Rocky Sucks, chant Cody.

6:51am: So the story here is that Cody challenged The Rock to a one-on-one match anytime, and Seth will be in Cody’s corner. That is… not the tag team match we have heard rumored, but there’s still more time.

It also ruins my prognostication that Rock was going to insert himself in the Elimination Chamber tonight and that we were going to get Seth vs The Rock at WrestleMania. It was a shot in the dark, sure, but… I was hoping! Build the story of the Workhorse Champion vs the guy who would take the belt and disappear for months at a time.

I mean… I guess there’s still time for that, too. But not much.

6:57am: Speaking of which, the Men’s Elimination Chamber is next, meaning Rhea is getting the main event to send the crowd home happy.

7:10am: It looks like our opening pair will be Drew McIntyre and LA Knight.

7:21am: KO is in first from the pods, and he is the lowest-rated superstar in the match, with just an 86 overall in WWE 2K24! The poor former Universal Champion is four full points lower than Logan Paul, who has, what, ten career WWE matches or so?

I have to admit I am eager for 2K24. I love GM Mode. I’m excited to see what they change about that this upcoming game.

7:25am: HERE’S SOMETHING: The ten-second countdown where we find out who is in next? It has ITS OWN FIVE SECOND COUNTDOWN. So we get 5…4…3…2…1… 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1.

That’s… wildly unnecessary.

ANYWAY, Bobby Lashley is in next.

7:30am: Randy Orton is in third, leaving Logan Paul for last.

7:33am: Orton hits a hanging DDT to KO on the outside of the ring, and this causes him to start selling his back the rest of the match, with Cole and Graves repeatedly pointing it out.

7:34am: Logan Paul is in next, and he is instantly jumped by KO who starts beating the absolute crap out of him.

7:36am: Bobby Lashley destroys one pod with KO’s body, then Spears Logan Paul through another. Then very, very audibly right into the camera, says “Oh fuck”, haha.

7:38am: Lashley is then the first man eliminated after a Claymore from Drew. Corey Graves astutely notes that Lashley hit LA Knight with his own injured elbow, and that’s what set him up for the Claymore finish.

7:40am: AJ Styles runs into the cage while Lashley is leaving, and beats the snot out of LA Knight with a chair. A Styles Clash onto the chair allows Drew McIntyre to pin Knight. So I guess we ARE getting Styles/Knight at Mania instead of Knight/Paul. WWE is determined to destroy any heat Knight has left.

7:44am: KO is out after an RKO. Man, he just can’t catch a break; he had just Stunner’ed Paul, but the social media star had rolled out of the ring. Paul keeps getting one over on Kevin.

7:48am: Logan pulls out the brass knuckles–which he really should have been wearing the whole match since there is no reason not to have been–but as he cocks his fist with them, Orton RKOs him from out of nowhere and gets the pin. This leaves us with the two favorites to win the match: Orton vs McIntyre.

7:53am: Well if you were hoping whoever won this match would come out looking dominant and strong and deserving: not so much! Orton hit McIntyre with an RKO and never even got a chance to go for the pinfall; Logan Paul brass-knuckled Orton, and McIntyre pinned him without even a Claymore.

They note that Drew McIntyre punched his ticket to WrestleMania, but in a very literal sense, Logan Paul punched Drew McIntyre’s way there.

Damn, what a deflating ending that was. McIntyre is getting a WORLD TITLE MATCH AT WRESTLEMANIA that he earned by complete fluke. I get that they might want to do an Orton/Paul program, but they could have still had McIntyre look a bit more like he earned it.

8:00am: HHH is here! Probably to announce attendance.

Yep. The attendance broke 52,000, which from what I recall is not even remotely close to the stadium record. Oh well!

8:03am: ARE YOU READY FOR NIA JAX TO MAIN EVENT A PREMIUM LIVE EVENT IN A ONE-ON-ONE ENCOUNTER? Because it’s time!

8:04am: While I’m waiting, I have not mentioned yet that between each match, Cole and Graves have essentially hosted a short commercial segment for Western Australia and how dreamy and amazing it is. Hey! It’s better than when they are trying to sell Saudi Arabia to us, so I’ll take it.

8:10am TALKING POINT: Who has better entrance music currently in WWE than Rhea Ripley? Her song rocks. Always my favorite part of her matches is her tune.

8:13am: As happy as I am that Rhea Ripley is getting to have this match in front of this crowd, I still wish WWE had given us a one-night-only return that would have been slightly more… oh let’s say… iiconic.

8:22am: Rhea kicks out of an Avalanche Samoan Drop! Damn! Shortly thereafter, she hits a forward-falling Electric Chair Drop, smacking Nia’s face off of the top turnbuckle. That looked brutal. But hey, this IS her brutality.

8:25am: Nia Samoan Drops Rhea onto the announce table, then elbow drops her through it. Back in the ring, Rhea kicks out of Nia’s finish.

8:28am: Rhea wins after a basic Riptide–I thought we might see an avalanche version here from out of the AnNiaLater–and that wasn’t a bad match at all. The big spots all certainly worked and looked impressive. That’s what they were focused on.

8:31am: Not bad for a four-match card. I’d say the Women’s Chamber match was the highlight of the show, which stinks it bit since it was first, but it was a great affair.

It’s just too bad so many folks were missing. No Jey. No GUNTHER. No Bloodline. No Rock. No Royal Rumble winner Bayley. Feels like a ton of folks were left out, and that’s a shame.

But like I said… I liked the show. Now back to bed before I have to go out for the day. Maybe I can finish my dream and see how Spidey is doing.

Until next time… take care!