Finalizing the six-man field for Elimination Chamber has been a complicated process. That theme continued on RAW when both Seth Rollins and Finn Balor scored the winning pin on Bray Wyatt, qualifying them both for the Chamber. But before chaos could take hold, Kurt Angle issued an unprecedented rule.
Since the beginning of time, Elimination Chamber only hosted six WWE Superstars at a time. However, there’s no scientific reason as to why there couldn’t be more participants and Kurt Angle just applied that rationale. Both Finn Balor and Seth Rollins will be in the match, making for the first ever seven-man Elimination Chamber contest.
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With only four pods, that means that the February 25th number one contend match will begin as a trip threat, likely with The Miz, Balor, and Rollins kicked off the contest.
It appears we’ve come a long way from WWE’s original plans for the match. Early reports had Jason Jordan being an important part of the show, but his injury forced not just him, but also his partner Seth Rollins from the match. However, given vacancy, it would be hard for WWE to justify keeping a bonafide star like Rollins out of a match that features six of RAW’s most prominent names.
So in response, WWE called an audible. The first plans for Raw were for Balor, Matt Hardy, Bray Wyatt and Apollo Crews to compete in a Fatal 4 Way for the final Chamber spot. But when Seth Rollins confronted Kurt Angle About his lack of direction, the RAW GM made the 4-way a 5-way.
Naturally, by someone with Rollins’ stature entering the RAW match, he’d nearly have to win – but few foresaw him sharing the honors with Balor.
We’d be willing to guess that Balor was the original pick to be the 6th man, but because Rollins is the bigger star, WWE saw fit to simply add them both.
However, despite all of the melodrama, neither of these men will actually win at Elimination Chamber. Instead, it’s possible that they use the match to start a WrestleMania feud and create 2016 SummerSlam rematch in New Orleans.
