8 Things You Didn't Know About The First Elimination Chamber Match
The most terrifying structure in all of wrestling is the Elimination Chamber. Two competitors enter, with four superstars locked in pods watching the action. Every five minutes, one of those pods open and a new competitor enters the match. The six men beat the heck out of each other. Debuting as the main event of the 2002 Survivor Series, Satan’s Structure has housed multiple superstars over the years in its way to becoming one of the bone-shattering pitstops on the road to WrestleMania.
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But there can only be one first one, which is also coincidentally Shawn Michaels’ last world title win during his career. The veterans all made this match seem seamless, but that wasn’t always the case. The first Chamber match was actually a comedy of errors. Here are ten things you may not have known about the first-ever Elimination Chamber match.
8 It Was Triple H’s Brainchild
Admittedly, Triple H was a huge devotee of the Nature Boy and the NWA. For a long time, he had tried to pitch to Vince that the Chairman should bring back War Games. He wasn’t alone, Michael Hayes had also tried to resurrect the match. But, when it was clear that Vince had no intention of retreading a classic Crockett, NWA, and WCW staple, the Game went in another direction and dreamt up this monstrosity.
7 The Most Devastating Napkin Ever
While Eric Bischoff in character came up with the Elimination Chamber, it was originally all from the mind of the Cerebral Assassin. He drew the concept on a napkin and let engineers do their work.
The structure was built in Colorado and hauled around in fifty-foot trailers and stored in Newark, New Jersey. The original demonic structure was 36 feet in diameter, constructed of ten tons of metal, and two miles of chains surround the ring. The “bulletproof” pods are made from plexiglass.
6 It Was A Very Real Structure
According to an interview all parties involved did with ESPN, when you have non-wrestling people build a wrestling structure, you’re going to have a bad time. The Elimination Chamber is all real and all painful.
According to the youngest AEW champion ever, Chris Jericho, “We didn't see it until the day of the show in Madison Square Garden. And it's one of those things that you can tell was made by somebody who's not a wrestling person. It was very clunky, it was very dangerous. It's made of real grated steel—you probably could have made it out of rubber, and you wouldn't have known the difference. The walls were very stiff, and they didn't make any noise when you hit them, so it hurts like hell and sounds like s---.”
5 Shawn Was Supposed To Be Fifth In
Throughout the day, all six participants discussed what could, should, and will happen during the match and mapped out a loose outline. Some of that outline went out the window when Triple H needed time to recover from his injury.
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One thing that was decided on was when HBK came in fifth, he’d come in and clean house. Jericho headed closer to Shawn’s pod to make it easier for HBK when it opened. But, for some reason, his pod didn’t open, and Kane’s did. The Big Red Machine cleaned house and heaved Y2J into the plexiglass pod.
4 Triple H Couldn’t Speak
Midway through the match, RVD delivered his patented Five Star Frog Splash from the top of one of the pods to Triple H. But Van Dam couldn’t get enough air and inadvertently smashed the Game’s throat. He suffered a torn Larynx and couldn’t speak for the rest of the match, which meant he couldn’t do what a lot of heels do, which is call the action in the ring. It made the last few moments a little more difficult when Shawn Michaels (only one match back in) was looking to his friend to call spots and take them home.
3 Michaels Wasn’t Officially Back
Shawn Michaels endured a near career-ending back injury, overcame addiction, and returned to the company for one more match against Triple H to go out on his own terms. There was not a plan for Shawn to keep going, he was done. But the call was made to see if he had yet another one in him.
HBK came back yet again, and, since he was willing to work a little more, Vince booked him to win the match. Which at the time, none of the fans thought was going to happen. It wasn’t until discussing the possibility of coming back with his family that Shawn officially put both feet forward and firmly back in the ring.
2 The Odyssey Of Shawn’s Strange Stretchy Pants
Despite not planning on coming back, Shawn’s tights weren’t just tossed together. That meant he actually planned to look like that! According to several people, he hadn’t planned on coming back, hence the “Little Drummer Boy” haircut, that guys like Prichard and Undertaker teased HBK about it.
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Instead, he had envisioned some sort of Earth-tone outfit, and WWE seamstress Julie Youngberg got to work. But she didn’t have enough time, and fans were left with the lasting image of poorly colored outfit for the usually flamboyant HBK.
1 The Brass Tried To Get Triple H Out
After RVD came crashing down on Triple H’s throat, he was hurt slightly more than pretty bad. Doctors after the show explained to HHH that if he fell asleep his throat could explode and kill him.
But the Cerebral Assassin soldiered on. Even after referee Earl Hebner threw up the X. Even after people tried to get Triple H out of the ring to continue. No one could ever doubt the Game’s toughness, slightly over a year prior he finished a match with a torn quad. According to Triple H, he spent the better part of the next day in the hospital, waiting for doctors to cut his throat open and get the swelling down to repair it.
NEXT: 10 Wrestlers Who Tried Something New (And Failed Miserably)
