Key storylines heading into Elimination Chamber 2023

The WWE will head north of the border this weekend with Elimination Chamber coming live from the Bell Centre in Montreal, QC. The show will take place on Saturday, February 18 at 8 p.m. ET and will be streamed on Peacock.

Elimination Chamber is an annual staple on the WWE’s pay-per-view calendar and will be the final premium live event before Wrestlemania 39 in the Los Angeles area this April. If you haven’t paid attention the Raw or Smackdown over the last few weeks, we’ll get you caught up with how these matches came to be below.

Elimination Chamber key stories

Roman Reigns vs. Sami Zayn

The main event will feature undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns defending his titles against Sami Zayn in Zayn’s hometown of Montreal. Formerly the “Honorary Uce” in the Bloodline, Zayn refused to partake in the group’s beatdown of Kevin Owens at the Royal Rumble. Instead, he hit Reigns in the back with a steel chair and was promptly was beaten down and thrown out of the group. On the following week’s episode of Smackdown, Zayn issued an attack on the champ and challenged him to a title match for EC. Reigns would accept the challenge, vowing to destroy the challenger in front of all of his friends and family.

An accompanying story to this is the story of Jey Uso, who refused to take part in the aforementioned beating of Zayn at the Royal Rumble and walked out on the Bloodline. He went M.I.A. on his family for two weeks until returning on an episode of Smackdown to help his brother Jimmy Uso defend the tag team titles. A conflicted Jey would later express to Jimmy that he was unsure if he wanted to be committed to the Bloodline anymore and was even seen dapping up Zayn later in the show. As a result, Reigns, who was presumably watching all of this on television, delivered direct orders for the Usos to not appear at Elimination Chamber. We’ll see if they defy those orders.

Elimination Chamber matches

The show will also feature two Elimination Chamber matches, one for the men and one for the women. The United States Championship will be on the line in the men’s match as Austin Theory will defend against Seth Rollins, Johnny Gargano, Bronson Reed, Damian Priest, and Montez Ford. A focus has been placed on Rollins heading into this match and while he is as confident as ever, he gets agitated whenever someone brings up him getting eliminated by Logan Paul at the Royal Rumble.

The women’s match will feature Asuka, Carmella, Liv Morgan, Natalya, Nikki Cross, and Raquel Rodriguez duking it out for a title shot against Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair at Wrestlemania. From the last two weeks of television, Asuka and Liv Morgan appear to be the favorites in this one and it wouldn’t be a shock if they were the final two.

Other matches

• Bobby Lashley will take on Brock Lesnar in their third singles encounter in just over a year. Lashley defeated Lesnar for the WWE title at last year’s Royal Rumble and later that fall, Lesnar toppled him at Crown Jewel. The two have traded attacks on Monday Night Raw since then, with Lesnar costing Lashley a shot at the United States title and Lashley eliminating Lesnar from the Royal Rumble. It all comes to a head in Montreal.
• Edge and Beth Phoenix will continue their revenge tour against the Judgement Day when facing Finn Balor and Rhea Ripley in a mixed tag team match. This stems all the way back to last summer when Edge, the creator of Judgement Day, was ousted by Ripley, Damian Priest, and their new leader Balor. This extended into the fall when Edge lost to Balor in an I Quit match at Extreme Rules and Ripley bashed Phoenix in the head with a chair. Edge and Phoenix were then off television for a few months before returning at the Royal Rumble last month.