WWE Elimination Chamber 2026: Nobody in the Writers’ Room Noticed They Ran the Same Promo Twice

One week before WWE Elimination Chamber 2026, the company’s creative team handed wrestling fans a gift they didn’t intend to give: proof that nobody is reading each other’s scripts. On the same episode of Raw, CM Punk and AJ Lee ran the exact same promo as Finn Bálor and Becky Lynch — same setup, same dare to take the first shot, same punchline about protecting the upcoming chamber match — with two different couples and nobody in the writers’ room apparently aware it was happening twice. It was, in its own way, a perfect summary of where WWE creative stands in the most important stretch of the wrestling calendar.

The chamber itself is shaping up to be genuinely compelling, partly because WWE has made a habit lately of putting people in it that nobody expected. Je’Von Evans is qualifying over Gunther and Dominic Mysterio. Kiana James is pinning Charlotte Flair and Nia Jax in the same match. Trick Williams is punching through a triple threat. The card is unpredictable in ways the main event storylines aren’t. And Brock Lesnar is returning to Raw on Monday, which means the week before one of WWE’s biggest PLEs of the year just got significantly more complicated. On the AEW side, the company is coming off its best Australian event in history and heading into Revolution 2026 with a card that’s already delivering real stakes — including a Texas Death match with a career stipulation that nobody should take lightly. There’s a lot happening in professional wrestling this week. Most of it is good. Some of it is inexcusable.

WWE’s “Creative” Team Just Ran the Same Promo Twice on the Same Show

There’s a documentary series — currently two seasons deep, probably a third on the way — celebrating WWE’s creative team. Which makes what happened on Raw this week especially difficult to defend. The company put out a two-and-a-half-hour show in which CM Punk and Finn Bálor ran structurally identical segments within the same broadcast, and nobody in the production chain apparently caught it before it aired.

Here’s what happened. CM Punk came out, cut a promo about not jeopardising the Elimination Chamber, dared Finn Bálor to take the first shot, and watched Finn back down to protect the upcoming match. Then, later in the same show, AJ Lee came out, ran the same premise against Becky Lynch — take the first shot, jeopardise the elimination chamber match, watch Becky decline for the same reasons. Two Chicago performers, married to each other, are doing the same bit in the same episode with their respective Irish opponents. “They literally did the same promo in the same show,” as Dave Simon put it. “I was watching this going — I see the Punk promo and the Finn promo, and it’s like, whatever, standard WWE fair. And then you go, wait a second. AJ and Becky are doing the same thing.”

What makes this particularly hard to excuse is that this isn’t a new problem. For years, WWE has been accused of recycling creative across Raw and SmackDown — similar match structures, identical finish sequences, and mirrored promo setups appearing on different shows in the same week. At least when that happened, it was two different programmes. There’s plausible deniability when the production teams are working on separate shows. There’s none when it’s the same two-and-a-half-hour block of television. The left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, and both hands wrote the same thing.

The timing matters too. This is the final Raw before Elimination Chamber. WWE had every incentive to make this episode feel consequential — to build urgency for a PLE that matters to the WrestleMania road. Instead, CM Punk couldn’t save what was, by most accounts, a rough show from top to bottom. When the best performer on the roster delivers a solid segment, and it still doesn’t elevate the episode, the scaffolding underneath is broken.

WWE Elimination Chamber 2026 — The Qualifiers Nobody Saw Coming

Whatever the issues with Raw’s creative process, the WWE Elimination Chamber 2026 is shaping up to be a genuinely unpredictable event — partly because WWE has made surprising choices with its qualifying matches. Two names, in particular, landed like upset victories before the chamber itself even happens.

Je’Von Evans qualifying over Gunther and Dominic Mysterio in a triple threat was the more logical surprise. Evans has been positioned as an ascending talent since a strong Royal Rumble showing, and WWE has clearly identified him as someone worth spotlighting at a major PLE. What made it unexpected was what it cost: Gunther, who retired John Cena and AJ Styles on the path to WrestleMania and entered the qualifier as the presumptive winner, is now out of the chamber entirely. His WrestleMania path just became significantly murkier. Dragon Lee attacking Gunther during the match — costing him the qualifier and possibly his title match at WrestleMania — sets up a collision that wasn’t on anyone’s radar a week ago.

The bigger shock happened on SmackDown, where Kiana James pinned both Charlotte Flair and Nia Jax to qualify for the Women’s Elimination Chamber. “It’s one thing for Je’Von to qualify over Gunther and Dom, but it’s another thing for Kiana James, who’s like — what? — and she qualifies over Charlotte and Nia,” as Dave Simon observed. Charlotte’s name carried the gravitational pull going in, and the segment had all the setup of a Jade Cargill-Charlotte confrontation that seemed to signal Charlotte advancing. Instead, James walked out of a three-way involving two of the most decorated women in WWE history and earned her spot in a field that now includes Rhea Ripley, Tiffany Stratton, Alexa Bliss, Asuka, Kiana James, and one more qualifier to come from a Raw triple threat.

For the men’s side, Trick Williams also qualified this week, beating Damian Priest and Carmelo Hayes. The final Raw qualifier is a triple threat between Bronson Reed, Jay Uso, and Chad Gable — and the smart money is on Reed. Roman Reigns made a point in a recent interview that losing to Bronson Reed led nowhere for his opponent, which reads less like a factual statement and more like creative motivation to do something meaningful with a man who beat the Tribal Chief and watched nothing come of it. You don’t put Reed over Reigns and then leave him out of the chamber entirely.

Brock Lesnar Returns to Raw — And LA Knight Has a Problem

Brock Lesnar is returning to Monday Night Raw this week, and the rumour is that his WrestleMania opponent will be LA Knight. The match makes commercial sense. It doesn’t necessarily make career sense for Knight.

Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania is a legitimate marquee attraction — probably the last one WWE can call on as a genuine special-event draw outside of its full-time roster. A match with him is, by definition, a big match, regardless of the result. The problem, as Dave Simon frames it, is what happens after. “All you’re going to remember is LA Knight getting thrown around and losing to Brock Lesnar, which doesn’t do a lot for the LA Knight character going forward. And he is going forward. Whereas Brock Lesnar probably disappears for six months after WrestleMania.”

That’s the structural problem with Brock matches in 2026. He’s a special attraction who doesn’t lose clean, can’t put someone over the way a full-time worker can, and occupies a WrestleMania spot that could go to a match with a longer shelf life. Knight getting thrown around in a midcard slot on night one, while Cody vs Drew headlines, is not the ceiling Knight should be aiming for. There are better options. The question is whether WWE’s creative team — the same one that wrote the same promo twice in the same episode — can identify them in time.

Gunther’s WrestleMania Path — and Dave’s Theory on Rey Mysterio

Gunther is having one of the great title reigns of the modern era. He retired John Cena. He retired AJ Styles. He arrived at Elimination Chamber week as the undisputed world champion with the kind of in-ring and promo credibility that makes WrestleMania placement feel obligatory. And now, with Dragon Lee costing him his chamber spot and his WrestleMania path suddenly unclear, the booking question becomes: what does the biggest show of the year look like without Gunther in a match that matters?

Dave Simon’s read is that Dragon Lee’s attack sets up an escalating programme — Lee feuds with Gunther, Rey Mysterio comes to his son’s defence, and Gunther does at WrestleMania what he’s been doing all year: retires a legend. “Ray is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. He’s done enough. He’s not the wrestler he was. He’s not in his physical prime. He’s been through a lot of injuries. The word was that he only stayed around and signed another contract with WWE so that his son could get involved and get a job. Now Dominic is established as a WWE superstar. He doesn’t need his dad anymore.”

The through-line holds up: Gunther has been collecting retirements the way other champions collect title defences. Rey Mysterio is one of the few remaining legends whose retirement would carry genuine emotional weight. If Dragon Lee is the bridge between Gunther and the Mysterio family, the path from the chamber to WrestleMania writes itself. It’s not the Randy Orton match that many fans wanted, but it’s a legitimate main-roster moment — and Gunther retiring a Hall of Famer in front of a WrestleMania crowd would be one of the night’s most talked-about moments regardless of where it lands on the card.

El Grande Americano — The Most Insane Gimmick in Wrestling Right Now

There is a lot of strange, creative happening in WWE right now. Nothing is stranger than El Grande Americano, a gimmick so aggressively absurd that it has somehow gotten over in two countries simultaneously — in opposing ways — with audiences who understand exactly what’s happening.

Here’s the full picture: Chad Gable, an American wrestler, was feuding with luchadores and began impersonating a great lucha star — El Grande Americano — despite speaking no Spanish whatsoever. The gimmick got over. Gable then got injured, and WWE decided the character was too hot to shelve. So they gave it to Ludwig Kaiser, a German wrestler who, like many Europeans, speaks several languages, including Spanish. Kaiser is now playing El Grande Americano alongside two British wrestlers — Tyler Bate and a partner — who are doing fake Mexican accents under masks, doing what Dave Simon describes as “a Conan Eddie Guerrero style promo from 1997.” In AAA, the WWE-owned Mexican promotion, Kaiser’s version is a babyface. Gable’s version is the heel. In the United States, those roles are reversed. The whole thing flipped babyface and heel depending on which side of the US-Mexico border you’re on — a 1997 Bret Hart dynamic with German and British wrestlers playing fake Mexicans for a Spanish-speaking audience that has apparently embraced it completely.

Dave Simon’s WrestleMania prediction for this storyline: a mask-versus-mask match between the original and new El Grande Americano — Chad Gable loses the mask, returns to being Chad Gable, and Kaiser carries the character forward. “There will be only one El Grande after WrestleMania,” as he put it. A German and two Brits, none of whom are American or Mexican, are competing over who gets to keep a lucha mask. Only in WWE.

The Mystery Crate — Dave’s Picks Are Danhausen and EVIL

A crate has appeared on both Raw and SmackDown. Nobody has revealed who’s in it. WWE has been building the mystery across both shows, and the dirt sheets have been running guesses for a week. Dave Simon’s read, on both the identity and the reasoning, is sharper than most.

His two candidates: Danhausen — the “very nice but also very evil” indie sensation who appeared on Conan O’Brien and went mainstream long before WWE came calling — and EVIL from New Japan Pro-Wrestling, who has been heavily rumoured for a WWE run and fits a supernatural gimmick inside a crate better than virtually anyone on the market. “I think if I were to bet, I would bet it’s Danhausen,” Simon said, though he acknowledged EVIL’s case. The reasoning on Danhausen is interesting: he’s a legitimate Hollywood-adjacent property. A crossover vehicle. Not an NXT project — a main-roster character who could do something beyond the wrestling bubble. The crate fits his gimmick perfectly. Chris Jericho, the other name circulating online, is contractually unavailable — his AEW deal is frozen, not expired.

AEW Is Having Its Best Run in Years — Grand Slam Australia Delivered

While WWE was running the same promo twice in the same episode, AEW was finishing what Dave Simon and Johnny North both regard as the best Australian show the company has ever run. Grand Slam Australia delivered across the card, with the single best match of the week coming from an unexpected source: Kenny Omega and Swerve Strickland on Dynamite, the week after.

Sacramento was on their feet the whole time for the FIRST TIME EVER meeting of @KennyOmegamanX + @SwerveConfident! But what happened after the dream match was a nightmare …

Watch the #AEWDynamite replay RIGHT NOW on @SportsOnMAX! pic.twitter.com/6LoQKVnEK8

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) February 20, 2026

Dave Meltzer awarded the match more than five stars — a rating that, whatever your position on the Meltzer scale, signals something exceptional happened. What made it work was Swerve’s pace and Omega’s ability to keep up with someone half his current workload. “I think Kenny has maybe lost a half step, but he was so far ahead of the game that it doesn’t even matter,” Simon said. The post-match was equally effective: Swerve hit the Vertebreaker through a table on Omega, turning heel in front of a crowd that was already booing him before the formal turn was made, suggesting the audience was ahead of the booking, which is usually a good sign.

From Grand Slam Australia itself, the highlights included Kyle Fletcher versus Mark Briscoe in a ladder match (Johnny North’s match of the weekend), MJF and Brody King in a strong physical contest, and the Hangman Page versus Andrade El Idolo match that had the right finish — Andrade attempting to cheat, Hangman blocking him, hitting a low blow, then closing with the Buckshot Lariat. Clean enough to protect Andrade, decisive enough to advance the story. The Wheeler Yuta head-shaving segment — Yuta trying to flee after losing, Moxley physically returning him to the ring, Toni Storm and Orange Cassidy presiding over the ceremony — was one of the better post-match segments AEW has produced in months.

The broader picture, beyond any individual match: AEW has become a more consistent product. The match quality was always there. What has genuinely improved is the storytelling surrounding it — the building of new stars, the elevation of the women’s division into something that can deliver a pay-per-view-quality four-way on Dynamite without it feeling like a consolation bracket, and the pruning of talent who were getting television time without earning it. “Pretty much everybody you see on TV now is looking like a wrestler wrestling reasonably well to excellently,” as Simon put it. “They’ve cut out a lot of the guys where you go: how is he on TV?”

AEW Revolution 2026 — Hangman vs MJF, Career on the Line

AEW Revolution takes place on March 15th in Los Angeles, and the card is already carrying real weight. Two matches in particular are worth examining closely.

The main event is shaping up to be Hangman Adam Page challenging MJF for the AEW World Championship under Texas Death rules — with a stipulation that if Hangman loses, he can never again challenge for the AEW World Title for the rest of his career. MJF has one week to formally accept. This is the Cody Rhodes stipulation from early AEW history, the same deal that banned Cody from the title picture until he left for WWE. Dave Simon’s position is clear: Hangman has to win. “To just have Hangman excluded from the world title picture is just dumb. It’d be like saying Seth Rollins is never allowed to challenge for the world title again.” Johnny North’s counter — that MJF is in a new reign just starting, and that retaining is the more likely outcome — sets up a genuine disagreement worth watching play out on March 15th.

The Young Bucks versus FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Championships in Los Angeles, with the Bucks completing a redemption arc from corporate heels to beloved babyfaces, sets up a title change. The Bucks are from Southern California. AEW is running LA. The FTR-aligned Stokely Hathaway already took a superkick from the Bucks in front of a crowd that was chanting for the superkick before it even landed. That’s a crowd telling a promotion what it wants. Dave Simon’s read: give the Bucks the belts. “It seems like kind of the storybook ending to this chapter for the Young Bucks, where they’re finally back to being who they once were.”

The third major match at Revolution: Jon Moxley versus Konosuke Takeshita for the Continental Championship, no time limit. Their last meeting ended in a draw within the time limit. This one has to produce a winner. Both men are legitimate wrestlers who can work long. The absence of a time limit is either a gift or a trap, depending on how AEW structures the card around it.

Reality Check: WWE Night One Has No Clear Main Event

The Reality: The WWE Elimination Chamber is next week, and the company still doesn’t have an obvious WrestleMania Night One main event. Cody Rhodes versus Drew McIntyre has been done to the point where even the people running it are apparently aware it needs Jacob Fatu to be viable. Cody suggested Drew winning the chamber might be better for the narrative — the underdog chasing rather than defending. Drew allegedly went over Triple H’s head directly to The Rock to complain about his creative, and found himself with a title and a potential main event for his trouble. That’s either compelling backstage drama fuelling compelling storylines, or it’s the creative process producing correct outcomes for the wrong reasons. Either way, the match still needs a third person. And the creative team that ran the same promo twice in the same episode needs to make it happen in about six weeks.

WrestleMania 42 Card — Where Things Stand

Frequently Asked Questions — WWE Elimination Chamber 2026

Full analysis of the WWE Elimination Chamber 2026 card, AEW Revolution build, and every major storyline heading into WrestleMania season on Wrestling Uncensored Episode 770 — live every Friday at 10 PM ET on YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, DLive, and Kick. Subscribe at ringsidereport.net.