A look into the 2015 Elimination Chamber.
Joining the Busted Open Radio crew for a chat was Nic Nemeth f.k.a. Dolph Ziggler, who is coming off of debuting for New Japan Pro-Wrestling at Wrestle Kingdom 18.
In addition to speaking about his free agency and arriving to New Japan, he looked back at his time with WWE. He shared the story of when he was competing at the 2015 Elimination Chamber event for the vacant Intercontinental Championship.
There was a point when Wade Barrett rammed Ziggler into Mark Henry’s pod and the plexiglass came off the hinges. Nemeth said that was not planned and Henry was not supposed to be out until much later. Nemeth helped call the match on the fly and said it was great improv.
You know what’s a really fun one I just remembered? Me and another person that is on this Zoom call (referring to Mark Henry), were in a multi-man match, you can imagine and things didn’t go exactly how they should have and I believe — I think Wade Barrett threw me into Mark Henry’s pod at the Elimination Chamber and it exploded the door and I think we were even in Texas too to make it a bigger deal for Mark and Mark was just standing there and he is not supposed to come out for three more people. So, I think Wade throws me and it breaks. It’s not supposed to, it wasn’t a planned spot and I’m laying there with broken plastic on the ground and I just hear the crowd come up and just start rumbling for Mark and I go, ‘Oh my God. He’s not supposed to be out here for 20 more minutes.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell are we gonna do?’ I’m like, ‘Don’t come out! Don’t come out!’ And you can’t hear me over the roar of the crowd who’s chanting for Mark to get in the ring… I’m laying on the ground and I just see a boot go past me and I go, ‘Oh no. What are we gonna do?’ And we had the craziest improv, on the fly 15-minute match with six guys. That is some crazy ass sh*t. I got to a point to where I’m trying to call a match on the fly for six different people where you can’t talk to them and the camera has to be on you at all times. So I got to a point to where… I told Ryback, ‘Take everybody’s head off. Put me up in a suplex.’ He’s holding me up in a suplex and I tell the referee to come over. I go, ‘Hold me in a stalling suplex.’ I call a spot to tell this guy to do this, tell this guy to do this, tell this guy to stay the f*ck down.’ Alright, boom. Puts me down. Somebody else, ‘Mark, clean house and then we’re all gonna beat you up and you stay down.’ Okay, great. Somebody else and I think I either get to another Ryback stalling suplex or some other thing where I go, okay, after eight minutes, we now have our orders. There’s no way this is gonna be great, but I think we can improv the rest of this match and make it all go down and that was some of the most exciting 12 minutes of my life in a terrible, terrible match but, it also, it was funny because you never know what’s gonna happen and you gotta be ready to go.
Featured in that Elimination Chamber was Sheamus, Nemeth, Mark Henry, R-Truth, Wade Barrett and the eventual winner, Ryback.
WWE’s 2024 Elimination Chamber Premium Live Event is emanating from Perth, Australia on 2/24.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Busted Open Radio with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
