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When a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats usually offers predictions for all of the advertised matches on the card. This data can be used to calculate a simple predictability rating for any event.
Five different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place on Mar. 8 at Elimination Chamber 2020. Staff members received credit for a correct prediction of the winner of any match, even if they were wrong about the context of that victory.
The Cageside Seats match preview articles for Elimination Chamber also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.
The following chart contains the prediction results for these matches. The leftmost column includes the match list. Below each staff member’s name, the number “1” is a correct prediction and the number “0” is an incorrect prediction. Empty boxes indicate where no prediction data was available. The rightmost column contains the overall predictability rating for every match, and the very last row shows the overall accuracy of each individual staff member.
The pre-show match featuring the Viking Raiders vs. Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins was omitted because it was announced too late.
The line for Andrade’s match can be interpreted as follows: “5 out of 6 predictions for Andrade’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 83.3%.”
Staff Predictions for Elimination Chamber 2020
| Match | Geno | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | Geno | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
| Bryan vs. Gulak | 1 | 100.0 | |||||
| Andrade vs. Carrillo | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 83.3 |
| Tag Team Elimination Chamber | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Black vs. Styles | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 33.3 |
| Street Profits vs. Rollins & Murphy | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 83.3 |
| Strowman vs. Zayn, Cesaro, Nakamura | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Women's Elimination Chamber | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Total | 66.7 | 33.3 | 83.3 | 66.7 | 66.7 | 85.7 | 67.6 |
These numbers add up to 25 correct predictions and 12 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Elimination Chamber 2020 is 67.6%.
This increases the overall predictability rating for 2020 WWE PPVs from 56.4% up to 60.9% (56 correct vs. 36 incorrect predictions). For comparison's sake, the overall predictability ratings each year from from 2015 through 2019 were 63.4%, 61.1%, 61.6%, 58.7%, and 63.7%, respectively.
The table shows that both chamber matches were as predictable as it gets, which seems like a problem. Andrade going over Humberto Carrillo has also quickly become one of the most predictable outcomes in WWE, even though I still somehow have trouble seeing it.
On the other side of the coin, only Fake Sean Rueter correctly predicted that Braun Strowman would lose the 3-on-1 handicap match, but Fake Sean’s picks were not included in the above data. Zayn’s victory was a legitimately shocking outcome.
Now here are the voting percentages from the Cageside community polls for the winners of these matches:
- 64%: Daniel Bryan
- 78%: Andrade
- 62%: Miz/Morrison (18% Otis/Tucker, 8% Ziggler/Roode, 5% Usos, 3% Lucha, 3% New Day)
- 63%: Aleister Black
- 82%: Street Profits
- 27%: Zayn, Cesaro, Nakamura
- 76%: Baszler (8% Morgan, 6% Asuka, 5% Riott, 3% Logan, 3% Natalya)
Note that aside from the obvious winners of the two chamber matches, Heavy Machinery was the only other chamber participant to surpass 10% of the community vote. Meanwhile Lucha House Party somehow received one more vote than New Day, which is another reminder of how far away we are from last year’s KofiMania.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a good night with predicting the winners at Elimination Chamber 2020. How did you fare, Cagesiders?