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.
Six different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place on Feb. 21 at Elimination Chamber 2021. 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.
John Morrison’s pre-show match was omitted from the results because it wasn’t advertised early enough for us to make predictions. Lashley’s triple threat match was also omitted, because we wrote predictions for the original triple threat match that included Keith Lee. Lee was eventually replaced by Morrison, so our predictions did not account for that change. Finally, Miz challenging McIntyre for the WWE championship was omitted from these results, because it wasn’t advertised for the card. With Asuka’s match against Lacey Evans also being canceled, that left us with only four gradable matches for this event.
The line for Roman Reigns’ match can be interpreted as follows: “7 out of 7 predictions for Roman Reigns’ match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 100%.”
Staff Predictions for Elimination Chamber 2021
Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
SmackDown Elimination Chamber | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14.3 |
Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
Jax & Baszler vs. Banks & Belair | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 28.6 |
Raw Elimination Chamber | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
Total | 75.0 | 50.0 | 50.0 | 50.0 | 75.0 | 75.0 | 50.0 | 60.7 |
These numbers add up to 17 correct predictions and 11 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Elimination Chamber 2021 is 60.7%.
This increases the overall predictability rating for 2021 WWE PPVs from 54.8% up to 57.1% (40 correct vs. 30 incorrect predictions). For comparison’s sake, the overall predictability ratings each year from from 2015 through 2020 were 63.4%, 61.1%, 61.6%, 58.7%, 63.7%, and 65.5%, respectively.
Now here are the voting percentages from the Cageside community polls for the winners of these matches:
- 23%: Daniel Bryan (35% Cesaro, 27% Owens, 14% Uso, 1% Zayn, 0% Corbin)
- 90%: Roman Reigns
- 46%: Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler
- 70%: Drew McIntyre (13% Sheamus, 6% Orton, 6% Styles, 3% Kingston, 2% Hardy)
It always felt a bit strange for Daniel Bryan to be the favorite at Royal Rumble 2021, but he slipped back into an underdog role here, with Cesaro and Kevin Owens both gaining more votes from the Cageside community. It didn’t really matter who won the SmackDown Elimination Chamber match, though, because nearly everyone knew that Roman Reigns was going to defeat that wrestler and remain the Universal champion.
With Bianca Belair winning the Royal Rumble match, most of the Cageside staff figured she would also win her tag team match with Sasha Banks at Elimination Chamber. After all, booking the Royal Rumble winner to lose pay-per-view matches before WrestleMania 37 didn’t seem like the natural booking path. The Cageside community leaned in that direction too, but was more open to the idea that a loss here would cause Belair and Banks to implode, giving Belair a more obvious reason to select Banks as her opponent at WrestleMania.
WWE had a different plan in mind. Banks & Belair lost because Reginald is a nuisance, so he is the target of their ire right now. Furthermore, Banks & Belair are getting a tag team championship rematch at Fastlane 2021, for some reason, and Reginald remains at the center of the story now that he is aligned with Nia Jax. This is definitely not how we expected Belair’s story to go after winning the Royal Rumble.
Drew McIntyre’s win in the Raw Elimination Chamber match was about as predictable as it gets. For 70% of the community to settle on one person as the winner from a field of six wrestlers is a staggering amount of support, and nobody on the Cageside staff was willing to pick any of McIntyre’s five opponents. Almost none of these five men seemed like potential WWE champions right now, so it’s a good thing that WWE found McIntyre a new opponent (Bobby Lashley) for WrestleMania 37.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a decent night with predicting the winners at Elimination Chamber 2021. How did you fare, Cagesiders?