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World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) originally had only two matches in a caged environment, the Steel Cage and Hell in a Cell matches. The Steel Cage was the first type of match in a cage in professional wrestling and consisted of four walls of steel surrounding the ring apron, while the Hell in a Cell was a roofed-version that was taller and surrounded the ring on the ground as opposed to the apron. In 2002, WWE announced the creation of the Elimination Chamber, a match that combined elements of WWE's Royal Rumble match, Survivor Series matches and World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) WarGames matches, in that the countdown timer comes from the Royal Rumble and War Games, the enclosed cage format from War Games, and the elimination process from the Survivor Series.[2] .


In 2002, due to an excess of on-screen talent after buying World Championship Wrestling (WCW), WWE enforced its Brand Extension in which on-screen employees were assigned to work on one of two television programs that were promoted as "brands" (like conferences in the National Football League) of WWE, Raw and SmackDown!. Former WCW President and then Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff formally announced the creation of the chamber on an episode of Raw, and scheduled the match to feature Raw wrestlers at Survivor Series. The match was exclusive to the Raw brand for the first four matches at Raw and joint-branded pay-per-view events, but upon the creation of the ECW brand in 2006, the match was promoted for the newly created brand at their December to Dismember pay-per-view event. Beginning in 2008, the match became an exclusive to the No Way Out pay-per-view and two were featured annually for two years among the three brands. In 2010, WWE replaced their No Way Out event with an event named after this match, and continued the same tradition as its predecessor.