A history making night, something to go down in the women’s wrestling annals for years to come: Hell in a Cell 2016, what did you have in store for us?
Well I’m going to switch it up this week since most of you will have seen the matches already, so let me keep this short and sweet so I can express my thoughts in the ‘Thoughts’ section!
The start of the show sees the Ravishing Russian, Lana, introducing her man Rusev to take on United States Champion Roman Reigns inside the Cell. She’s dressed in pink, has her hair down and her accent gets more American each week – oh kayfabe we miss you!
Bayley and Dana Brooke come out and have a solid match, but nothing to blow us away. Bear in mind, we’ve seen these two tussle ever since Bayley’s debut on the main roster. This should have been the chance for these two to show us something fresh: Dana’s breakout moment or Bayley showing why she should be part of the main event! Instead… we got a bog standard match that could have been on RAW, with Bayley picking up a win that she didn’t really need.
Throughout the night, we’re kept on tender hooks watching to see if the women’s will take the Main Event slot. Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins take to the cage in the 2nd hour which means that it’s happening guys – the women will be Main Eventing the first ever PPV!
Out first, being lead to the ring on a friggin’ throne is The Queen herself Charlotte Flair. Next up is her rival, The Champion Sasha Banks rolling in a ride much like in Brooklyn: Takeover last year but only this time with a bigger crowd, with the bigger title and heading into a bigger match inside the Cell!
As mentioned at the start of this review, I’m not going to do an in-depth match analysis since the videos and clips all over social media should probably cover it all!
The end of the match sees Charlotte laying down the beating on Sasha, lining her up her fallen body on the table to go for her signature Moonsault. However, the ever-tenacious Sasha gets up and stops Charlotte before she can take flight! She positions the table to the other corner of the ring and knows the finish line is in sight.
However, the 20 minutes plus of battering taken to Sasha’s back by the Cell, the announce table and even a steel chair causes her to cave in before she can put her foe through the table. Charlotte turns things around by grabbing Sasha and throwing her into the table! Not only once, but twice! Poor Sasha’s back takes full impact against the table which unfortunately doesn’t break. As she falls to the mat, Charlotte hits her with the Natural Selection for the win.
There we have it folks, Charlotte Flair is the new three time RAW Women’s Champion and the Boss has fallen in Boston at the first ever Women’s Hell in a Cell match in the first ever Main Event slot of a WWE PPV. Times have changed… but has it been for the better?
Thoughts: If I can sum up my thoughts on last night’s PPV, I’d say it was like a Christmas Day, with people singing carols, Christmas lights across the street, people giving cards and presents, to each other… then you open your present and it’s a pair of bright orange socks that you will never wear.
Or I can also liken this event to going to a fancy restaurant, making a booking well in advance, dressing in your nicest clothes, having some amazing appetizers, a luxurious main course and then you get dessert… and it’s a stale cold muffin.
Get where I’m going with this? It was such a good match, some amazing spots and you really can’t fault how far these women have both come in such a short time. However, what the hell was with the end to that match? It’s such an absolute shame that this match will forever go down as having two botched table spots and a bad booking decision.
Again, no discredit to both women as they were amazing from the very start to the very end – but bad luck and bad booking from the higher ups really let them down. My assumption is that the wrong table was used for the wrong spot, hence why the first one broke so easily and it probably would have been way too risky to drop Sasha straight through that table at the end after 20 minutes plus of heavy spots.
So I might as well get into the result, my biggest problem. Wrestling is built on traditional stories, people want to see the good guys win and HIAC should have been that feel good moment for Sasha Banks that she was robbed of at WrestleMania 32. Sure her past title wins were momentous enough, but this would have been that moment in her hometown… instead we got a crowd that was completely killed and a completely awkward end to what should have been a pivotal point for women’s wrestling in the WWE.
Also, where do we go from here, this inevitably means another rematch – lets remember that these two have been feuding since JANUARY – it’s now NOVEMBER, lets also remember that they started this all the way back in NXT. These two women are on the verge of becoming Randy Orton and John Cena, just absolutely exhausted in all capacities. There needs to be a change, which can’t come any sooner!
Share the same thoughts as me? Happy with last night’s result? Are you happy history was made or could it have been made in a better way? Let me know in the comments below!
