WWE Hell in a Cell 2016: Reactions & Review

Charlotte defeated Sasha Banks to become the new Women’s Championship at WWE Hell in a Cell 2016. (WWE.com)

Going into the WWE’s Hell in a Cell 2016, the event was looking to be historic for a number of reasons. It was the first Hell in a Cell after this year’s brand split, the first that would feature three main events, and it would be the first time two women would participate in a Hell in a Cell match. Plus, that women’s match would conclude the evening.

So with all of those firsts, and with so much hype about this being a massive turning point in WWE history, especially when it comes to the women’s division, how did Hell in a Cell measure up?

Here’s our final thoughts on RAW’s WWE Hell in a Cell 2016!

Cedric Alexander, Lince Dorado & Sin Cara vs. Tony Nese, Drew Gulak & Ariya Daivari

Reactions: If you missed this pre-show match, it’s certainly worth going back to, as it surprisingly ended up being one of the most solid of the evening. As usual, the Cruiserweights deliver a match that is incredibly fast paced and full of impressive flips left and right, with Sin Cara and Cedric Alexander being the clear standouts. The crowd was pretty into it as well, which is surprisingly considering how uninterested they’ve been on Raw recently. When Cedric Alexander, Lince Dorado and Sin Cara landed a perfectly coordinated suicide dive and crushed Tony Nese, Drew Gulak and Ariya Daivaria all at once, a massive and much-deserved “Yes!” chant broke out. There was also a huge pop when Cedric Alexander tagged in and scored the victory, and it would be surprising if we don’t see him getting a push in future weeks. Overall, this wasn’t exactly one for the record books, but it was a well executed and consistent piece of sports entertainment that particularly stands out during such an inconsistent night.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Roman Reigns (c) vs. Rusev (Hell in a Cell Match for the WWE United States Championship)

Reactions: What an ending, huh? This is one of those matches that almost needs to be reviewed in two parts, with the ending as a completely separate review. For the most part, this is a Hell in a Cell event full of thrilling spots, and the big takeaway is that Rusev comes out looking more terrifying than ever. It all starts hitting the fan when Rusev grabs the Kendo stick from under the ring, releasing all his anger on Roman and slamming him over and over and over in the chest. This would probably have a greater impact if Roman were not wearing a vest for it, but either way, it works. There’s also a nice bit where Rusev sets up the steel steps on the top rope, but nothing is done with them until later, leaving us in a state of anticipation wondering who’s going to experience that horrible pain. Just when we thought the Kendo stick was awesome, Rusev grabs a chain from under the ring, hitting Roman with it and then, incredibly, delivering an Acolade with the chain on the top of the steel steps. It’s a jaw-dropping moment…yet somehow Roman is able to get out of that, and he takes down Rusev with a single spear and that’s it. Really? To call this anticlimactic would be an understatement, and it verges on self-parody how preposterously Roman Reigns overcomes the odds out of absolutely nowhere just because it was decided that this is how the match would end. The majority of this match lands just fine, but boy was the ending not a good way to kick off the show.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Bayley vs. Dana Brooke

Reactions: Well, at least it wasn’t arm wrestling. It’s hard to imagine most viewers will even remember the details of this match within a half hour of it occurring, and it’s hard to blame them. The Bayley and Dana Brooke matchup was just flat, uninteresting, and weirdly paced. There is no real momentum to it, no back and forth or much of a story being told at all. Bayley and Dana just sort of hit each other, Bayley’s arm is hurt, but she works through it and wins. Alright, so what? Didn’t these two just start feuding like literally two weeks ago? Bayley’s finisher also continues to be hilariously lame as a way to close a match. There’s just not much reason for this whole match to have existed other than to fill time. Bayley is an incredible entertainer, but the WWE really needs to give her something more interesting do on the main roster.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars

Enzo Amore and Big Cass vs. Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson

Reactions: Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows actually won for once! Wow! This feud has been kind of a bust, but despite that, we got a surprisingly good match out of it. Big Cass comes across particularly well here, at one point having no trouble taking on both Anderson and Gallows at the same time. It’s quite promising to see them win clean, particularly after several months of being made into a complete joke, losing constantly and seeming to pose no threat whatsoever. Let’s just try to forget that whole “fake doctors” phase. Could this be the beginning of a comeback for Anderson and Gallows? Let’s hope so.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Kevin Owens (c) vs. Seth Rollins (Hell in a Cell Match for the WWE Universal Championship)

Reactions: Of the three Hell in a Cell matches, this was without question the best of the bunch. The underlying feud has been built up well, the pacing is excellent, there are at least three jaw-dropping spots including a few bits of comedy, and a nice twist is thrown in that does not feel cheap. It’s pretty much everything you’d want, delivering what you tuned in for while not going too far above that. A great moment occurs early on when Kevin Owens has two tables in his possession and spends a few moments clearly trying to work through some sort of plan here. He winds up placing one of those tables up at an angle, and this winds up being used later when Seth Rollins throws Owens through both tables in what is by far the best moment of Hell in a Cell 2016. Oh, and for this move, Rollins managed to lift up Kevin Owens – a 266 pound man – on his shoulders. Chris Jericho’s involvement is more than welcome, and the setup to this – with Kevin Owens accidentally spraying a referee with a fire extinguisher and with Jericho running in while a new referee enters – did actually not feel forced. It’s potentially a bit disappointing to see Seth Rollins lose his seventh title match in a row, but walks out of the cell more a face than ever, and the dynamic between Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho gets to continue for just a bit longer, which is certainly welcome. In retrospect, there’s no question that this should have been the main event (as in, the final main event).

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

T.J. Perkins (c) vs. Brian Kendrick (WWE Cruiserweight Championship)

Reactions: Another solid match from T.J. Perkins and Brian Kendrick, although it arguably didn’t actually top the pre-show Cruiserweight event. T.J. Perkins gets in some great spots, including a suicide dive and a few jumps off the top rope. Both men have done better, but they’ve also done worse. The ending, though, is a bit strange, something that seems to have been a common theme tonight. Brian Kendrick fakes an injury, and it totally fools Perkins, who walks over to check on his friend and is promptly betrayed. Has Perkins literally never watched a wrestling match before? Isn’t he supposed to be a super fan? How dumb do you have to be to fall for this, the oldest trick in the book? And what was the point of the setup of Brian Kendrick asking T.J. Perkins to let him win if that didn’t factor into this whatsoever?

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

The New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston and/or Xavier Woods) (c) vs. Cesaro and Sheamus (WWE Raw Tag Team Championship)

Reactions: This was a solid outing from everyone involved, though it definitely does seem that the WWE is struggling to stretch out The New Day’s title reign. What we get is sort of a compromise where the audience can now take Cesaro and Sheamus more seriously, and they come out looking strong, even though The New Day remains the champions. In terms of spots, the highlight is definitely Sheamus jumping from the top rope and landing on all three members of The New Day at once. It also remains entertaining to see Cesaro and Sheamus bicker, including one moment when each man continues to spitefully tag his teammate out. But having The New Day win by disqualification is a strange conclusion, particularly when there seems to be absolutely no reason Kofi Kingston was compelled to brawl with Sheamus outside of the ring. This feels like one of those cases where it was decided that Cesaro and Sheamus would win but The New Day would retain, and the WWE struggled to write an ending that lead to that place, so what we got is a bit awkward. Still, not a bad match by any means.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Sasha Banks (c) vs. Charlotte (Hell in a Cell Match for the WWE Raw Women’s Championship)

Reactions: Finally, we get to the main main event, the much hyped, history-making battle between Sasha Banks and Charlotte. The result is…underwhelming. The first sign that things aren’t quite going as planned comes a few minutes in, when Charlotte starts climbing the cage. This immediately gets the entire crowd hyped out of their minds, as we’ve all seen enough Hell in a Cell matches to know what this leads to. Then Sasha starts climbing too, only for Charlotte to come down and Sasha to very awkwardly seem to intentionally get herself onto Charlotte’s shoulders so she could be thrown down into the table. In the end, the whole climbing the cage thing ends up being kind of pointless. If Sasha hitting the table was the end goal, it’s kind of a strangely executed way of getting there.

What follows is a legitimately excellent work that had all of Twitter going absolutely wild for several minutes. As is often the case with her, Sasha lands quite badly on that table to the point that it would be believable if it really hurt her. Still, we assume she’s fine, and when she starts limping away, this is probably just the millionth example tonight of a superstar selling an injury. But then Sasha collapses onto the ground, medical officials are called in, and this all goes on for an incredibly long time. We soon start doubting our assumption that this is part of the show, because if it’s scripted, would they really devote so much time to this? There’s a solid 60 seconds there where it dawns on the whole audience that we might actually not get to see the main event tonight. Sasha begins to be taken away on the stretcher, but after Charlotte is about to be declared champion, we breathe a sigh of relief as Sasha gets up and runs into the cage. The swerve leads to a huge pop, and we’re actually filled with more excitement for the “real” match than we were before this whole ordeal started. It’s like we have a greater appreciation for it after it was briefly taken away.

Unfortunately, this was the highlight, and it was mostly downhill from there. In part, this match is just a victim of hype of a bad booking. Coming after the Universal Championship match, it’s disappointing, and after Mick Foley spent about 10 minutes talking about how this was going to be the single most violent and horrible thing to ever happen in the history of mankind and how it would leave physical and mental scars on both superstars for the rest of their lives, the match…wasn’t actually that much more violent than a typical match between these two women. Their SummerSlam brawl, which happened just two months ago, was way more painful to watch.

Not only that, but there were some pretty bad botches here, the most obvious one being when Sasha was thrown into a table and it didn’t even break. This was so horrible and so blatantly a mistake that the audience actually started booing. It seems like this was probably intended to be the end of the match, but since the table didn’t break, Sasha and Charlotte had to improvise, and the result was a poor final few minutes. All in all, the match was far from a complete disaster by any means, but it certainly did not live up to the hype, and it’s far from the best either of these incredibly talented performers have shown us even just this year alone. Never did the actual match meet the excitement of the setup, and it was seriously dragged down by some awful botches and a bad ending.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars

Match of the Night

Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins!

Final Verdict

One can’t help but imagine a version of this pay-per-view where there was only one Hell in a Cell match. This whole “three main events” nonsense was completely ridiculous; here we have a pay-per-view where nearly half of the matches are considered to be the “main” one. How does that work? It just makes each seem less special, and speaking of that, having three Hell in a Cell matches was probably not the best decision. We’ve gone from a Hell in a Cell being something that occurred once in a while and under extreme circumstances to something that occurs three times in a single night. In the third main event, when the cell is lowering down on Sasha and Charlotte, we’re meant to be nervous and excited, as if this is some huge moment and we’re thinking, “Oh man, it’s about to get real.” But that’s kind of undermined by the fact that we’ve already seen this exact same cell in action two other times tonight. It’s certainly admirable that the WWE gave their women this opportunity and had Sasha Banks and Charlotte perform in the main event – something that should definitely happen again in the future – but unfortunately, in this case, that match could not top the Universal Championship competition. The end result is a decent pay-per-view with some excellent matches, some decent ones, one horrible one, a lot of really questionable writing decisions, and a whole bunch of baffling endings.

Final Score: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

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