10 New Directions For WWE After Hell In A Cell 2016
New feuds, forced alliances and a note for next year's PPV...
Hell in a Cell is now the books, and with it we not only saw our first-ever women’s Hell in a Cell bout, but we also witnessed two women main event a WWE pay-per-view for the first time in company history.
That in itself is something of a new direction, and something that would have seemed ridiculously optimistic to envisage even five or so years back.
Either way, they say that change begets change, and while we sit here and digest that particular new direction, we’ve also got a fair few more to ponder in light of Sunday’s PPV. Two new champions, some far-from-clean finishes and (perhaps most unbelievably) a victory for the Club means that there are plenty of options the company could pursue in the coming weeks and months.
This article looks into a few of those possibilities as we count down ten new directions for WWE off the back of Hell in a Cell 2016.
10. Parity For The Women
The past couple of years have been a hugely changeful time for the female division in WWE, and Sunday’s PPV—with its all-women main event—was essentially the culmination of that.
More importantly than simply closing the show though, I think it’s fair to say that Sasha Banks and Charlotte managed to hold their own (finish aside) in their 22-minute slugfest at the top of the card. Simply put, that means that the women now rightfully have parity with the men.
So as well as being a new direction for the PPV in isolation, it also opens new avenues for future shows. Hopefully we no longer have to talk about “women’s revolutions” on account of the fact that the revolution is now complete. Hopefully we may even move away from qualifying these matches as “women’s wrestling” and simply refer to them as straight-up wrestling matches—after all, we don’t feel the need to pre-qualify male matches as “men’s” wrestling, do we?
And hopefully this means that we may even see future PPVs built exclusively around female feuds, rather than simply having them slotted into the main event at the very last minute without the kind of hype they may deserve.