10 WWE Hell In A Cell 2019 Impulse Reactions
Groundhog Bray.
It's extremely WWE of WWE to end their busiest week in years with a pay-per-view it looked as though they'd forgotten to actually put a card together for.
They don't warrant sympathy on this one - yes, the billions they're being paid by Fox are predominantly for SmackDown, but as a billion dollar enterprise, they should have been able to spin at least one more plate at the back end of "Premiere Week".
Sure enough, with mere hours to go before doors opened at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California, WWE airlifted a series of workable contests on to the card, announced via one tentacle of their Social Media octopus instead of the usual carpet bomb assault when they've got something to say.
After a week of relentless build for everything else, it was all quite odd. For the punters in the building, it can't have been particularly thrilling to have so little to look forward to (despite, admittedly, two Hell In A Cell clashes), but the element of surprise offered equal opportunity for viewers at home of something being either awesome or awful.
Did they fail to prepare and prepare to fail, or was this Card Subject To Loads Of Changes a shock hit? One of the already-booked battles would ultimately decide...
10. Natalya Vs. Lacey Evans
Natalya's victory over Lacey Evans was about as average as her loss on Raw just days earlier, with the Hart Dungeon graduate doing less for the 'Sassy Southern Belle's overall improvement than Seth Rollins appeared to have for Baron Corbin before his King Of The Ring run.
It wasn't for the lack of trying by both - they were stuck in Kickoff hell, even more so than usual without so much as a Cruiserweight Title encounter on offer to tease the locals into showing up any sooner.
It's hard to imagine the pedestrian back-and-forth generating much louder of a response considering how close it was to the one on the go-home show, though they did at least reverse the ending that made Natalya look doubly stupid on Raw. There, she was clocked with the Women's Right after being beaten without it. Here, she returned the favour after securing a Sharpshooter tap-out as well.
As a match, it was too bland to be good but too proficient to be poor. As far as some on-the-spot decision making went for the card, it didn't bode all that well.