6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Hell In A Cell 2022
Cody isn't human, Belair shines once again, Owens owns Ezekiel, Ali is hometown chump.
Whenever WWE ditches the silliness and minimizes their overproduced segments, scripted promos and various overplayed tropes, and they just focus on the in-ring performance, things just amazingly tend to turn out well for them.
Thus, Hell in a Cell has to be termed a qualified success. They delivered a red-hot opener and white hot main event that made you feel. Throw in five matches in the middle that ranged from passable to decent, without anything registering as an outright embarrassment, and you’ve got a pretty decent PLE.
The two big stories coming out of HIAC have to be Bianca Belair’s title defense in a solid triple threat that played to a fired-up crowd right out of the chute, and Cody Rhodes overcoming a torn pectoral muscle, gutting out a tremendous performance that was cringeworthy and jaw-dropping at the same time.
And yet, little effort was put into building up HIAC as anything more than a B-show. WWE Unified World Champion (or whatever he’s called) Roman Reigns hasn’t defended his title since WrestleMania 38. The unified tag titles weren’t defended Sunday. Ronda Rousey didn’t defend her SmackDown Women’s Championship. And of course, the Intercontinental Championship was nowhere to be seen.
Still, this was a two-match show in which both matches are well worth checking out, and most of the other stuff was just bland enough to not be offensive.
Let’s get to it…