4 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Hell In A Cell 2021

1. Despicable Wrestlers Produce Dismal Outcome

Rhea Ripley charlotte flair
WWE.com

Repeatedly, we have trashed the abysmal build behind what should have been a simple, powerful rivalry between Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley. WWE has managed to turn what could have been a career-defining feud for Ripley into utter garbage.

Still, Flair and Ripley (as expected) managed to put together a pretty good Raw Women’s Championship match on Sunday night, only for everything to fall apart at the end. After a solid exchange between the two and Rhea’s perseverance being extolled, the champion used the announce table cowl to cause a DQ, seemingly doing it deliberately because she couldn’t put Charlotte down.

And if we had any doubt, the brawl continued afterwards, with Rhea putting Flair down with the Riptide, and then celebrating (despite losing) when the ring announcer declared that she remained champion – which is a total heel move.

So as we’ve asked 100 times, who are we supposed to cheer? Who are we supposed to support? The answer very clearly now is “no one.” We aren’t supposed to support or emotionally connect with either woman. They’ll just have a bad feud with good in-ring work – and even then, that’s not a guarantee.

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.