4 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE Hell In A Cell 2018

Overbooking, inconclusive finishes overshadow solid wrestling.

Brock Lesnar HIAC
WWE Network

If you turned off Hell in a Cell Sunday night 90% of the way through the WWE Championship match, you’d think you saw a pretty good PPV, with three pretty damn good championship matches.

If you turned HIAC on 90% of the way through the WWE Championship match, you’d think you journeyed to the second circle of hell, with two world title matches ending inconclusively and a disappointing mixed tag bout.

Hell in a Cell was a mixed bag of sorts, but there were far more negatives to this PPV, much of which stemmed from the main event. And spoiler alert: It wasn’t Roman Reigns’ fault. The HIAC main event was a mess, a trainwreck that didn’t have to be. It felt like the writers were arguing between two overbooked endings, voted and ended in a tie, so they opted to use both.

At least WWE delivered three good title matches, including a show-stealing Raw Tag Team Championship match. That and the SmackDown Women’s Championship bout saved this from being a colossal waste of time.

Maybe part of the problem is that WWE is trying to build to two October shows – Super Show-Down and Evolution – before Hell in a Cell even began. Regardless, the godawful red cell was the least of our worries.

With that said, let’s find out what scaled the cell and what crashed and burned…

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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.