5 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Hell In A Cell 2016

Ups...

5. Cruiserweight Carwreck

Admittedly, these multi-man cruiserweight matches are doing exactly what you’d expect – pumping up the crowd and reintroducing the lucha style that had taken a backseat in recent years – but they won’t remain in the “ups” column forever.

Creating a cruiserweight division on Raw has opened the door to a lot of talented wrestlers getting the opportunity to perform on a bigger stage, and it’s provided a different kind of match and a diversion from the angle-heavy stuff we sometimes get. Guys like TJ Perkins, Tony Nese, Rich Swann and Cedric Alexander have made a nice impression, and matches like the six-man from the Hell in a Cell pre-show certainly help with that. The match alone – complete with Alexander scoring the win – was a nice positive to start the night.

But – and this comes with a caveat – if WWE continues to run six-man cruiserweight tag matches that appear to just be random bouts with no rhyme or reason, it will become a negative for the division. We’re not talking about needing a half-hour segment to set up every match, but simply establishing friendships and rivalries and setting things up a little go a long way to giving the wrestlers a little depth.

The caveat here is that the cruiserweight division is less than two months old, so the previous paragraph is more of a preemptive warning than anything.