6 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Hell In A Cell 2017

1. Burning Another Top Talent

Jinder Mahal Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE.com

Maybe more than just the frustration of Jinder Mahal retaining his WWE Championship once again is the fact that he did it for the second time at the expense of Shinsuke Nakamura.

In NXT, Nakamura was a phenom, a guy who took the brand by storm with his fast and flashy moves and unique persona. He was incredible to watch, and he was booked properly, as a dominant force who was all-but-impossible to best. You couldn’t help but think that there was no way that WWE could screw this up – as long as they followed a similar blueprint on the main roster.

And then they stuck him against Jinder Mahal at two straight PPVs, where he lost both matches. Compare that to Shinsuke’s first NXT match against Sami Zayn, where fans chanted, “Fight forever!” throughout it. Nakamura hit the ring with a dull thud when Mahal hit the Khallas, and fans just groaned.

Instead of making a new star that could captivate fans, a champ who could carry great matches with top talent, WWE made Nakamura just another guy. Somewhere, someone in the back was probably talking about Shinsuke paying his dues, or remarking at how him losing will help him “get over” in the long run.

Regardless of that idle speculation, it was a waste. If Nakamura wasn’t going to win the title, then they shouldn’t have put them into these matches to lose.

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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.