If WWE is breaking out the Hell in a Cell, fans expect a long, vicious fight to settle the score. But that is not always the case. Three cell matches have failed to last 10 minutes. In 2011, John Cena won a 5-minute, five-man cell match for his WWE Championship in a dark match after Raw went off the air. The shortest televised cell match lasted less than 8 minutes, a 1998 bout between Mankind and Kane that ended in a no contest. The shortest PPV cell match was the infamous contest between Undertaker and Big Boss Man, which ended in 9:48 and then continued with Taker hanging Boss Man from the cell. By comparison, most Hell in a Cell matches tend to last between 20-25 minutes, with four cracking the half-hour mark. But the longest cell match is the longest by far: a 47:26 affair between Triple H and Shawn Michaels in June 2004. The former (and future) DX partners had been defeated in back-to-back triple threat World Heavyweight Championship matches against Chris Benoit and decided to settle the score inside a cell. Both men bled during the contest, which Triple H won. And before anyone jumps up and down that it was Triple H throwing his weight around to get that much time, Bad Blood was a seven-match PPV and there was about an hour left in the show.
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.
