7 WWE Hell In A Cell 2021 Impulse Reactions
WWE enters hell in the last pay-per-view of the no-fans era, but will any come back after this?!
A lousy pay-per-view build took a psychopathic turn with 48 hours to go when Hell In A Cell's main event was announced as the headline attraction of the go-home show instead.
The level of acceptance that this was greeted with spoke dangerously loud volumes about the lack of wider investment in the product.
The match with the biggest stakes on a Sunday was suddenly happening with no notice on a Friday, probably just because Vince McMahon saw the cell erected and fancied doing it, or because a nudge from a Fox expert wielded more power than the Chairman himself. Who the f*ck knows, but it feels redundant to say that WWE have lost the plot, because it's been so long since they had it that everybody's just stopped looking.
Added matches and an aggressive upgrade in the stakes between Bayley and Bianca Belair was the supposed solution to a truly bizarre problem, with the aim for the company seemingly being just to get through the show rather than actually present it.
The end of the line for The ThunderDome (and, of a fashion, what that venue represents) is close. With everybody's eyes on the return of crowds, would this once-conclusive event be a total snoozer of a show, or one not to sleep on?
7. Natalya Vs. Mandy Rose
WWE went for some pathetically low hanging fruit on the Hell In A Cell go-home Monday Night Raw when Tag Team Champions Natalya and Tamina responded to Dana Brooke and Mandy Rose's assertions that they were undeserving by calling them ugly.
Reductive, race to the bottom bullsh*t, but announcing a singles split for the show's Kickoff was at least in service of the eventual Championship match between the pair. A quality match (if one only officially announced during the pre-show itself) stood to turn things around for the Champions and the last remaining team left to challenge them.
Unfortunately, the battle for mutual respect that informed the first half of this match rapidly dissolved, bringing it dangerously close to the footage you see in vignettes from the Performance Center where William Regal and Albert pay taciturn complements to trainees with names they can't remember.
Natalya won the stoic and unmemorable battle with the Sharpshooter, which arguably should remove Rose and Brooke from title contention. That we know the opposite will occur rendered the finish meaningless before it could even be effectively sold. Reaped. Sown.