7 WWE Hell In A Cell 2021 Impulse Reactions

4. Alexa Bliss Vs. Shayna Baszler

Alexa Bliss
WWE

The bar set for Shayna Baszler Vs Alexa Bliss was at an all time low thanks to a Monday Night Raw segment that somehow reduced the standards beyond the rock bottom we all thought we'd reached at WrestleMania 37.

There, the burned alive Bray Wyatt was put down with RKO thanks to what we might generously call mind control from an Alexa Bliss gimmick he helped foster. Here, Nia Jax lost complete control and Baszler struggled to regain any, all thanks to Bliss' indiscriminate magic claiming yet another scalp.

There was some decent stuff buried in the treacle of the plot. When Alexa wasn't (gamely) entirely in character, she was walloping 'The Queen Of Spades' with some super stiff kicks that would mattered more in a match that wasn't mostly about possessions and spooky powers.

Baszler no doubt pleased her boss no end with her ac-ting, and based on how McMahon hated her original character, it probably bodes well for her after the fact. All of these bits of isolated praise required manually isolating in the first place though. This was a bad match with snatches of good entirely overwhelmed the stupid story. A stupid story that's nearly a year old if the lore losers want to trace this back to the Swamp Fight.

Get them back in there - if they're gonna be forced to work stupid, they may as well do it in a stupid location too.

 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett