7 WWE Hell In A Cell Stats And Facts You Need To Know

3. A Champion’s Edge?

cm punk hell in a cell
WWE

Roman Reigns might be the “golden child” of WWE, but does he have a good chance – statistically speaking – of walking out of Hell in a Cell with the WWE Universal Championship?

Despite being trapped inside the cell with a challenger with nothing to lose, a world champion has far better odds of retaining his (or her) title inside Hell in a Cell (13 times out of 19) than (s)he does against the winner of the Royal Rumble (11 times out of 25).

Out of 19 title matches (one was a vacant title), only five times has a title switched hands inside Hell in a Cell, two of which came at the first Hell in a Cell PPV in 2009 (Undertaker over CM Punk and Randy Orton over John Cena). Another was a three-way bout at the 2011 HIAC, with Alberto Del Rio beating CM Punk and Cena, who was the champ.

In the last two years, we’ve seen Charlotte Flair defeat Sasha Banks for the Raw Women’s Championship in 2016, and the Usos topple the New Day last year for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships.

The oddball match (as you might have noticed there have been three title switches and 11 defenses) is the 2013 cell match between Orton and Daniel Bryan, which was for a then-vacant title.

Contributor
Contributor

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.