WWE Hell In A Cell – Highs and Lows

High: THAT tag team title match

What a difference a month makes in wrestling.

At SummerSlam, the Raw Tag Team Titles were defended by J.O.B. Squad 2018, sorry, the B-Team, in a throwaway pre-show outing against The Revival. Prior to that they were held by unlikely comedy duo Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt, who won a tournament for the vacant straps after they were vacated by Braun Strowman and a 10-year old kid.

At Hell in a Cell, Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre defended the titles against Shield duo Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins in one of WWE’s best pay-per-view outings this year.

The 23-minute match was a thriller. For the majority there was nothing complicated about it, with the two duos utilising classic tag team wrestling psychology of old that used to be a staple of Midnight Express-Rock ‘N’ Roll Express bouts in the 1980s.

What’s old was new again here, with the fans buying into the match to such an extent that at one point they chanted “this ref sucks” when he missed a tag. In 2018! Impressive.

The final stretch was superb. Seth Rollins is the main roster king of the go-home sequence, and with three very able dance partners they crafted a masterpiece. The timing of the Claymore kick to finish was particularly sensational.

Michael Cole got so swept away in the action that at one point he could not help but squawk, “What a sequence! What a sequence!”

Ambrose and McIntyre must have been especially pleased. It was Ambrose’s first pay-per-view outing since his lengthy injury layoff, and Drew’s first main roster PPV bout since appearing in WrestleMania XXX’s inaugural Andre the Giant Battle Royal. It was some way to make an impact.

 

Low: The continued mistreatment of the WWE Championship

Once the richest prize in the game, the WWE Championship has been reduced to the role of midcard title since the 2016 brand split and the creation of the Universal Title.

The historic belt has not headlined a co-branded pay-per-view since the split. The last time it main evented a show featuring two world titles was at Survivor Series 2013!

The booking of late has hardly helped. AJ Styles has carried the gold since November last year but his supercard matches in 2018 have been blighted by dodgy finishes. The inconclusive ending to his defense against Samoa Joe at Hell in a Cell – for all it was well executed – was yet another example of this.

WWE are clearly unable to book a wrestler to lose and remain strong, so instead fall back on lame overbooking, which damages the title’s prestige.

The second consecutive screwy PPV finish in an AJ-Joe match combined with being defended in the fourth match of the show added up to another bad night for the WWE Title.

• Hell In A Cell
• Highs & Lows
• wwe

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