Randy Orton is your new WWE Champion.
Otis has lost his Money in the Bank Briefcase because of a heel tuck.
And Roman Reigns and Jey Uso just had, in my massively inconsistent and wildly subjective
opinion, a 5 star match.
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Like my review of Hell in a Cell 2020… in about 10 minutes.
Drew Gulak lost to both R-Truth and Little Jimmy in a handicap match for the 24/7 title
on the pre-show.
Gulak is so much better than this.
And then the main card opened with arguably the biggest and most anticipated match of
the night - it was certainly mine - Roman Reigns defending his Blueniversal Championship
against his real-life cousin Jimmy Uso in an I Quit match inside Hell in a Cell… presented
by Skittles, taste the rainbow… of blood…
The tale of this match, and the entire pay-per-view, was how well SmackDown has booked its main
event longterm storylines.
Roman vs Jey and Sasha vs Bayley later weren’t only amongst some of the best WWE in-ring
matches of the year, but they’re enhanced by months, or in Sasha and Bayley’s case,
half a decade, of steadily escalating character work.
Roman vs Jey in an I Quit match was already very logically booked, as Jey never gave up
in their Clash of Champions encounter - it was Jimmy throwing in the towel.
Not content with just that story layer, though, SmackDown has added the real-life family element,
having the Blueniversal championship and, in a pre-match promo, Paul Heyman saying that
when Jey says he quits, that effectively puts him in the servitude of the Big Dog Tribal
Chief - which WrestlingNew.co is reporting will soon form a Roman Usos heel faction.
The match itself, with all that context, was expertly structured.
Jey got that pent-up pre-Thanksgiving family rage out early, diving Roman onto the cell
walls, but this was cut off hard by two Reigns spears.
Showing Heyman’s fingerprints, the finisher button was then spammed, with several more
spears, and two Jey Usos splashes.
Both guys’ selling of their midsections was superb.
Jey introduced a leather strap to whip Roman’s back biblical style, and then even choked
Reigns out.
In another match, Jey would’ve won right there.
But Roman has to say those humiliating words ‘I Quit’, so the drama continued into
an incredibly dark final act.
Reigns choked out Jey in a Guillotine, meaning he was also unable to verbally quit, so Roman
went to more and more extreme lengths, getting over a new serious injury spot - a driveby
dropkick sandwiching Jey’s head between the steel steps and the ringpost.
Producers ran down to get him to stop, but Roman was pathologically obsessed with being
recognised as the Tribal Chief.
He was about to legit murder Jey by decapitating him with the steel steps, but Jimmy again
threw his body over his brother.
And what was already a four and half star match entered Tokyo Dome tier.
Jey’s unconscious.
Jimmy is pleading to Roman’s humanity.
His cousin.
Please stop, look at yourself.
Roman starts genuinely crying too.
The emotion and drama appeared to be reaching a crescendo, a family resolution, when you
realise Reigns isn’t crying at what he’s done.
He’s crying for what he’s about to do.
He took Jimmy’s hand, and then pulled him into a Guillotine.
The injured Jimmy reached desperately for Jey’s hand, and Jey screamed ‘I Quit’
to save his brother.
What an incredible way to both do a satisfactory ending, protect Jey in saying ‘I Quit’,
and get over everyone’s characters and their relationships with one another to make you
want to see the next chapter.
And then at the top of the ramp, Roman’s dad and uncle, the Wild Samoans, joined him
not to confront him for beating up their cousins, but to celebrate and confirm Reigns as the
head of the family.
All of that, plus Roman really got over the Guillotine choke as a finishing submission,
it got a brilliant amount of time at 30 minutes, and the presentation was perfectly pared back
for WWE, which usually has the referee ask if someone’s quitting with a microphone
every two moves.
I thought this was even better than their Clash of Champions main event, and is already
one of my favourite matches of the year.
I loved, loved, loved this.
I think it’s a 5 star match of the year in WWE.
What do you think?
Leave a comment down below letting me know what you think.
It was a tough act to follow, so Elias vs Jeff Hardy was more just a continuation of
their two week old feud - with Jeff losing via DQ when he hit Elias with the guitar.
Confirming WWE never actually had any plans for how Otis would cash in his Money in the
Bank briefcase when they booked him to win it, SmackDown has been struggling to get it
off him for months.
And they shockingly went through with that here - having Tucker turn heel on Otis, hitting
him with the briefcase, for Miz to pick up the win and win the Money in the Bank title
shot.
It was an exciting and newsworthy moment, but unlike Roman vs Jey, where I can’t wait
to see what happens next, it made me pessimistic about where everyone goes from here.
Miz won’t be cashing in on Randy anytime soon - implying they don’t have any plans
for him - and Tucker and Otis are on different brands.
A Survivor Series interbrand match makes most sense, but it’ll most likely fizzle out,
as WWE were always more interested in Otis anyway.
Do you think Otis losing the briefcase was a good idea?
Let me know in the comments.
What was a good idea, though, was Bayley vs Sasha Banks for the SmackDown Women’s title
inside Hell in a Cell.
Not just good because this being the break up climax of their year long friendship and
recent split storyline, but also for all the other layers of context aligned to make it
even more momentous.
On top of their history of over half a decade, stretching back to NXT, Bayley’s held her
title for over a year.
A title Banks has never won.
Bayley has never been inside Hell in a Cell, whereas Sasha has competed in every single
one in WWE history, and lost.
All of those storytelling layers would’ve been enough on their own, but Banks and Bayley
put on a match to rival Reigns vs Jey anyway.
Some of the best babyface stories are about failing, and coming back a little bit better,
failing, then coming back even better than before.
Learning from your mistakes, adapting and overcoming obstacles.
And after two years of losing at Hell in a Cell, Sasha used all that experience against
Bayley, basing her incredibly innovative offence around the cell walls.
Further establishing the different in strategy, most of Bayley’s offence were weapons inside
the ring.
That’s where the majority of the final act happened, with near falls to rival their TakeOver
Brooklyn bout - particularly an amazing Belly-to-Bayley from Sasha onto a ladder.
Probably the only time ever that finisher has been believable.
And then WWE did the right thing, going with the aligned stars, and paying off Sasha’s
feuds against Bayley and the Hell in a Cell structure itself, trapping Bayley’s neck
in a chair with a Bank Statement and stomping on it until she tapped.
She’ll probably lose it on her first title defence, but for now, congratulations The
Boss.
I’d give this 4 and 3/4s, just because it didn’t make me cry like Reigns vs Jey, but
it was still one of the best WWE matches of the year.
Which went right into a lesson in how not to get over a new faction - have Bobby Lashley
make SlapJack tap in 3 minutes on a pay-per-view, and then have Retribution run away from the
Hurt Business.
They’re dead in the water.
Putting Randy Orton vs Drew McIntyre as the main event harmed it in two ways.
Firstly, it was the third Hell in a Cell match of the night, and stipulation fatigue is real.
Secondly, making it the show closer made an Orton win more predictable.
Or that Brock Lesnar could return and cause a DQ.
Everything the SmackDown matches had in months or years of storyline escalating build, Raw
has unfortunately made Orton vs Drew less interesting with every Monday night.
It meant this climax lacked the same emotional intensity, and the majority of spots had been
bettered by the other two Hell in a Cell bouts earlier on.
To combat this, Orton climbed to the top of the cage for an underwhelming and contrived
reveal that he’d put a pipe to use as a weapon up there, making you ask: why couldn’t
he have put that under the ring like he did with the bolt cutters?
Randy pushed Drew off the side as they were climbing down, sending him through the announcers
table, and they traded finishers in the ring for Orton to win with an RKO.
What did you think of the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view?
Let me know in the comments down below, because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA ROMAN’S
FLOWER NECKLACE!
While the main event was lacklustre, and the other matches were mostly filler, Reigns vs
Jey and Sasha vs Bayley were near-perfect combinations of long term storytelling and
excellent in ring action.
This year’s Hell in a Cell is therefore a very, very high four out of five.
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In the meantime, watch WrestleTalk’s Hell in a Cell live reactions - with Pete dressed
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And watch our breakdown of AEW vs NXT Year One on Wrestle2 by clicking the video below
that.
I’ve been Mr Davis, Jam that Jam.