In one of the more difficult PPV’s to deliver I thought Hell in a Cell did fairly well for itself. That is unless you’re a WWE Cameraman! Man, they took a couple of rough tumbles on Sunday.
John Morrison did a good job of creating a spot in the PPV with his dive from the stage. His efforts were dually noted for performing something that is on the verge of conflict within the PG rated restrictions.
How professional wrestling can be PG rated in today’s world is beyond me but that is another argument for another day.
Sheamus looks to have finally been buried, even his actions on Daniel Bryan on RAW is not enough to detract from the fact that he is never going to be put over clean within a PPV main event.
I didn’t quite understand his Irish Curse move which he performed at Hell in a Cell on the steps to Randy Orton? Matt Striker tried to explain this by saying it’ll have more impact going through the steel but it seemed a little silly, as I suppose the RKO on the steps fits the same bill.
Somebody needs to have a word with Sheamus about which way he uses a steel chair. He leathered Orton over 3 times in the back with the rim side of the steel chair. Mistakes like that could be costly in the current climate as what would WWE have done if Randy’s back was sliced open? Avoided showing it? Stopped the match? Either way it would have caused problems.
The PPV was a little lacking on the card so a match between Del Rio / Mysterio or Edge / Swagger looked to be a possibility. We ended up with the latter. Now I’m not sure if many people spotted this but during the match Jack Swagger attempted a German suplex from the apron. During this move his movements well, shall I say were humorous to say the least. Seeing as my column is not PG rated I can say that he looked to be taking him from behind, if you know what I mean? If Maffew from the botchamania series is reading this or watched that PPV, you know what needs to be done!
Apart from that moment and a small botch on the ringpost the match was quite good.
Then we come to Cena and Barrett. This match seemed to be a usual John Cena match, get beat up for 10 minutes, get hit with finisher, kick out, hulk up and then finish them off… But this time he didn’t. I was quite glad that they made Barrett kick out of the AA (Sorry but AA means something completely different in the UK and I can’t help but think of the RAC!) It made Cena look a little more human, however we all knew the STF was coming, good finish though, the first fan which was Michael Mcgilibutty (sorry) actually appeared to be quite genuine at first.
The best part about it and people might think that I’m sadistic here, was watching the kid’s reaction to their hero being defeated. Now most people may have had that reaction but it was even more shocking to see grown men with surprised looks on their faces miming “wow!” Proof that there are still grown ups that have the old belief that wrestling isn’t fake or were so pulled into the match that their beliefs were suspended for a short period of time. This is good to see as Pro Wrestling is obviously still working, it’s just not aimed at us anymore.
Overall I think the PPV was quite predictable, but the quality of the in ring work was done quite well. Talent made the best of the Cell situation without any serious injuries. I did wonder though, if Kane’s cut on the top of his head was any greater, would WWE have used a towel and stopped the match? Luckily the bleeding didn’t seem severe and it didn’t spoil the match.
However, Paul Bearer’s moment seemed a little clumsy. I had a feeling that Bearer would turn at the PPV but why didn’t he just hit him with the urn? The whole light in the eyes segment seemed silly. They could have just left him with the light at the end on Kane as they did, but instead they made it look like power from the urn blinded the Undertaker? Again proof that we are back in 1993 storyline era of wrestling.
Other than that though I felt the quality of the show was good. With little build up, lack of matches and a difficult job in selling a “Hellish” series of matches in our current era they have managed to put together a tidy show which I quite enjoyed.
RAW followed on from the show in a typical fashion with John Cena being the main vocal point. I honestly felt this was one of the better RAW’s of the year. The fact that Zack Ryder got owned by a 5 foot hand might have swayed my opinion there but hey, it was different at least!
Any comments are welcome to beansontoastuk@msn.com and you can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/beansontoastuk or @BeansOnToastUK
Martyn
