Opinion: How WWE Is Ruining Hell in a Cell

Earlier this week on “Monday Night Raw,” General Manager Mick Foley announced the second and third Hell in a Cell matches at this year’s pay-per-view. If the match concept hadn’t been driven into the ground already, it certainly has been now. Let’s take a quick look at why this is a bad idea and how it’s causing more harm than good.

The first Hell in a Cell match took place October 5, 1997 at “Badd Blood: In Your House,” with Shawn Michaels defeating Undertaker, thanks to Kane’s debut. The match set up Michaels as the top contender to the WWF World Title, with the cage preventing him from running from the Undertaker. Instead, he would have to use his wits to survive inside the Cell.

There have been 33 matches inside the Cell over the 19 years since the concept was introduced. For years, they were infrequent (there was no such match in 2001), and multiple years only had one match inside the Cell.

Everything changed in 2009, when Hell in a Cell became a running pay per view event. Held every October, the show guaranteed at least one match inside the Cell a year. That’s fine in theory, assuming you have a match that has been built up well enough to earn a spot inside the biggest and most dangerous structure the company has. Surely WWE wouldn’t water down an idea because they know when to say “when.”

Assuming you didn’t get the sarcasm in that last statement, of course WWE did that — because that’s how things work for them. The matches became just another stop on a short-term feud, with another match being the real blow-off. Often times, the Cell wouldn’t be used that often because there was no reason for the participants to be involved in a match built around such violence.

The other major problem had to do with the frequency of the matches. From 1997 through 2008, there were sixteen matches inside the Cell, an average of 1.3 a year. Since Hell in a Cell became its own show, there has been a minimum of two Cell matches a year, with 2009 and 2011 having three each.

In 2016, we’re going to see a total of four matches inside the Cell, including the 30-minute marathon at “Wrestlemania XXXII,” with Undertaker beating on Shane McMahon in a match which could be longest in the series’ history. Four matches a year is an average of one match every three months. Can you imagine any other gimmick match taking place that frequently?

The best way to sum up the problem is from a line that Michael Cole used at “Elimination Chamber 2012”. The show featured two Elimination Chamber matches with one opening the show and the other as the third match on the card. During the second Chamber match, Cole asked (paraphrasing), “When is the last time you remember seeing carnage like this?” I remember looking at my laptop and saying out loud, “About forty five minutes ago.”

That’s the problem with the Cell in a nutshell: The idea of the match is built on carnage (think of how many times you hear Cole talking about it changing lives and shortening careers, neither of which it really does anymore), but when it’s happening this often in a single night, how much of an impact can it really have? Instead of being a match that feels like it belongs in the Cell, the show turns into a match with three matches (out of seven or eight total) that happen to be inside the Cell.

I get the idea of having the dangerous and allegedly scary match taking place near Halloween, but having three versions of the same match in one night stops being scary and starts being overkill. It’s not that hard to build up a match and feud to the point where it belongs inside a cage because that’s the only logical step. Instead, what we’re getting is a rematch of a match that ended in a double countout (and was a rematch in the first place), a match to prevent a screwy finish (but is almost guaranteed to have a screwy finish) and a match inside the Cell for the sake up having women inside the Cell.

The Cell still seems imposing and can be a big deal, but knowing it’s coming every October and that it’s going to dominate a card like it is this year isn’t doing it any favors. The announcers will treat it like a big deal (which it still will be to an extent) but it’s going to be over hyped and over killed by the end of the second match, which isn’t going to do help the third match.

I get the thinking here (bigger is better), and while it can work at times, this is a situation where WWE really would be better off slowing down and building towards one major match instead of weakly setting up three at a time. The fans are a lot more likely to watch one well booked match than three lukewarm matches almost any day, but for some reason WWE insists on making things more complicated than they need to be.