I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t watch Hell in a Cell. Like any of it. I forgot it was on, I realized about halfway through, then remembered there was nothing I was looking forward to, so I didn’t turn it on. I could have, but I didn’t. And, judging by the results, I don’t feel like I missed anything. More and more, pay per views seem to be Pay Per RAW, slightly longer shows that are as inconsequential as the RAW and/or SmackDown that preceded it.

Now Hold On

Don’t get me wrong, I have the WWE network, so paying $9.99 a month is way better than the days of $40+ for PPVs every. fucking. month. But that doesn’t mean the shows aren’t boring. Week to week, RAW and SmackDown are…fine, I guess. They could be better, but they’re not bad. Not 1995 bad, at least. But the special events, the ones that used to be consequential, the thing free TV led up to…they don’t feel like that anymore. Want an example? At Hell in a Cell 2019, the main event, a HELL IN A CELL MATCH, ended in a no contest.

What?

Yup, you read that right. Hell in Cell, a match that didn’t end after the Undertaker seemingly killed Mick Foley TWICE in the same match, ended in a no contest in 2019. Because they wanted to have the match between Seth Rollins and The Fiend, but they didn’t want to, you know, have a definitive finish. So they put it in Hell in a Cell and….didn’t give us a finish. Wow, just wow. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not.

Hell, they had Kofi drop the SmackDown belt to Brock Lesnar in Diesel-Bob Backlund time so he could go face to face with a former MMA fighter with the body shape of Shrek. Woohoo, good job.

Anyway…

The rest of this pay per RAW was a resounding “meh”. Not bad, but nothing really that big of a deal. You could argue that HIAC is one of the “B pay per views”, but aren’t they all these days? I mean, besides WrestleMania, which is the admitted culmination of a booking year and the designated time where WWE gives a title to or takes a title from Brock Lesnar. But besides that one show, does any other pay per view on the WWE schedule really mean all that much? Did HIAC really effect anything going forward? Did Stomping Grounds? Did Extreme Rules?

I’m not expecting miracles, I know turning a company around takes time. But what worries me is, outside of a serious offensive by AEW that they would be dumb to try this early, the WWE has no incentive to get much better. Sure, they’re going to worry about SmackDown’s ratings on FOX, so maybe that’ll lead to improvements in that show. But RAW? Pay per views? At this point, as long as they don’t burn the new RAW set down and fry the network servers, they’ll be fine. Hell, they’re making Saudi Arabia murder money, they don’t have to worry about RAW or Hell in a Cell, or whatever event is next. And that’s what concerns me, more of the same.