Sasha Banks and Charlotte made history when they headlined a WWE Pay Per View, and also became the first women inside of Hell in a Cell. From that perspective, it was a major success. But did it live up to the hype that led up to the show? In short, no!
First off, even though Sasha and Charlotte have had a series of matches, none of them have been classics. This feud has been running for a long time, but they pale in comparison to the Sasha vs Bayley matches in NXT. The timing between Sasha and Charlotte just seems off a lot of the time, even with the big spots mixed in. The intensity is there clearly, but their matches are always missing that special, to quote Chris Jericho, “it” factor to make them classics.
Second, this Attitude Era level of belt switching isn’t really helping the title or either wrestler. Fans have been chanting for Sasha Banks since her series of matches with Bayley last year, so to put the title on her should have been the WWE’s main focus. For some reason, building up both of them is the focus, but at what cost? One month title reigns don’t help either of them in the long run. The WWE managed to get the Rock and Stone Cold over during the same era, even with Stone Cold winning the majority of the matches between the two of them. The Rock stayed over based off of his larger than life personality, that obviously won’t work for Sasha and Charlotte, or any other superstars for that matter.
Finally, THE WRONG PERSON WON! Most of the time, if a match is good enough, the winner doesn’t matter in the end. Examples are any of the Rock vs Stone Cold matches, HBK vs the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 25, and the Sasha vs Bayley ironman match. Sasha Banks has been booked as the underdog throughout this feud, and the prematch beatdown emphasized that point. So having Charlotte win a Hell in a Cell match, with a simple finisher, not a super top rope version or through a table, was deflating, and that’s not even mentioning the fact the match took place in Sasha’s hometown.
The match was clearly setup for a big, emotional babyface comeback. You know, the ones they keep wasting on “babyface” Roman Reigns. The one they used at the beginning of this PPV, Roman comes back from 3 Rusev finishers, a regular one, it’s reapplied, and one on the steel steps……..with a chain, and Roman still comes back and wins. Sasha is actually over as a face and in her hometown, so the quickest way to kill the crowd and send the crowd home “meh” is by having her lose cleanly. I have to take tons of points off of a match, when a match ends, and you are left scratching your head and saying “that’s it?”.
Where do they go from here? This seemed like the ultimate blowoff match, so Sasha basically lost the feud. What does she do now? Go down and work with Dana Brooke? That nearly derailed all of Bayley’s momentum having her work that boring feud with Dana. Nia Jax makes a move to bigger fish and goes after Sasha? Or maybe a returning Emma goes after Sasha. But at the end of the day, Sasha may turn into the person putting over other people, which is a shame since she was more over the majority of the roster, male or female. The brand split is not really helping when you only have 6 women on both brands.
I usually don’t care about wins and loses, but when the outcome of a match makes no sense whatsoever, it makes me not want to watch the product at all.
It’s only my opinion, this is just me sounding off!
