Raw is a bit of a flashback these days. Chris Jericho is the most entertaining performer on the show, Mick Foley is screaming into a microphone about falling off of a cage and the Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908. If you tuned out for 16 years only to recently tune back in, you’d think not much has changed.
But if you watch Hell in a Cell this Sunday (WWE Network, OSN), you'll see a triple main event that prominently features the Women's Championship among the three billed biggest matches. In 2000, women's wrestling was little more than lingerie matches between a couple models. Now, it is taken as seriously as anything on the show, with genuinely gifted athletes helping revolutionise a product most fans have for years seen as a joke. And WWE is finally promoting their women athletes on the same tier as the men.
Granted, there’s still a long way to go, and it’s not as though professional wrestling is all of a sudden a beacon of progress and equality. There are still babyfaces who get cheap laughs from derisively making their heel counterparts seem effeminate (looking at you, Enzo and Cass). The humour is as crude as ever. And there still hasn’t been a black WWE Champion since The Rock, but he was billed more for his Samoan half to fit the WWE narrative at the time.
Trails are being blazed, though. Sasha Banks and Charlotte have traded the Raw Women’s Championship (such an unfortunate name for the title, but alas) for a few months, and their rivalry takes the next logical step Sunday inside the eponymous Cell. It’s the first women’s match to have that distinction, and rumours suggest the match could go on last, which would be another milestone. A WWE PPV has never ended with a women’s match, and doing so with the very popular Banks in her home town of Boston makes a lot of sense.
But it feels as though WWE is hedging a bit by making it part of a triple main event, along with the US title and Universal title matches (both of which also take place in the Cell). The women’s match could go on first or in the middle or last, and WWE can still call it a main event. Fans don’t see it that way. The match could only truly be seen to the casual viewer as the capital-letters Main Event if it closes the show.
We’ll get to that. On to some predictions. Note: the first three listed matches are part of the triple main event, and all three are inside the giant cage. Don’t expect any Foley-level self-harm, but expect a lot of rattled cage noises.
Sasha Banks (champion) v Charlotte: Raw Women’s Championship
Let’s put this first in the hopes that WWE makes the right move and treats it as the main event. I have a couple of hunches as to why they wouldn’t, though.
First, as mentioned the show is in Boston, so saving a Banks triumph over Charlotte to close the show in front of a partisan home crowd would be a perfect way to close any show, let alone one that’s saying it’s making so much history.
But I think WWE isn’t sticking to letting Banks get the win. Part of Charlotte’s dominance – this would be her third title, 13 shy of her father Ric Flair’s record 16 titles – has been her record at PPVs, where she’s never lost a singles match.
Professional wrestling doesn’t take such streaks lightly, and even though it’s in Banks’ home city and she only just won the title back from Charlotte, these two could trade it for years and keep the division interesting. It’s a tough call, but if Charlotte wins here, she keeps her PPV streak alive, builds up the number of title reigns to the historic levels WWE wants her to be at, and gathers some nuclear heel heat for having let down the hometown fans. That’s too juicy to pass up. Charlotte wins the title back.
Kevin Owens (c) v Seth Rollins: Universal Championship
My other hunch as to why WWE isn't committing to putting the women on last is because of Triple H. They've been saving his run-in to ruin a Seth Rollins title victory, something we predicted would happen at the last PPV but didn't. Say they do it here, they don't want Big Daddy H's big return to come in the middle of the show, they'd want that to close the show and continue the storyline seamlessly the next night on Raw.
They have to build to the inevitable Triple H v Rollins feud at some point, but they’ve held off this long and I think they will again. Owens will still retain the title, but for the second straight time it will be due to interference from Jericho. There’s really no one else on the card close to the title picture at this point, so they’ll keep it between these three for another few weeks. Hopefully, they’ll do a better job of making Owens seem important in the fray, because he’s been an afterthought while holding the belt.
Roman Reigns (c) v Rusev: United States Championship
Reigns is the guy in the feud making fun of the other guy’s wife and family and adorable dog, yet he’s the babyface. For all the progress, WWE still doesn’t know how to present relatable human beings to root for.
Reigns wins, and we’ll be so tired of Cell matches by the end of the night that hopefully they’ll retire the gimmick for a while.
The New Day (c) v Cesaro and Sheamus: Raw Tag Team Championship
Cesaro and Sheamus would be ideal successors to The New Day’s record run with the tag titles, but they haven’t made them feel important enough to pass the titles over yet. New Day retains.
TJ Perkins (c) v Brian Kendrick: Cruiserweight Championship
The new Cruiserweight division has been a dud. This is the second PPV title match, both featuring this maudlin rivalry that no one cares about. Perkins retains, and hopefully can then lose to one of the more entertaining Cruiserweights not long after.
Enzo Amore and Big Cass v Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson
These teams are both pretty stale, but the best part of this past Raw was this bit of brilliance from Enzo and Cass:
For all their faults, Enzo and Cass remain as popular as anyone. They should get the win here to pop the crowd.
Braun Strowman v Sami Zayn
Kudos for WWE for remembering to put the company’s best actual wrestler on the card. His underdog schtick is the perfect counter to Strowman’s super-human strength. Strowman will win here, but Zayn will make them both look better in the process.
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