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Maybe it’s the Starbucks Blonde Roast talking, but I’m so stoked to see two legends, hell, two phenoms to go toe-to-toe FOR THE FINAL TIME as we head into Hell In A Cell on Sunday. Golly, not only that, but we’re getting the Tiger Beat hairstyle Foley to special guest ref two of his former foes in that self-titled Satanic structure. That’s right, we got “Better Than Brock & Bray” Triple H against Ric Flair’s best man and crikey, cue up some Men At Work because it’s all taking place in the land down under.
[Hypothetical assistant taps me on the shoulder, I look at notes, go to window, ponder self-credibility, suddenly recall the horrific HIAC poster with Reigns as an SNL-like demon, returns to seat and exhale.]
Anybody else feel like this was a little overlooked in favor of, I don’t know, something with more history? I realize there’s a lot of canine rhetoric going around Gorilla recently, but WWE has given me a lot more to wag my tail over than Roman Reigns (a notorious mean mugger to the police) against a Braun Strowman that people still want to cheer for. The old dogs triangle we got growling between Triple H, HBK and Taker has more bark and bite to it’s story no matter how many pooch puns Vince tries to cram into to a quarter hour segment (although I think I just muzzled Vinny Mac in the pup pun game).
Maybe it’s the dog days of Summer Slam (okay God, Dom, enough), but this whole show seems like one low hurdle to step over before we get to the Sydney Show-Down, the currently ironically titled Evolution and WWE’s next Greatest Compromise in Saudi Arabia. There’s some very rock solid matches on here for sure, but almost all of them feel like they’re going to be stretched over to the following shows in some capacity, which is favorable to some, yet detrimental to the others. Let’s take a look, eh?
WWE Universal Championship (Hell in a Cell Match w/ Mick Foley as special guest referee)
Roman Reigns (c) vs Braun Strowman
So that whole thing about Braun being a heel? That will all happen when the Monster Among Spectacle Destruction gets those hands on Foley and chaos breaks loose, and what’s so nuckin’ futs about it is that it might actually get Roman cheered. This type of thing wouldn’t be so difficult if Roman smiled at people once in awhile and welcomed offerings of assistance like when a pre-apron-bombed Tyler Breeze extended a hand to Seth Rollins a month ago or so. Vince might not be aware of it, but good guys in general don’t kick sand in the face of people looking to befriend. Then again, I’m pretty positive Vince also didn’t know what a beignet was when Renee brought it up on Raw (boy, did that awkward silence linger).
Prediction: Roman wins by a quicker than normal count from Foley in an effort to save him from some sort of abnormal feat of strength by Braun who rips off half the cage (or something). Dean, Seth, Drew and Dolph all get mixed in at some point as Braun destroys Foley while The Shield helplessly watches while under some ringside rubble.
WWE Championship
AJ Styles (c) vs. Samoa Joe
Every picture tells a story don’t it? Joe sure thought so as he took not just a page out of the Young Bucks’ book, but the whole damn thing and spun it into some DeNiro in Cape Fear-esque yarn with AJ and his family (credit to PWTorch’s Wade Keller for the perfect analogy). These two know one another so well that a tale like this isn’t one I’m upset about. With their history, you’d think this would be the perfect match to be inside a cell and you’d be right, but this feud is still in the budding stages so something more final can take place down the road.
Prediction: Samoa Joe with a KO submission as he does something pretty heavy duty family-related to distract Styles from the task at hand to get the dirty victory and the title, giving this train a lot more tracks to travel down.
