That Was Then, Is This Too? 08.11.2009: Hell in a Cell

Posted by Jasper Gerretsen on 08.11.2009

As part of WWE's continuous effort to re-brand their pay-per-views to combat dwindling buy rates, the October PPV has been renamed 'Hell in a Cell', with multiple Cell matches expected to take place. Haven't we seen something like this before? Come inside to find out, in the latest edition of That Was Then, Is This Too?.

Welcome back to another installation of That Was Then, Is This Too?, the column that looks for parallel lines in all the right places. To start us off this week, we have comments!

good article i gotta agree that those who tried to claim they're betta or tryna recapture those old ECW fans failed cuz they tried to create something that was already done and failed people can say CZW is a rip off ECW i'd say no cuz they established they're own identity hell it was formed when ECW was in buisness they didn't say they're the new ECW no they just let the action the wrestlers put on a show tell the story XPW was a cheap knock off and failed mesrabily tryna bring in old ECW wrestlers to get peopel to watched it failed CZW is the most successful hardcore wrestling company in the us since ECW went out for all u people that say Vince ruined ECW yea but hey at least it has its own identy as a high level devolopment show which u see the future of WWE sur emaybe most of them won't be wwe or world champions but Isn't that wat the Old ECW was once the guys got too big for that smalled pond they left to go to the big ponds such as wwe or wcw so all in all promotions need to stop saying the show is being held in the former ECW arean seems like cheap plug to get sales if u have faith in ur product u should be able to get people to see ur show by just being the company they want it to be not because a dead organization used to have shows there

Posted By: jamille 5150 (Guest) on August 04, 2009 at 06:04 PM

I... don't even know where to begin...

The key to the old ECW was that it created a real connection between the fans and the wrestlers. I once saw ECW in the Camden County CYO. each and every wrestler interacted with the crowd and stayed after the event to talk with us. Thus, you felt like you were rooting for your guys out there. This' why when Public Enemey, et alia, defected people got righteously angry.

Posted By: Iron Knee (Guest) on August 04, 2009 at 08:05 PM

After all these years I'm still baffled by the backlash against certain ECW wrestlers over jumping ship. I think the most baffling example of this was Joey Styles saying "suicide dive, and it's a shame he didn't succeed in taking his own life there." on commentary during Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka at the first ECW One Night Stand.

Just a note, but it was Heat Wave 2000 that saw a few members of the XPW roster cause a ruckus, not '99. '99 was in Dayton, OH at the Hara Arena again, just like the year before. And was a better show, overall.

I'd say CZW is a more direct continuation of the ECW spirit, at least when it comes to the hardcore stuff, because Zandig formed the company based on the Japanese deathmatch circuit, and not once really wanted to compete with ECW or take its place. XPW did. This is why XPW failed miserably. That, and awful, awful shows.

Posted By: AndrewCrow (Guest) on August 05, 2009 at 08:08 AM

Thanks for the correction, and I agree with your point about CZW. Like I said in the article, what CZW did exactly right was establishing their own fanbase in New Jersey and Delaware in stead of trying to go straight for Philadelphia.

3PW should not be classified as a hardcore promotion. They used Joey Matthews, Matt Striker (who was very funny there)Curt Hennig, Kid Kash & Low-Ki, not exactly what I could call "hardcore" Plus the matches between AJ Styles & Christopher Daniels were amazing. Sure they used some old ECW talent, Sabu, Public Enemy, Raven, Sandman, Gary Wolfe... ect. Jasper (and everyone else) should watch some 3PW shows & you will see 3PW was not a hardcore promotion. CZW is a hardcore promotion (that every now & then has good wrestling matches) There is no way you could combine 3PW & CZW under the same heading of hardcore. I would compare 3PW to TNA, not in booking, they are just more similar in terms of style to TNA than 3PW.

Also PWU (Pro Wrestling Unplugged) had moderate success in that building.

Posted By: HomicideTheCat (Guest) on August 05, 2009 at 04:10 PM

I have to admit that I haven't seen much 3PW, but the shows that I've seen all featured more hardcore matches than regular matches. That and the fact that it was run by The Blue Meanie, Tod Gordon and Jasmin St. Claire makes it fair to call it a hardcore promotion, in my opinion.

With that out of the way, we move on to this week's edition of That Was Then, Is This Too?. Banner!



That Was Then, Is This Too? - Hell in a Cell

Over the past few months news has been trickling in steadily about several of WWE's minor pay-per-views being reformatted. This is of course an attempt to combat dwindling buy rates. The logic behind this is that by making an otherwise ordinary PPV into something special, it'll generate extra interest and extra buys. This is of course hardly a new idea. In fact it's almost as old as WWE's oldest PPVs, which were first broadcast on closed circuit.

The first true 'gimmick' PPV was of course the Royal Rumble, which had a 30 man (20 man for the first one, which was a TV special rather than a PPV, 28 when the three faces of Foley participated, 29 when Chyna participated) battle royal as the main event, with wrestlers entering the match at equal intervals and elimination occurring solely by getting thrown over the top rope and having both feet touch the floor. Of course battle royals rarely make for thrilling matches, but when the stipulation was added that the winner of the match would receive a WrestleMania title shot, the PPV suddenly became a lot more interesting.

Another early example of a gimmick PPV was of course Survivor Series, in which teams of five wrestlers fought elimination bouts. In fact, it wasn't until 1991 that the Survivor Series PPV saw a singles match, in which the at that point undefeated Undertaker managed to win the WWF championship with a little help from Ric Flair. Since then there has been some tweaking in the Survivor Series concept, but the majority of all Survivor Series PPVs have featured at least three elimination tag matches.

Since then, there have been quite a few attempts at creating PPVs with a gimmick. The most obvious recent examples are Cyber Sunday, where match participatants and stipulations are voted for by the audience, Night of Champions, where every championship in WWE is defended, and One Night Stand, where every match is wrestled under some kind of no disqualification stipulation. With WWE Breaking Point and WWE Hell in a Cell scheduled for September and October this year, it seems that WWE is more dedicated than ever to the concept of 'gimmick PPVs'.

That Was Then...



Of course October's Hell in a Cell PPV won't be the first time the entire show is built around a Hell in a Cell main event. It was in December 2000, during Kurt Angle's first reign as WWE champion, that commissioner Mick Foley booked what seemed like an almost impossible challenge for Angle: at the Armageddon PPV, Angle would defend his championship inside Hell in a Cell against four former champions, and Rikishi.

Of course these days it's kind of hard to take Rikishi serious as a thread to anything but a box of cupcakes, but he definitely had a reason to be there. After all, it was Rikishi who had run over Steve Austin to take him out of the WWE championship match at the 1999 Survivor Series in a failed attempt to help his cousin The Rock win the title. Furthermore, it was Rikishi who interfered at No Mercy to help Angle win the title from the same cousin he almost committed vehicular homicide for.

Throughout the show, literally every single backstage segment involved the main event in some way. Besides all six wrestlers involved giving their thoughts on the main event, we also had Foley promising that he'd resign his position if any of the wrestlers involved in the match became seriously injured, Shawn Michaels sharing his Hell in a Cell thoughts from WWE New York and of course Vince McMahon and his cronies doing everything they could to stop the match from taking place. With all their eggs in one basket and the main event being the subject of all twelve backstage segments, it should come as no surprise that pretty much every match on the card felt as filler, which is a shame considering that the card also featured the epic Val Venis/Chyna match.

The match itself was pretty mediocre, considering the stipulation and the wrestlers involved. In the end it suffered from having too many wrestlers and too many uninteresting minor storylines, and it ended up being a match that just happened to take place in the cell. There was the obligatory face raking across the cage and the brawling on top of it, but nothing about the match had the epic feel that it was supposed to have. There were even some moments that were downright silly, such as Vince coming down to the ring in a truck filled with wood chips to try and tear down the cell, just in time to catch Rikishi as he was tossed off the top of the cage.

The biggest problem I have with this match is not that it was overbooked, or that it dominated an entire show, or even that it diluted the importance of Hell in a Cell as the ultimate final match in a feud. It was the way that Kurt Angle managed to win the match but still came out looking weak. He only got the win by pinning The Rock after a Stunner from Austin, who was held back from Triple H and who left Angle laying with another Stunner after the match was over. In the end the match simply failed to achieve what it set out to do.

...Is This Too?

While we have to wait and see as to how many matches on the Hell in a Cell PPV will actually take place inside a cell, I still have a pretty bad feeling about the whole ordeal. After all, Hell in a Cell is supposed to be an epic conclusion, and having one just for the sake of having it completely deflates the impact of the match. Furthermore, the magic of Hell in a Cell doesn't come from the cell, but rather the vicious rivalries that have reached the point where the cell is the only way to settle things.

And then of course there's the problem that the amount of feuds that warrant a Hell in a Cell match. On the SmackDown! side of things a case could be made for Jeff Hardy vs. CM Punk, but that would mean they'd have to feud another two months, and that's assuming that Hardy doesn't leave the company after Summerslam. Other than that there really aren't that many options, especially with Jeff Hardy leaving. The only other match I could see is CM Punk against John Morrison, and even with two straight months of build starting immediately after Summerslam I simply can't see that feud reaching Hell in a Cell point in such a short amount of time.

Over on RAW there are far more options, as both Triple H and John Cena have feuded extensively with Randy Orton over the past two years. I would be all for a Hell in a Cell match between Orton and either Cena or Triple H, provided that it really would be their last match for a very long time. Of course the return of both Batista and Shawn Michaels opens up even more options, and I wouldn't be surprised if we'd see a three on three match pitting DX and either Cena or Batista against Legacy.

Of course we'll have to wait until October to see whether or not the Hell in a Cell PPV will be a repeat of Armageddon 2000. Unfortunately I simply can't see the 'forced' Hell in a Cell matches living up to the many classics we've seen over the years. Bad Blood 1997, King of the Ring 1998, No Way Out 2000 and even Summerslam 2008 were classic matches not just because they took place in a cell, but because they had months of build behind them and were epic conclusions to intensely personal rivalries.

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