WWE Hell in a Cell 2017 Results: Highlights, Analysis, and Grades

Source: WWE.com

SmackDown Women’s Championship Match

Natalya (c) vs. Charlotte Flair

Result: Charlotte defeated Natalya via disqualification; Natalya retains SmackDown Women’s Championship

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

Brilliant use of limb targeting in this one. It’s one of the simplest things to do to tie together the story of a match, but it always seems to be underused. The only issue – that Nattie’s Sharpshooter targets the back, not the legs – was explained away by Corey Graves, world’s greatest broadcaster. Graves points out that besides the Sharpshooter, Nattie’s trying to make it harder for Charlotte to apply the Figure Four/Figure Eight with a bum leg.

Either way, it’s a great way to build heat within a match. “How is Charlotte going to come back from this? Oh, she just got hit with a dragon screw. That’s gotta hurt.” It makes you pay attention more closely to see how she survives.

And survive she did, for the most part. Charlotte really sold the leg injury throughout the match. Whenever she got some offense in, the knee/leg really slowed her down and weakened her. But she never backed down, even climbing to the top rope for a moonsault several times. After escaping the Sharphooter, Charlotte finally hit that moonsault on the outside.

That’s where the match went off the rails. While outside the ring, Nattie grabbed a chair and just started wailing away on Charlotte’s injured leg. It was kind of a weird, abrupt ending. You would think that Charlotte could take losing while injured to build to a rematch down the road, but I guess not. So Nattie retains, Charlotte looks tough but lost, and Carmella is still in the back clutching her briefcase.