WWE Hell in a Cell 2017 Final Rating: Ups Outweigh the Downs

WWE Hell in a Cell 2017 is officially in the books and it will be remembered as one of the most memorable pay-per-views of 2017 with a variety of standout moments led by the two battles inside the demonic structure.

The main card for WWE Hell in a Cell 2017 kicked off with the SmackDown Tag Team Championship match between The New Day and The Usos inside Hell in a Cell.  The teams’ long-running feud had reached an end and what an end it was.  Not only was this the match of the night, but it was quite possibly the match of the year in the WWE with countless memorable spots and standout moments before The Usos regained the SmackDown Tag Team Championship in a true classic.

It’s next to impossible to follow a match of that caliber, but Randy Orton’s battle with Rusev did a fair job of it. Despite not having much attention heading into Hell in a Cell, the match was pretty good with Orton hitting Rusev with an RKO for the win.  Orton is likely done with Rusev now, but his future plans are unknown at this point.

The United States Championship match featuring the champion A.J. Styles, Baron Corbin, and the late-addition Tye Dillinger was a very entertaining triple threat match that saw each individual get their moment to shine.  But in the end, Corbin took advantage of Styles’ offense and after knocking Styles out of the equation, Corbin pinned Dillinger to win the U.S. Championship.  Regardless if you like Corbin or not, this could be mean the WWE is one step closer to moving Styles back into the main event picture on SmackDown, exactly where he belongs.

The next match featured a SmackDown Women’s Championship battle between the champion Natalya and the challenger Charlotte.  The two put on a pretty good match despite it not being great, but the ending was a bit of a letdown.

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Natalya hit Charlotte with a chair and got herself disqualified and retained her title, but the ending does lead to future possibilities in the two’s feud, so it did its purpose.

The biggest dark spot of the pay-per-view came in the next match with WWE Champion Jinder Mahal defending his title against Shinsuke Nakamura.

The match was far from a classic, but probably outdid the two’s SummerSlam match.  The issue came with how easily Mahal was able to finish off Nakamura in the end to retain his championship, prolonging the Mahal failure of an experiment and killing Nakamura’s momentum in the process.

Bobby Roode’s battle with Dolph Ziggler followed and putting the match on at this point in the show pretty much dismissed anything the match could have done.  The match was pretty good, but didn’t do much for either individual and after an exchange of roll-ups, the babyface Roode used the tights to pin Ziggler for the win after Ziggler tried the same thing to Roode.  Ziggler then attacked Roode immediately after the match, which added to the confusing ending.

The main event featuring Kevin Owens vs. Shane McMahon inside Hell in a Cell closed out the show in a blaze of glory featuring spot after spot after spot.  The two put on a classic Hell in a Cell battle and fought everywhere possible, including several bumps on the top of the cell.  Owens went crashing through an announce table from the side of the cell, but the bigger spot came shortly afterwards when Shane leaped off the top of the cell and came crashing through another announce table.

Owens was moved out of the way by the least likely of individuals, Sami Zayn.  After both Owens and McMahon were laid out, Zayn put Owens on top of Shane and KO got the win.  This match featured about everything and had a major plot twist with the apparent heel turn of Zayn.

Next: Top 10 Most Memorable Hell in a Cell Spots

All in all, Hell in a Cell was a solid pay-per-view outing from SmackDown and despite a few questionable endings, there wasn’t a bad match on the entire show.  The event did a great job of building hype for SmackDown on Tuesday night and the cliffhanger featuring Zayn’s heel turn is very intriguing.

Final rating for WWE Hell in a Cell 2017: 7 out of 10