Minus-Star Match Reviews: Seth Rollins vs. The Fiend – WWE Hell In A Cell 2019

Seth Rollins might be riding high right now as World Heavyweight Champion, but his WWE career will be forever tarnished by this deep blemish of a match.

This match didn’t just stink; it was putrid. Almost everyone hated it outright for how badly it was put together and it’s historically awful finish. If it weren’t for WWE operating on its fans’ alleged short memories and their willingness to move on, then this would’ve also killed the HIAC match as a gimmick altogether.

But just like with matches that get heaped with praise in their immediate aftermath, it’s good to look back at historically bad matches to see if they really were that bad in the moment or if time has changed how the match comes across. In this case, we have a match that was hated when it first took place and now, with the benefit of hindsight…it’s safe to say that the initial fan disgust wasn’t enough of an expression of how bad this was. Why? Read on to find out.

The story

Since his passing last year, many people have lauded Bray Wyatt for his alleged creativity and outside-the-box thinking. After a stalled career that included him teaming with ‘Woken’ Matt Hardy, Wyatt began creating a new gimmick: The Firefly Funhouse. On this show, Wyatt began acting like a Mr. Rogers-type character that interacted with a bunch of bizarre puppets. Some people loved the gimmick; personally I found it to be an effective anti-drug PSA.

Anyway, this new character, unsurprisingly, had a dark side, a Mr. Hyde-like alter-ego that was begging to be “let in”. This creature was the Fiend, and saw Wyatt don a demonic mask and strange attire that made him look like the unholy lovechild of Corey Taylor dressed as #8 from Slipknot and carnival ringleader Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal 4.

This new monster had a meteoric rise to the top and after a few months of beating up legends and locking in the Mandible Claw on people, he earned a shot as Seth Rollins’ Universal Championship. And with this pairing, WWE booked themselves into a corner. Going into the match the Fiend was booked as a heel and Rollins was booked as a face. But some of the things that Rollins said and did in 2019 didn’t endear him to some of the fans. On-screen, his promos weren’t really passionate or inspiring, his laugh was (and still is) annoying, and when he was inserted into a short storyline involving his wife Becky Lynch, it didn’t do him any favors because his shortcomings as a character were exposed instead of concealed.

Off-screen Rollins was also being, to put it mildly, something of a douche. And while the online wrestling audience is only a small portion of WWE’s overall audience, Rollins still said things online that contradicted his alleged portrayal as a babyface. He got into Twitter spats with other people in the wrestling business over trivial matters and when he praised WWE (as he was expected to given that he was champion) he came across as overly-grateful. It was like he was the ultimate “happy to be there” guy and wanted everyone to accept his view that WWE was the best. Then he got into a short argument with Will Ospreay whom Rollins dismissed as an irrelevant indy guy. And when AEW first formed he made the offhand remark that it was “taking food off his table”, despite, you know, him and his wife combined probably making eight figures a year after deductions. And while some might dismiss his online comments as banter, and while some might even say they’re OK since kayfabe is dead, the fact is that Rollins’ behavior both on-screen and off didn’t make him into a likeable babyface, and this was at a time when the only person getting almost universal positive reactions was Becky Lynch.

So when this match between Rollins and the Fiend was announced, a problem emerged. Rollins was the established champion that needed a big win but the Fiend was white hot and had more immediate positive momentum. And given that people had begun turning on Rollins, there was concern that The Fiend might be cheered in this match despite being booked as the villainous monster the audience was supposed to hate.

So how would WWE get themselves out of this corner? Would they sacrifice Rollins’ latest babyface push to create a new top monster threat the likes of which hadn’t been seen in years? Or would Rollins eke out a victory and barely survive, thus putting the Fiend over without actually dropping the title? Well as it turns out, neither of those things happened; instead, the audience was in for one of the dumbest match endings of all time.

The match

This match took place on October 6, 2019. It was rated -** by the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and was voted Worst Match of the Year for 2019 by the WON’s readership.

Fiend powers Rollins around, no-sells a few strikes, and clotheslines him down. Rollins grabs a kendo stick but it does absolutely nothing. Rollins tries using his speed but Fiend catches him on a dive and lands an uranage. He drives Rollins into the cell wall and then hits a body block. Fiend throws Rollins around some more and looks for a weapon but then Rollins attacks with steel ringsteps. Rollins brings a table into the ring and hits two suicide dives. He smashes Fiend about and sets up the table in the ring. He goes for another dive but Fiend catches him and hits Sister Abigail into the cell wall.

Rollins avoids getting slammed through the table and then superkicks Fiend onto it. He follows with a frog splash through the table but Fiend gets up before he does. Rollins kicks Fiend and lands his a Curb Stomp. Fiend gets right back up. A second Stomp is countered into Sister Abigail that gets a two-count. Fiend hits a neck wrench which causes Rollins to ‘convulse’. Then Fiend pulls out a huge cartoonish mallet from under the ring. It’s like Triple H’s sledgehammer on steroids. But instead of swinging it or even lifting it above his head to tease a strike, Fiend uses it to push Rollins forward. Dio Maddin uses the word “impale” at least once here which goes to show how utterly stupid the people backstage think the audience is.

Rollins lands more superkicks and a second Stomp, this time onto that mallet. Two springboard knees fail to get the Fiend off his feet. Two more superkicks bring him down and Rollins hits three more stomps for a total of five. The audience boos Rollins but then they cheer when Fiend starts getting up. Rollins hits a Pedigree followed by stomp #6 for a one-count. then Rollins lands three more Stomps. Why would you spam that move knowing it’s not working? What an idiot. Even more stomps by Rollins, bringing his total to ten. Then Rollins grabs a chair and does a “safe” chairshot to the head (read: he strikes above the head, barely grazing Fiend’s mask), all for another one-count.

Rollins sets the chair on Fiend’s head and drives a ladder onto it (again, that’s like trying to punch a hockey player with one’s bare hand while he’s wearing a helmet) and gets a two-count. He puts the ladder on top of the chair on top of Fiend’s mask and hits the pile with a metal toolbox. But even through all of this the Fiend can still be seen stirring so Rollins grabs Triple H’s magically-enchanted sledgehammer. He raises it for a strike and then the referee goes from neutral arbiter to appealing to Rollins’ morality. He begs Rollins not to use the sledgehammer even though it’s perfectly legal for him to do so. He even says, “don’t do this, it’ not who you are”. Rollins appears to give in to the emotional blackmail and the camera zooms in on him apparently sobbing. Your top RAW babyface, everybody. But then Rollins changes his mind and strikes with the sledgehammer, which causes the referee to ring the bell to end the match.

Winner and STILL WWE Universal Champion due to REFEREE STOPPAGE IN A HELL IN A CELL MATCH after 17:30: Seth Rollins

Post-match the crowd boos loudly. Even on the WWE Network you can hear fans chanting ‘bullshit’ the second the cell starts being raised. Several officials bring a gurney down as Rollins trash-talks his opponent. Then as Fiend is placed onto the gurney Rollins gets too close and gets trapped in the Mandible Claw. Why?! Why would you do that now instead of earlier when the match was still on? Not only that but Fiend moves with such speed that it’s as if he’s completely unharmed. This guy should be champion but instead he lost the match via a referee forgetting the parameters of his job.

Some fans chant for the match to be restarted as Fiend rips off a piece of ringside mat to expose the floor. He teases a sister Abigail and the same referee who was moralizing to Rollins doesn’t even get close to Fiend, even after he lands Sister Abigail on the exposed floor. The screen goes to black as Fiend locks in another Mandible Claw and blood can be seen coming out of Rollins’ mouth as Fiend’s laughter is drowned out by a torrent of boos (and apparently some ‘AEW’ chants according to those that attended live).

Review

This was absolutely garbage. It was an idiotic, indefensible match filled with glaring decisions that made no sense that harmed everyone. What should’ve been Fiend leaving the match looking like Kane in his 1997 debut left him looking like a completely and utter idiot for taking so much punishment and then attacking Rollins after the match ended. And as mentioned earlier, it doesn’t get any dumber than ‘the referee’s conscience gets in his way and he orders a match stopped because of one specific weapon’. This is truly all the evidence those that hate wrestling need to call it dumb nonsense pretending to be entertainment that appeals to the lowest common denominator. And no self-respecting wrestling fan would ever defend something like this because it’s so clear that this is pure stupidity. And yet this match being so terrible isn’t the wrestlers’ fault.

This was a rare case of a match being terrible without much responsibility lying on the performers. Rollins and The Fiend were like actors given a terrible script/stuck with trying to perform while dealing with maddening levels of studio interference. Aside from the general absurdity of the Fiend’s character and Rollins being somewhat unlikeable as a babyface, neither of them could really be blamed for this match turning into a dumpster fire. Instead, this match was so bad thanks to one person: Vince McMahon.

One doesn’t need to look far to find proof of Vince’s hands all over this. This wasn’t the first time he had a match shot under unnecessary lighting effects. He gave the audience an unsatisfying and inexplicable finish not caring about long-term consequences since he knew fans would still watch anyway. Dio Madden confirmed after his WWE release that he was ordered by Vince on commentary to use the word ‘impale’ to describe Fiend’s use of the giant mallet, knowing full well it made no sense but he had to do it because the boss was shouting orders in his ear. McMahon allegedly reacted to the booing, pro-AEW chants, and general negativity surrounding this match by laughing. He may have been trolling his own fans, or at least doing a bait-and-switch by giving them what he enjoyed even if they didn’t like it because now that he had their money he could give them whatever he wanted. And while there are some people out there that might justify this match because it was such a surprise and it was so different, those voices are few and far between. Even XPAC said on WWE’s own Watch Along program, “I don’t think I’m going to be invited back to one of these things, but how do you get disqualified in a freaking Hell in a Cell?” If an experienced wrestler with intimate knowledge of WWE’s inner workings can’t understand a company decision, one can only imagine how little thought was given to the audience.

It was clear from how this match was put together that Vince and his crew had little respect for the paying fan going into this show. There’s no way that Rollins or Bray would’ve come up with such an ass backwards match layout or finish. There’s no way that Dio Maddin would’ve said the dumb things he said on commentary out of free will. There’s no way that all the members of the production team thought adding red lighting to this match was a good idea. This was all Vince. He trolled the fans, both those in the arena and those taking their time to watch the show, by giving them something that he probably knew would be universally hated and put it on anyway because he knew that people would still tune in anyway. He knew people would be upset and complain, but within two weeks this would be all but forgotten. He learned his lessons from the 2014 and 2015 Royal Rumble matches: widespread complaining on Twitter and creating artificial hashtags “threatening to cancel the WWE Network” were either empty threats or drops in an ocean.

And while I try to separate myself from these match reviews, this one’s a bit of an exception because it was such an aggravating experience for me. I watched this live at a Boston Pizza with some friends and all of us, including one who was only a lapsed viewer who was only there for the laughs, thought it was stupid. None of us could figure out any way in which the finish of the match made any sense. No one was laughing. It wasn’t even one of those so-bad-it’s-good situations where you can try to mask the overall experience with jokes. It was irredeemable. It was stuff like this that makes some people embarrassed to want to show wrestling to their non-fan friends because it’s such a blatant insult thrown towards the viewer. You don’t see this sort of bad storytelling aimed at attacking a paying audience in any other medium: not live sports, not in theatre, not even in stand-up comedy which sometimes involves audiences being added to the show for the sake of entertainment. This really was the worst of the worst; even Hollywood Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior in 1998 could be laughed at for Hogan messing up a fireball spot; this match had no such unintentional comedy, especially after such a long night that got progressively worse.

I feel sorry for anyone that paid tickets to that show (especially anyone in the nosebleeds) because their evening ended with them being unable to see anything well. They spent their hard-earned money for a live event and they were treated to something like this? No wonder many of them chanted “refunds” when it was all over.

Final Rating: -*****

If there’s someone out there that has any genuine positive points to it I’d love to hear them. Otherwise, this is near the top of the list as one of the worst matches of all time.

This started off somewhat promising but once the weapons were introduced it was all downhill from there. This was what you get when you can’t decide on a conclusion and throw your hands up in the air when pressed for a decision. It was historically bad in pretty much every way. It dragged, had gaping holes in story and logic, and featured some of the worst creative ideas in modern WWE history…and it seems like all of these bad decisions were either intentional on Vince’s part or the byproducts of the environment he fostered in which people were too afraid to stand up to him and tell him he was making bad choices.

This match killed Seth Rollins as a babyface, and it took him years to big himself out of the pit he found himself in once this was over. As for the Fiend/Bray Wyatt, he proved that no amount of visual appeal could salvage a bad match. All his creepiness and strangeness meant nothing in the end. He was buried here worse than Rollins given how he lost the match and then inexplicably attacked at full strength after the bell rang. Stuff like that makes the wrestlers look dumb which in turn makes the fans look just as bad for trying to enjoy it.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that AEW was able to grow so fast and have such positive momentum during 2019 and into 2020, even before the COVID lockdowns slowed things down for them. AEW capitalized on the dissatisfied fans that were tired of being insulted by WWE’s bad creative output and found solace in an alternative provider that, on the surface, seemed to treat them and their tastes with slightly more respect.

The only people that might enjoy this are those that like watching things that are inherently designed to be bad, which is something I’ve never understood and probably never will. But for everyone else, this is a close contender for the worst match of the 2010s and a firm reminder of why WWE might be better off without Vince McMahon making creative decisions.

Thanks for reading.