(Almost) 5-Star Match Reviews: Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks – WWE Hell In A Cell 2019

The last time I reviewed WWE Hell in a Cell 2019 it was to revisit an infamous disaster and remind readers how little Vince McMahon thought of them considering what kind of shit he put together for their “entertainment”. HIAC 2019 stands as one of the worst PPVs in modern times because it started off okay with two good matches and then went off a cliff. Then, as the show was in freefall and we got closer to the bottom, we discovered that there were several sharp rocks at the bottom that would only worsen the eventual bad landing.

Circling back, though, apparently HIAC 2019 had at least two good matches on the card, one of which being the opener which was also an eponymous Hell in a Cell match. And while I can wax philosophical about the merits or drawbacks of opening a show with what is supposedly the most ominous and terrifying stipulation in modern wrestling, that’s a discussion for another day. For now, let’s see if this HIAC match between two women still holds up after five years of hindsight.

The Story

One month earlier Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks met at Clash of Champions in a singles match for the RAW Women’s Championship and the match ended in disqualification. A tag team match occurred shortly thereafter (holla, holla, playa) which led to another confrontation between Lynch and Banks that setup this HIAC match. It seems like a short jump from singles match to Hell in a Cell match, but hey, this was 2019’s WWE, which was a period of dreadful creative courtesy of one man with an alarming lack of understanding or respect of his target audience. Anyway…

The Match

This took place on October 6, 2019. It was rated **** out of five by the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.

Banks rushes Lynch before the cell has been fully lowered which allows both women to start the match outside. Clever start, I’ll give them that. The cell reaches the bottom as Banks suplexes Lynch on the floor and smashes her into the cell a few times. Banks gloats for a bit as Lynch recovers but then Lynch kicks the cell door into Banks’ face and then pummels her with forearms as the cell door is finally padlocked shut.

The bell rings but Lynch rips away the padlock and chain used to keep the cell locked to use as a weapon. Lynch hammers Banks with chain punches and a few kicks as well. She rakes Banks’ face into the cell wall to stop her from escaping and then locks the door herself. Seems like a waste of time in such an urgent situation but whatever. They brawl for a bit and then Lynch introduces a table. As Vic Joseph notes on commentary “anything goes inside Hell in a Cell”. Well too bad they forgot that critical fucking rule in the main event but I digress.

Lynch starts pulling out a ladder but Banks hits her with a chair. Banks setup the ladder in a corner but eats chair-shots for her efforts. Banks gets a few one-and-two-counts off some flash covers but then Lynch smashes her face into an opened chair. Lynch snakes Banks’ arm through the chair but Banks kicks her before some serious damage can be done and lands a dropkick for two.

Banks misses a chair-shot which allows Lynch to hit a Bexploder onto said chair and land some baseball slide dropkicks. Banks hits a slide-around kick to Lynch’s face followed by a Meteora into the ladder in the corner. Say goodbye to having functioning knees when you hit 40. Banks gets a two-count so she puts Lynch’s arm in the gap between cell door and cell wall and smashes the door into it several times. Banks gets another two-count so she Pillmanizes the arm and works it over for a bit. We get another contrived chair spot which ends with another Meteora that gets Banks another two-count.

Banks sets one chair up on the cell wall and tries to use another on Lynch but Lynch counters with a roll-up for two. A quick counter exchange ends with Lynch kicking Banks into the cell wall. Lynch fires back with a combo and sends Banks face-first into a ringpost and lands a Bexploder into the cell wall. Back in the ring we get a short standing strike exchange which ends with Lynch landing a drop toehold that sends Banks face-first into one of the chair legs. One, two, Banks kicks out.

Another convoluted corner spot ends with Lynch hitting a diving dropkick to send a chair into Banks’ face for a two-count. Banks pulls out two kendo sticks, whacks Lynch with one of them, places both of them in a cell corner as some sort of platform, and goes to use it for a face smash spot but Lynch counters that on Banks. Lynch adds a chair and a third kendo stick to this…contraption…setup in a corner and despite Banks trying her best to regain control, Lynch cuts her off, sits her on this raised chair, and lands a running dropkick. All that laborious effort for such a weak payoff.

Back in the ring Lynch lands a diving legdrop for a two-count. The fans chant for the table as they are wont to do and Lynch obliges them. Banks cuts her off with a Backstabber and tries a superplex. Lynch escapes and tries a powerbomb. Banks counters with a Meteora through the table for two. Banks tries a Banks Statement using a kendo stick but Lynch escapes under the bottom rope. She rips that stick from Banks and pummels her with it but then Banks counters and sends Lynch into the chair she setup through the cell earlier.

Banks throws eleven chairs into the ring, whacks her with one, and gloats in a corner. Lynch cuts her off with a chair-shot and lands a second-rope Bexploder suplex followed by a Dis-Arm-Her out of nowhere. Banks taps out after maybe ten seconds. Lynch wins!

Winner and STILL RAW Women’s Champion after 21:50: Becky Lynch

Review

Watching this match I’m reminded of that one HIAC match that marked a critical ideological shift in WWE, that being The Undertaker vs. Edge from SummerSlam 2008. That was the first time that WWE’s take on Hell in a Cell turned into TLCIAC because almost every big Cell match thereafter became a TLC match contained within a cage. It was the ultimate example of a bait-and-switch, with the match being marketed as this no-escape claustrophobic situation which, once the asses were in the seats, would turn into a token demolition derby featuring a cavalcade of weapons and broken objects. Such was the case here once again. What was sold as a personal feud and bitter rivalry between two women ended up as just another hardcore match with a red wall between the ring and the audience. It was creatively lazy and lacking in intensity. They rushed to the biggest stipulation possible (allegedly) and turned it into the same kind of weapons-based brawl you’re likely to see in a dark main event once the cameras are turned off. If this was supposed to be the best match on the card then it’s no wonder that things would only get worse from here.

The match had a dreadful pacing that was built around these labor-intensive setup spots with weak payoffs. They both tried these new and creative ideas but despite their best efforts these new ideas lacked impact, both literal and metaphorical. Both women put plenty of attention on that corner kendo stick/chair thing but the payoff ended up being minimal. The table spot was boring because we’ve all seen it a billion times. Banks wasted time throwing eleven chairs into the ring yet never got to make use of ten of them. For a match that went almost 22 minutes there was maybe ten minutes’ worth of actual person-to-person action and the rest involved setup of weapons.

That focus on non-cell weapons ultimately hurt the match and the story because the match just devolved into a generic hardcore brawl that made little use of the stipulation. Using Undertaker/Michaels or Undertaker/Mankind as standard-bearers, when you use the Cell for a match you want to make the cell a central part of the action to justify that stip. If it becomes irrelevant then the audience ends up feeling ripped off or swindled. That’s what happened here: a bunch of other random weapons ended up having more of an effect on this match’s flow than the cell itself. The only time the cell actually had any relevance was in the beginning when both women found a semi-clever way to start brawling outside the ring before the match even began. And yet that entire sequence ended up meaning nothing because neither woman really sold all that well and both of them moved from spot to spot at a similar pace, as though neither suffered any cumulative damage from all these supposedly creative weapons spots.

Final Rating: **1/2

This is a passable brawl but an underwhelming Cell match. It isn’t even all that worthy of the cell stipulation because it didn’t feel all that personal. Traditionally the Cell was used as a feud ender, a final chapter for a bitter and intense feud. That tradition was thrown out the window here as any sense of personal hostility disappeared from this match after maybe two minutes and the rest of it was a soulless and mechanical shift from one hardcore spot to the next.

This match isn’t worth your time, especially since both women had better matches both before this and after this. If you’re a Lynch fan you’re better off watching her Last Woman Standing match with Charlotte from Evolution 2018 or her body of work post-COVID with Rhea Ripley or Bianca Belair. As for Sasha Banks/Mercedes Moné, thus far the only match of hers that I would recommend is her famous NXT bout with Bayley from 2015. Sadly, much of her work after that has failed to live up to the hype and this match here is further proof.

Thanks for reading.