Hell In A Cell 2019: 5 Things WWE did right at the PPV

WWE's annual Hell in a Cell show has come and gone, finishing up one of the most important weeks in the history of the company. Hell in a Cell was the last pay-per-view event of an era.

While it was treated as a somewhat unimportant event in the lead-up to the show, with only a handful of matches announced, the show ended up being more than just a period at the end of a long sentence.

There were some small and big moments, title changes, and a lot of the vicious brutality that one would expect out of the pair of Hell in a Cell matches.

Hell in a Cell was an exclamation point marking the end of the sentence that was the most important week in recent WWE history.

It wasn't a blow-away event with amazing matches one after the other, but it did its job well and was better than a lot of people probably expected it to be. Hell in a Cell set the tone for the next biggest week in WWE's recent history, the beginning of the next draft, and the official beginning of the USA vs. FOX era of WWE.

Here are 5 things WWE did right at Hell in a Cell.

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#5 Orton shows Ali respect

Randy Orton showed Ali a sign of respect after their match.

WWE only announced four matches before Sunday's PPV event, so a few matches had to come into existence on the day of the show.

One of those matches was a SmackDown contest between Randy Orton and Ali. Ali has been trying to reinvent himself since his return from injury and Orton has been in limbo since he was twice unable to defeat Kofi Kingston for the WWE Championship.

If you need a solid match, just get Randy Orton and put him in the ring with a fast, high-flying competitor. That's what WWE did here, and it worked, just like it always does. Ali put up a very strong fight against The Viper and even had an incredible handstand-counter to the RKO.

Sadly for Ali, he would soon succumb to a real RKO, which came, as you may have thought, out of nowhere. After the match was over, Orton celebrated. But before he left the ring, Orton made a very simple gesture, fist-bumping his chest over his downed opponent.

Not only did Ali get to look very good in defeat, but he received a very brief, yet very important, sign of respect. Will it mean anything going forward? It's tough to say, but for the night, it was a small gesture with a big meaning.

#4 New Women's Tag Team Champions

The Kabuki Warriors are the new Women's Tag Team Champions.

Ever since they formed a team, Kairi Sane and Asuka have done little more than exist. The crowd has always been loud for both women separately, and as a team, the WWE Universe loved them even more. They were unable to become the inaugural Women's Tag Team Champions and failed to win the titles on other occasions, but Hell in a Cell was their night.

With the draft coming up at the end of this week, it is certainly possible that the makeshift team of Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross could come to an end, especially with Charlotte Flair likely needing a new challenger for her title.

FOX is said to have been studying WWE and they probably know that Alexa Bliss is one of the most popular female Superstars in recent time.

That in mind, WWE can start the next era of RAW and SmackDown with a clean slate. The new Women's Tag Team Champions are a solid, strong team in the Kabuki Warriors, and the Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross storyline that saw The Goddess seemingly just using Nikki as a puppet has faded away, leaving them as a duo who worked well as a team -- but it was hollow.

Nikki can go her own way and build herself up as a star on RAW while Bliss can be drafted to SmackDown, where she can flourish as one of WWE's top stars.

Side note: The green mist from Asuka was pretty awesome.

#3 Hell in a Cell to start and finish the night

Becky Lynch retained her title in the opening match inside Hell in a Cell.

WWE has done this before with events like this, where there are more than one of the eponymous matches on the card.

Instead of having a few regular matches to begin the show, one of the big matches (Hell in a Cell in this case), a "cool-down" match to allow the crowd to rest and prepare for the main event, and then the second match, WWE is smart to bookend the show with the two most important matches of the night.

In 2016, WWE presented three Hell in a Cell matches at the Hell in a Cell event and did something similar. Roman Reigns and Rusev were locked inside the cage to start the night, Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins were right in the middle, and the historic first-ever Hell in a Cell match for the Women's Championship closed the show.

You don't want to wear out the crowd, and with the way WWE built up this year's event, it was really a two-match show anyway.

The important matches were the two that took place inside the Cell, and the rest were just placeholders while WWE prepared to begin their new era. Pepper in a couple of title changes, and you have a neatly put together package.

#2 Showed the true brutality of the Hell in a Cell

Hell in a Cell was not for the weak of heart.

Both of the Hell in a Cell matches on the show were extraordinarily brutal. Tables, chairs, kendo sticks, ladders, sledgehammers, steel steps -- you name it, and between the two matches, they used it. While neither match was necessarily the kind of match that needed to happen inside the giant red cage, all four competitors used the fact that there are no rules to their advantage.

The main event between Bray Wyatt and Seth Rollins ended with the champion apparently being disqualified for an exceptional amount of destructive brutality. While the Hell in a Cell has no rules, the referee deemed Rollins' actions (piling steel chairs and ladders on top of The Fiend and then using a sledgehammer to drive them into his prone body) simply too extreme to let the match continue.

Whether or not you agree with the idea of a Hell in a Cell match ending with a referee stoppage due to the excessive use of weapons, you have to agree that doing it does put over just how violent a match like this can force a wrestler to become.

Nobody came out of the hellish structure the same. Not the winners or the losers.

#1 Red lighting for The Fiend

The dim, red lighting made it feel like a horror movie come to life.

It's not easy to protect a character like Bray Wyatt's Fiend. Sure, when he's not wrestling you can use all of the camera tricks, extremely dark lighting and spooky sounds you want, but things change when he's in the ring.

When The Fiend made his debut at SummerSlam against Finn Balor, the match was barely three minutes long, and The Fiend was there and gone almost before you knew it. WWE didn't use any special effects or lighting tricks during the match, because it was going to be short. They wanted you to see the mask, see the outfit, and know what the character looked like, but not for too long.

The Hell in a Cell match was almost 20 minutes long. WWE wanted to put a powerful message behind the match, and having your Universal Champion at a complete disadvantage by fighting the unknown inside a giant cage with dark lighting is loud and clear.

The Fiend is a spectacle, and he is to be feared. The match itself showed just how indestructible Bray Wyatt's alter-ego can be. He dealt a lot of punishment out to Rollins, but The Fiend spent the majority of the match taking everything the champion could throw at him, only to get right back up.

The superhuman behaviour of The Fiend was scary enough. WWE decided to make it look like a horror movie by making the arena dark and filling it with dim, red lighting. It truly felt like Jason Voorhees -- you can't put him down with one blow, and you can't put him down with 100. And then, when it looks like he's finally been destroyed, he's back to his feet and smothering you to stand tall.

Whether you agree with the way the match ended or not, and whether or not you had an easy time seeing what was happening is almost completely unimportant. The fact that it looked different was all WWE needed. They can't do this all the time, but in a match like Hell in a Cell, with The Fiend unable to be stopped, WWE obviously wanted it to look like a horror movie, and they did it.