The Scrap’s Worst 2019 Moment: Seth Rollins vs. ‘The Fiend’ at Hell in a Cell
2019 saw plenty of good… but with that comes some bad too. And with the worst of it all, WWE brought us the main event of Hell in a Cell.
Oh, boy. Here we go. Strap yourselves in, it’s The Scrap’s worst moment of 2019… None other than the main event of WWE Hell in a Cell between Seth Rollins and “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt. It was a fun prediction, Austin Luff.
Unforgettable for all the wrong reasons, fans knew right from the initial teasing from Wyatt himself about his title push that things would be a train wreck.
Wyatt, an intriguing character from the beginning since debuting in 2012 eventually fizzled out as time went on and it took him up until a 2018 partnership with the WONDERFUL Matt Hardy eventually led to his time off and repackaging.
Which, to be honest, could have and should have been done after Wyatt’s loss in the Ultimate Deletion that saw him take a somber dip into the Lake of Reincarnation. I mean, that’s the whole point of that part of the Broken/Woken Universe … Instead, he came back a few months later as essentially the same guy with some different clothing items. Okay.
To get back on track, the repackaged Wyatt would emerge a matter of months later after he and Hardy dropped the Raw tag team titles. Normally the creepy swamp dweller dude or whatever you want to call him, Wyatt was now the 2019 Mr. Rogers!
And as completely stupid as that might sound on a surface level, it was actually brilliant.
Wyatt’s show “Firefly Funhouse” saw subtle callbacks aplenty to earlier in his career. Not just to the Cape Fear inspired character, but even before that with the Huskus the Pig Boy puppet.
Overall, it was just a really unique, new, and weirdly entertaining concept. There were laughs and dark undertones – Wyatt had become easily the most gripping thing on WWE TV in a matter of roughly his first two weeks back.
So with that, among the many layers of this new character was another character in “The Fiend” who would go onto squash Finn Balor for his official in-ring return. More popular than ever now, WWE couldn’t resist but to jump the gun and throw him right into the title scene after this. Thus leading to the worst moment of the year.
What should have been the progression of a snail’s pace was the complete opposite. Now feuding with the aforementioned Universal champion in Rollins, “The Fiend” had suffocated several legends and superstars, Rollins included, before their match. At this stage, it was impossible for Wyatt to lose without ruining him… but WWE wasn’t ready to remove their golden boy babyface from his perch just yet either.
What we ended up with was their Hell in a Cell match. A match type, that in the name implies that bad and violent things happen. A match type that has seen people thrown from the top of its 16 to 20 foot cage to the floor – and not be called off.
The point is that several very violent actions have taken place in Hell in a Cell matches.
With Rollins and “The Fiend,” we saw 72 Curb Stomps from the champion that couldn’t put the challenger away. Which, already pretty much established his supernatural capabilities. And then, it happened.
Rollins buried (literally and figuratively) “The Fiend” under an assortment of weapons before he smashed him with a sledgehammer. Mind you, this coming after “The Fiend” had already brought a much larger mallet from Firefly Funhouse into play. Yet, that didn’t stop the referee from calling off the match.
But alas, it was over! However, no one had won or lost… A match with no disqualification had ended by… disqualification? No? No contest? Not that either? Then what? Well, nobody really knows the exact answer to that question as WWE has since acted as if the match never happened. You could say, “Can you blame them?” But yeah, we can. They did this to themselves and booked such a nonsensical mess.
“The Fiend” was surely kayfabe dead now, right? He had to be! Nope. He ends up getting up and attacking Rollins with his Mandible Claw and dragging him out of the ring to hit a Sister Abigail. Under the red light lit arena with fans chanting “AEW,” Hell in a Cell was over and arguably the new best thing in wrestling had been severely derailed before it could gain maximum steam.
It’s a miracle that Wyatt has been able to even somewhat salvage himself after the damage done and remain interesting heading into 2020.
This was 100% the Worst 2019 Moment, and there is no close second.
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