WWE Hell in a Cell 2016: Why PPV's Signature Gimmick Must Be Used Less Often

Rusev splintered a Kendo stick across Roman Reigns' chest, smashed him into the cage wall until he bloodied his bicep and stretched a steel chain across his foe's maw at WWE Hell in a Cell 2016.

That kind of violence shouldn't have felt as underwhelming as it did, but the Hell in a Cell match format has become too commonplace, too tied up in the date on the calendar rather than the trajectory of a rivalry.

It's hard to blame the Boston fans for not treating Reigns and Rusev's journey into Hell in a Cell on Sunday's pay-per-view like a momentous occasion. It was the first of three such bouts that night.

Sasha Banks and Charlotte tore the house down to close the show. Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens put on a thriller, as well.

Still, WWE has overplayed its Hell in a Cell hand. It tries to hype the match as exceptional but stacks them one right on top of another. 

It's time to space out the gimmick match much more and take the namesake PPV off the calendar.

For one, building the event around The Devil's Playground each year forces WWE Creative to shoehorn stories to fit the match.  

Rollins vs. Owens was more about annoyance than pure hatred. "The List of Jericho," one-liners and Owens' friendship with Chris Jericho took center stage for much of the rivalry. Yet because it was October, WWE diverted that tale into Hell in a Cell.

Randy Orton vs. John Cena in 2014 wasn't an intense enough feud to warrant a trip to hell, but WWE took them there anyway. Orton vs. Mark Henry three years prior didn't belong in The Devil's Playground, either.

And as great a job as Rollins and Owens did on Sunday, the Hell in a Cell gimmick wasn't necessary.

This point in the feud would have been a good time to put on a standard cage match. Reigns vs. Rusev could have easily told the same story in a No Disqualification match. Instead, those four men, Banks and Charlotte all battled in the same type of clash.

There is no Iron Man-themed PPV. WWE doesn't put on a trio of retirement bouts on a single card. 

If WWE were to put on 20 Royal Rumble matches in a seven-year span, as the company has done with Hell in a Cell, it would dilute the power of that spectacle.

When WWE first announced that Hell in a Cell 2016 would feature a trio of steel-centered offerings, Adam Pacitti of WhatCulture called it "overkill" on Twitter: 

SmackDown general manager Daniel Bryan mocked the idea on the Oct. 26 edition of Talking Smack (h/t Raj Giri of Wrestling Inc): "Do you know what I think they should do, they should make it four hours, maybe five hours with six Hell in a Cell matches!"

Bryan's sarcasm hits home. WWE has a habit of overdoing a good thing until it veers dangerously close to being ordinary.

The Tables, Ladders & Chairs match is now the base of its own PPV. The same for the Money in the Bank ladder match. WWE has put on so many Triple Threat bouts that it's hard to remember when that gimmick contest was a big deal.

The company would be better off scaling back on Hell in a Cell, making each time that cage is lowered even more significant.

Hall of Fame announcer Jim Ross reflected on calling the famous Mankind-Undertaker match from 1998. That remains for many the standard-bearer of that type of bout, a stunning battle that will never be forgotten. 

In an interview with Zach Linder of WWE.com, Ross said of the match: "It was a spectacle, it was an attraction, it was a train wreck, it was career-threatening, it was unpredictable. It was something I'd never seen before."

It will get harder and harder to achieve anything close to that if Hell in a Cell is an annual or—thanks to Sunday's PPV and Shane McMahon and Undertaker's clash at WrestleMania—something we see four times in the span of seven months. 

The audience eventually grows numb to the risks these wrestlers take. The appetite for brutality is more difficult to satiate.

Banks and Charlotte played daredevils and masochists on Sunday's PPV. They crashed through tables, clanged chairs on each other's flesh and shoved each other into the steel walls around them.

The women killed it in an instant classic, but in the aftermath of the show there have been some who felt it didn't go far enough. 

Anthony DiMoro of Forbes wrote that the bout "under-delivered." For some fans online, it was a Charlotte moonsault off the top of the cage or bust. 

As for the PPV's opener, NoDQ.com tweeted that Reigns vs. Rusev was average:

That word should never be used to describe a Hell in a Cell match, something WWE trumpets as a career-shortening war, a bout that leaves scars on the combatants' psyches.

But if one pulls off a magic trick often enough, the audience stops being wowed at some point. If WWE books three Hell in a Cell bouts for a single card, it shouldn't be surprised when fans don't fully invest in the first one.

Imagine if WWE let two, three years go by before unveiling the bout again. Imagine if only the most intense and brutal rivalries allowed enemies to gain entrance in the structure.

Imagine if the next time a warrior demanded to end a blood feud inside The Devil's Playground, it was because there was no other way to do so, not simply because the Hell in a Cell PPV was on its way.