There have been various rumors and reports that Triple H may be doing away with events like Hell in a Cell, instead returning them to special matches that pop up when appropriate and/or as part of bigger events. When asked about this himself at the Survivor Series: War Games post-show press conference, he had this to say:
“I think there’s a lot of feeling that Hell in the Cell is one of those things that is a giant blow off. If you’re calling somebody out at the end of something you can challenge them to Hell in the Cell. I hear this speculation among fans a lot, and all of you as well, about Hell in the Cell, Money in the Bank, Elimination Chamber, maybe those things should all go away. Some of that I hear. Hell in the Cell, I hear it. I had a highlight of my career in Foley and I calling each other out in Hell in the Cell.
“But then when you get into… no one is ever going to challenge somebody going like ‘that’s it, I’m tired of you, I challenge you to an Elimination Chamber with five other guys.’ It doesn’t work, right? Same thing like ‘that does it, I challenge you to Money in the Bank!’ Right? I feel like those… there’s a difference there. I feel like we have to reevaluate all of that.
“I think we have to look at that. It’s really looking at the overall calendar and saying what is the best place to put this? What is the best way to entertain our fans and what makes the most sense one after the other? It’s really no different than when you look at a show and you say ‘okay, this match has to deliver.’ Yeah but it can’t take away from the rest of the show because it’s the whole show. But then it’s the whole arcing story of what we’re doing right now, and then it’s that whole year of what we put out all together. There are so many layers of what we do that you gotta keep in mind all of those, and we’ll look at them going forward.
“So it’s up in the air but I think it’s something that we think about on a regular basis.”
I, personally, am an advocate for doing away with centering an entire pay-per-view around the idea of doing multiple Elimination Chamber matches, as I laid out here. And while I understand where Triple H is coming from in the sense that a wrestler can’t challenge another to a match like that, we quite literally just saw an expertly told story involving an entire group that played out beautifully in a War Games match, one you also can’t get to by having one wrestler challenge the other.
There are times it makes sense to work it in, and I think it’s just about making sure it’s right for the story instead of trying to force it because it’s simply the date coming up on the calendar.
Either way, Triple H is showing all the time he can be trusted with such things.
