By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Specialist

"Know your body's made to move, you feel it in your guts
Rock 'n' roll ain't worth the name if it don't make you strut"

-"Overkill" by Motorhead

-After tonight, one wonders what the layout for the next WWE Hell in the Cell DVD will look like. After all, their recent HITC collection promptly features bleeding wrestlers and deals with themes of hell, torture and barbaric human nature. Their next one will probably feature theatre geeks in black spandex moving in interpretative dance and hitting each other with whiffle bats. Welcome to the new Hell in the Cell. Ah, WWE gimmick PPVs. They're so awful. Awww.

We all had uneasy feelings about "PG" WWE's treatment of the HITC concept. As the PPV started, fans were treated of a video recap of the HITC matches that even nuns would consider too tame. We should have seen it coming. Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for the "original" HITC match concept was those capitalist green Ninja turtle bastards dancing and jiving, urging the viewers at home to buy their Wii game. Really, that was WWE in 2009: A "Hell in the Cell" banner on top while four ninja turtles get their boogie on. Surreal.



-I was perplexed into why exactly the PPV was starting off with an Undertaker-Punk video recap. Why start off with a video recap...oh. It's because Undertaker vs. Punk is the curtain jerker. Anybody who advocates that having three HITC matches in one PPV as a "smart choice" should take an Abyss glass shards bump.

The Undertaker vs. Punk match accomplished one main goal: It tried to re-educate the audience into what to expect from a HITC match. The match itself was sad. As an older fan, I was nonplussed. Sorry, but loads of getting thrown into a "steel chain" fence doesn't do it for me. Maybe because the fence seems to be flimsy. Or that it reminds me of a baseball fence down by your local park. It doesn't at all scream brutal.

-A lot of people are ticked off that none of the HITC matches featured blood (although apparently Cena vs. Orton was supposed to feature a crimson mask). I can understand that slicing your forehead to get blood is crazy and barbaric. So I suggest that WWE invest in "fake blood". Or go the Mick Foley route and use grape jelly.

So Undertaker gets the gold. Yawn. After the Undertaker vs. Punk weak sauce, WWE pumps up the "Bragging Rights" PPV. Good luck with that. After that first match, can't say that I'm too eager to give WWE more money for more hokey "PG" kiddie krap. As of right now, they've got to give fans something intriguing with Undertaker's reign. I look at Taker and Sting and I think of bones grinding on bones. It's painful just watching these nearly-crippled guys. I can't imagine how they must feel. As for Punk? Damn, son. That Jeff Hardy angle was gold to you. Now you're just Stevie Richards in the "Right To Censor" role.

Mr. Ziggles vs. Mr. Morrison was a bit rough but the finish was pretty cool. I think I even heard a faint "This is awesome" chant by a section from the crowd. I believed that Mr. Ziggles would have been given the victory nod if not for heels Randy Orton and the JeriShow winning in their matches.

-The camera zooms into Ralph, Don, Mikey and Leo, the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Where's Robocop?



-Mickie sure gave Alica "Twiggy" Fox a nasty DDT. Mickie retains her sugar pony championship.

-This PPV felt to have only 2 hours worth of meaningful content. Hey look, a "don't try this at home" PSA. Fine. But the "WWE tag team" DVD, which came out in July? Why not a teaser about Pittsburgh Steeler's QB Big Ben Burger on Raw? Or a quick bit on Cena and Orton preparing for their match? Instead they gave R-Truth airtime, and he said a whole lot of nothing. Watching WWE nowadays, it just feels like they're all burned out and running on fumes.

-The best match of the night for me was JeriShow vs. Batista and Rey. You had a returning Mysterio, but more importantly, the tease that Batista and Rey would become tag team champions. I wanted Batista and Rey to become champions. I found myself struggling caring when Undertaker and Orton won in their championship matches.

More importantly, unlike the way-too-long DX heavy-storyline angle match, the tag team match was nice, concise, and it felt right.

-Orton vs. Cena wasn't a wrestling match. No, it was "performance art". Yes, there were some nice teases of Orton DDTing Cena onto steel steps. But that's all it was: teases. WWE did go into their bag of tricks into making the HITC matches "feel" violent without resorting to buckets of blood or barbwire, but that only goes so far. If you grew up on the original HITC matches, you couldn't help but feel that WWE tonight was PGing up the HITC concept. Which has its merits. Let's create a safe environment and tell a story without butchering our guys.

But let's face it: The original HITC concept was killed tonight.

Orton vs. Cena relied a lot on performance art. If this match is not the end of the feud, it should be. These guys are just going through the motions now. I did like the performance art Orton did at the end. His arm slowly, slowly creeping around Cena's neck. Orton's eyes lighting up in delight as he choked out Cena. The thing was kind of a weird S & M, bondage done in some sleazy art theatre.

-I felt that the PPV execution was severely flawed. After the Orton-Cena match, I was burned out. McTintrye-Truth and Miz vs. The Dumbest Man in Professional Wrestling vs. Kofi never had a chance. Plus I couldn't shake the feeling that I had already seen all of the main championship matches after the Orton-Cena bit, and I was waiting for a ... tag team match for a main event. Oh right. Gotta wait for DX.

Quick side note: Don't know what to make of it when the Miz steals Conan O Brien material and pretends like it his own. Kind of liked it better when he made up his own material. Quirky too was that I noticed that they announced that Kofi's hometown was in Africa "but he was heavily influenced by Jamaica and plus we really can't make an African character work in wrestling so he's a fake Jamaican". Oh-kay...

-Orton's talking to Legacy, and Legacy is giving their "we're giving our cocky speech so that means we're gonna lose tonight". Orton talks about how you don't walk away the same from a HITC match. Or water balloon fights. Can't tell which one is which.

-Loved Legacy beating up on Grandpa HBK while Triple H took a snooze on top of the ramp (Quick note: Doesn't it seem like HBK was brought back to be the punching bag of DX? And doesn't it also seem like Triple H hardly wrestles anymore in his matches?). This was heavy-duty depressing "heels are destroying my favorite babyface" goodness. Legacy has locked HBK inside the Cell and Trips can't get in.

But the one moment of the match in which I felt it lost all of its mojo was Triple H returning with a ... bolt cutter. A f'n bolt cutter.

When I buy a wrestling PPV, I want to see something cool. I can tolerate the idea that Trips didn't come back with a Sherman tank and blow the cell apart. That's absurd. WWE is too broke right now to spruce up for Trips to come back in a truck and rip the door apart. That's understandable. And the lock was on the inside of the cage, so the sledgehammer thing wouldn't work.

But a f'n bolt cutter was the only option? Holy crap, that's lame. Throw on a tape during the Attitude era and you'll get monster trucks exploding on top of the Empire State building. Come on, guys. I paid to see something awesome. HITC matches were once built up to be anarchy and pure insanity. Now apparently they are built up as WWE's little movies.

Nice of Trips to show urgency too. Yep, even with HBK vs. Legacy, DX has got this thing in the bag.

When Triple H came into the ring, everybody in Newark knew that Legacy's playtime was over. When Trips came in, Legacy seemed to shriveled up and prepare themselves to get owned. It was academic at the point. Even HBK, once thought to have a broken back after Legacy was done with him, looked as right as rain. As a wrestling fan I know that I have to suspend my belief, but come on. They sure do love Ted though. It's a "wait and see" approach with Legacy, but it looks like big things are in store for Ted...I mean, Ted and Cody. Right? Right.

-"Story-telling" is great in wrestling and all, but I felt tonight that WWE relied too heavy on story-telling in their HITC matches. And they had too. They couldn't go to the blood-and-guts bit that was a staple of HITC matches. So they went heavy with their wrestlers acting in their own movies. As a result, I don't remember the last time I was so bored watching a PPV. The PPV had its moments, but the PPV dragged its feet largely. The execution was off, and the PPV never really had a good flow to it.

Simply put, if WWE decides to do Hell in the Cell PPV for 2010, I won't be buying.

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