Does the WWE really need another pay-per-view, just two weeks after the last one?  No!  Of course it doesn’t!  And the fact that only five matches have been announced for this show tends to suggest that it’s about as much of an afterthought to them as it is to us.

If they’ve got any sense, “Hell in a Cell” is a show that will be dropped from the 2012 calendar.  Quite aside from the fact that they need to cut back on pointless D-list PPVs, this one is a hangover from a couple of years ago when the company got the idea that it would be a really good idea if every show had a theme.  So, casting around through the company’s arsenal of established gimmick matches, they came up with a show headlined by “Hell in a Cell” matches.

The problem with this is twofold.

Firstly, Hell in a Cell is just a glorified cage match.  The difference, strictly, is that the cage is bigger (so that the area around the ring is also available for use) and that it has a roof (thus in theory eliminating the possibility of escape by climbing over the cage, though it’s remarkable how often that doesn’t seem to have worked out).  But fundamentally it’s just a cage match like any other.  Its reputation among fans rested, not on the inherent strength of the gimmick, but on the fact that the company used it sparingly, with restraint, and generally on matches that were good or at least memorable, or at least tied to the conclusion of a major storyline.  Two years of using the gimmick as a bolt-on to whatever happened to be headlining a minor pay-per-view in October has pretty much killed that aura.

Secondly, the gimmick doesn’t translate terribly well to the company’s current direction; it’s very difficult to present a match as especially brutal when the show is aiming for a PG rating, and quite aside from that, some of the early matches featured incredibly reckless stunts that the company would never permit today (and, with hindsight, shouldn’t have allowed at the time either, if only because it raised the bar to a level to which only the suicidal and the imminently painkiller-addicted could aspire).

A defanged Hell in a Cell match, without very careful booking to protect the gimmick, is just a glorified cage match, and nobody’s really that bothered about it.

Still, here’s what’s on:

1.  WWE Title, Hell in a Cell: John Cena v. Alberto Del Rio v. CM Punk.  Somewhat desperately, the company is pushing this as the first three-way Hell in a Cell match.  Which it is, but they’ve done more than three competitors several times before, so it’s hardly a major event.

The booking of Raw’s world title is currently something of a mess.  To recap, at Summerslam, CM Punk unified the two version of the WWE title, only to be immediately ambushed by Alberto Del Rio with his Money in the Bank title shot.  The company had been planning to have Del Rio as the champion for months, but kept pushing it back for various reasons, all of which rather undermined Del Rio’s momentum.  Del Rio defended against Cena at Night of Champions two weeks ago and, inexplicably, lost.  Now the company seems to be burning through all the outstanding rematches at once, by having Cena defend against both Del Rio and Punk.

This is going badly wrong.  Obviously Cena was going to get the title back at some point – he’s the biggest star on the Raw roster – but if Del Rio is meant to be a headliner, he desperately needed the credibility from a reasonably long run.  My guess would be that the WWE were simply panicking about ratings and decided to switch the title back and forth a few times, which is a very bad idea, but one that still appeals to them.  Given the way the company thinks, my bet is that they intend to go back to the original plan of having Del Rio as champion (not least because there’s an upcoming tour of his native Mexico, as I recall), and that he’ll probably beat Punk to win, possibly with some sort of face-saving outside interference.  Frankly, though, the match itself doesn’t really matter.  At this point they just need to put the title on somebody and stick with them for a while in order to reassert some stability.  In a sense Cena is the worst choice for that role because he has no fresh challengers.

The actual match should be fine within the confines of the gimmick.  Cena and Punk work well together, Del Rio’s perfectly okay.

2.  World Heavyweight Title, Hell in a Cell: Mark Henry v Randy Orton.  To widespread surprise, Mark Henry actually beat Randy Orton at Night of Champions to win the Smackdown title in what seemed to be the twilight of his career.  And not only did Henry win, he won cleanly and decisively, which suggests that the company’s actually serious about running with him for a while.

Mark Henry’s certainly a great character, and it’s not as though Smackdown has many other top heels to fall back on (given that Christian could use a break from the main events to freshen up).  The problem with him is that he still has a track record of producing largely mediocre matches – but I wonder whether his feat-of-strength stunts could actually be used to liven up a HiaC match even within the confines of a PG rating.  This might actually work.

The problem for the WWE is that Orton is a wrestler they generally want to protect, since he’s meant to be the star carrying the flagging Smackdown brand.  And since the HiaC format doesn’t easily allow for outside interference, nor for heel cheating (since virtually everything is legal to start with), it’s terribly difficult to have Henry win this match without simply beating Orton cleanly again.

Personally, though, I’d do it anyway.  Orton’s strong enough that he can take two losses from a challenger with momentum – and there’s enough novelty in Henry as champion that it would be folly to throw it away.  Admittedly, if Henry wins here, he kind of has to move on to another challenger for the next show, but they could probably get away with Sheamus.  In the meantime, Orton seems to have a possible feud lined up against Cody Rhodes which could keep him occupied for a couple of months.

Henry to win, then.  With careful planning around his strengths, the match could be decent, but I’m not expecting it to be anything more than average.

3.  Christian v Sheamus.  Smackdown’s secondary heel versus its secondary babyface.  (Oddly, considering that it’s the stronger brand, no undercard matches have been announced from Raw.  Perhaps they’re saving them for a more important show.)  There’s a serviceable if somewhat generic feud in place here, but basically, Christian has finally finished his long run of unsuccessful challenges for the title, and now he’s moving on to feud with Sheamus, a longtime heel who’s recently turned babyface with some success.

Sheamus ought to win this feud, though if they’re going a few months with it, it’s fine for Christian to cheat his way to victory in the first match.  But if Mark Henry retains the world title, then Sheamus pretty much has to win in order to line himself up as the next credible babyface challenger.  These two are both talented, so on paper it’s a good match.

4.  Sin Cara v Sin Cara.  A curious feud, as you might guess.  Sin Cara is a masked wrestler who was previously a big star in Mexico under the name Mistico (which the WWE doesn’t own).  He was signed in the hope of finding a replacement for Rey Mysterio in the role of small, high-flying masked guy.  Mysterio been around since the 90s and should really be looking to call it a day by this point.

Sin Cara/Mistico was widely regarded as one of the best wrestlers working in the Mexican style, but he’s not adapted very smoothly to the WWE style; nor does the roster include many wrestlers who really understand how best to work with him.  Nonetheless, through a combination of a decent build-up and some flashy moves, he’s got over to a degree.

In July, Sin Cara was taken off TV for several weeks.  In storyline, that was because of injuries; in real life, it was because he failed a drug test.  Amid general grumbling about whether he was working out in the role, and some irritation in the company about his decision to give an interview to a Mexican newspaper about his suspension (in which he implausibly claimed bafflement about the whole thing), there was some talk in the rumour mill that the company might get rid of him.

Then, with a week still to run on his 30-day suspension, Sin Cara showed up on an episode of Smackdown, but with a different wrestler under the mask – Jorge Arias, who was then working for the WWE’s Floria farm league under the name Hunico.  (You might also have seen him under the name Incognito.)  In a testimony to the power of the mask, despite gentle prompting from the announcers, most audiences did not seem to realise that Sin Cara was now a different person, even though he was now slightly taller, noticeably heavier, and doing different moves.  In due course, “Sin Cara” turned heel by randomly attacking Daniel Bryan after a match, and the original Sin Cara returned to feud with him.  This resulted in general confusion since, even when the two were standing next to one another, audiences seemed unsure which was the original.  This has now been addressed by having Sin Cara II switch to a black version of the costume and give a little speech in which he claimed to be taking revenge for the time Sin Cara stole his identity.

Strangely, there is a grain of truth to this, though the company hasn’t made any effort to explain it to viewers yet.  Both Sin Caras started their careers in Mexico at around the same time under the name Mistico; there is some dispute as to who used the name first, but what’s undoubtedly true is that Arias ended up having to change his ring name.  If you know this, then the Sin Cara storyline actually makes perfect sense.  To be fair, since the identity of Sin Cara II is currently supposed to be a mystery, it’s hard to see how the company could explain it at this stage.  Perhaps they’re planning to get to it in due course.

I would guess that the heel Sin Cara wins this match, since it’s far too early to end the feud.  We haven’t seen much of these two working together, but since Arias spent a good few years working in Mexico, they should at least have the potential to do a match that fully brings out Mistico’s strengths.

5.  Divas Title: Kelly Kelly v Beth Phoenix.  Another case of unfathomable booking.  This is Beth Phoenix’s third shot at the women’s title, even though she’s meant to be a dominant heel.  It’s possible that the company intended her to win at the last show but panicked on realising that she would be cheered by a hometown crowd, but frankly, they should have gone with it anyway – the WWE is oddly worried about hometown reactions undermining their storylines, when they’d probably be better off just exploiting them to make people look like bigger stars.

This match wasn’t great the last two times, and it probably won’t be much better now.  Phoenix surely has to win this time unless they’ve given up on the storyline.

Worth getting?  Well, of the five matches announced, three should at least be solid, and you never know, with enough smoke and mirrors, they might get an entertaining match out of Mark Henry.  But there’s going to be some real last minute filler to round out the show here.