It’s been an eventful week for WWE with the season premiere of Raw, the beginning of the Wednesday Night Wars between AEW and NXT, and the eventful kickoff of Smackdown on Fox. It’s been such an eventful week that today’s Hell In A Cell was easy for fans and maybe even for the company to overlook. While this week’s Raw set up an angle for the company’s next event in Saudi Arabia (and this week’s Smackdown may have as well), WWE had only announced four Hell In A Cell matches by the time October 6 rolled around.
That all changed about an hour before the start of the one-hour HIAC kickoff show. WWE announced that WWE Now Live “reported” four additional matches and one new stipulation for the PPV. Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns vs. Erick Rowan and Luke Harper is now a Tornado Tag Team match. The new additions to the card are Natalya vs. Lacey Evans on the pre-show, Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross defending their Women’s Tag Team Championship against the Kabuki Warriors (Asuka and Kairi Sane), Chad Gable vs. Baron Corbin, and the O.C. (AJ Styles, Karl Anderson, and Luke Gallows) vs. The Viking Raiders and a mystery partner.
Adding these new matches to the previously-announced Raw Women’s Championship match between Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch (c), Smackdown Women’s Championship match between Charlotte Flair and Bayley (c), Universal Championship match between Seth Rollins (c) and “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt, and the Reigns-Bryan vs. Bludgeon Bros tag match turns HIAC from an unusually short PPV to a very reasonably-sized one with seven main card matches and one on the pre-show.
