Outside and inside of Golden One Center in Sacramento, CA. Home of the NBA Kings, concerts, pro wrestling (WWE and AEW).
This post, Looking Back, is the first of a series of wrestling memories. It is to share with the wrestling fans everywhere on some past shows attended. There's no particular order but wanted to share this one. This fan has talked about it with several fans recently. The photos above share a small part of the story!
A number of wrestling fans will remember this event. It was 6 October 2019. The pro wrestling show was called WWE Hell In A Cell. The PLE took place at the Golden One Center in Sacramento, about 135km from where this fan lives.
WWE seemed to be struggling a little in popularity. A new promotion in All Elite Wrestling was nine months old. Also, storyline creativity seemed to be fading other than The Fiend. It was my first PLE live since Wrestlemania 31 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara (29 March 2015).
The card appeared to be a good one with four title matches out of eight on the show. Here are the results with my thoughts following all eight.
First off, it was a solid crowd but not a capacity one. You could actually buy a ticket the day of the show.
It appeared after the fourth match of the show, HIAC lost a little luster. The Six Man tag match was okay but it really dropped in popularity with the fans afterwards.
The Golden One Center crowd started chanting "AEW" by this time, and am sure that the performers could hear it. I've never watched it on video, but am sure that Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler and Corey Graves were probably feeling the heat.
The most surprising match of the night, on the positive side, was the one between Randy Orton and Ali. Both worked very well together. Even Orton appreciated post match how Ali responded.
The most disappointing match? You guessed it - The Main Event. The Universal Title match between Seth Rollins and the champion, The Fiend Bray Wyatt was announced as a No Disqualification match to those attended. That was based on past history during 2019.
To this day, many fans will never understand why the referee ended up calling it a NO CONTEST! Yes, there were chairs placed by Rollins on top of The Fiend. But what was the referee doing other than just looking? It appeared that the panic button set in as he waved it off meaning no contest.
It is very rare for a match like this ends this way. I've seen live matches in my lifetime that are won or lost by DQ. This fan saw DQs back in The Territory Era. This one was totally new, and to a lot of people.
Fans were upset with the outcome as well as the show itself. There were louder shouts of AEW. There was even a chair thrown in disgust probably after the show went off the air.
This fan wouldn't go as far as to see that it was WWE's worst PLE ever. However, I've seen five or six PLE's combined with different promotions in my lifetime. This one was definitely the worst!
The ride back to San Francisco was an empty one.
For those that would like to see the final match between Seth "Freakin" Rollins and Bray Wyatt, please click the link below. Thank you.
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