Drew McIntyre & Dolph Ziggler def. Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins (Tag Team Title Match)
It’s not every day that The Shield walk into a fight and don’t come out the winner, so it says a lot about Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre that they held off two of The Hounds of Justice — Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins — to retain the Raw Tag Team Championship … even if they resorted to some rule-breaking when things truly got dire.

Ambrose & Rollins came into the match looking to prove themselves as workhorses, and while they certainly worked hard, the champions worked smart, staying juuust on the right side of the rulebook while employing a timely array of distractions and interference to stop the challengers from reaching full steam. When Ambrose chopped McIntyre down to his knees, Ziggler jumped the ropes to start a commotion that helped the Scotsman escape. When Rollins had Ziggler lined up for a suicide dive, McIntyre tripped him up in the ropes, and The Showoff pounced with a DDT.

As the match began to go long, strategy seemed to go out the window, with Ambrose throwing hands at anything that moved (he had eyes for McIntyre in particular) and Rollins answering Ziggler’s counters with counters of his own in an athletic showcase. Eventually, the champions managed to work their way back to their initial game plan, though they were far less subtle this time around as McIntyre blatantly rushed the ring and struck in the middle of a Rollins sequence, obliterating The Kingslayer with the Claymore while he was hoisting Ziggler up for the Falcon Arrow. The Showoff fell on top of the KO’d Rollins to earn the three-count, ending a bout that may well have remade the Tag Team division as Corey Graves said — yes, it was that good. But even if the game has changed, the titles stay where they are.

Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose Attack Drew & Dolph during the World Title Match
According to Braun Strowman, all Mick Foley had to do as the Special Guest Referee was count the pinfall on Universal Champion Roman Reigns. As it turned out, the conclusion to the main event of WWE Hell in a Cell wasn’t so simple, as the arrival of several Superstars, including Brock Lesnar, brought the bout to an unprecedented ending: A no contest.

Even for the notoriously anything-goes Cell, which just that night had played host to borderline torture from Randy Orton, the Reigns-Strowman bout was shaping up to be particularly lawless. Strowman was so sure he’d win the bout — which doubled as his Money in the Bank cash-in — that he snatched the Universal Title out of Reigns’ hands just before the bell. The Monster Among Men certainly backed up his bravado, though, beating The Big Dog about the crimson structure with gleeful abandon and kicking out of every Spear and Superman Punch thrown his way — and there were a few. As he said to Reigns himself, “your boys can’t help you.”

Except, maybe they could. When Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre — Strowman’s “Dogs of War” — attempted to force their way into the Cell, Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins ran interference and initiated a mad scramble around and atop the Hell in a Cell. All four Superstars threw fists and swung kendo sticks with reckless abandon atop the harrowing structure, and the brawl ended with McIntyre and Ambrose laid out atop the cage, while Rollins and Ziggler tumbled off the side through the commentary table. Then, Brock Lesnar’s music hit, and what had been a figurative hell turned literal very fast.

The Beast Incarnate, who lost the Universal Title to Reigns at SummerSlam (and had been denied the rematch he wanted at WWE Hell in a Cell), kicked open the door and attacked both champion and challenger, reducing a chunk of a table to splinters across their backs before laying both out with F-5s — Reigns landing on top of Strowman. Paul Heyman, meanwhile, incapacitated Foley with what looked like pepper spray to the face, leaving the replacement ref no choice but to call off the match. So Strowman’s cash-in fails. Reigns’ big defense ends in ruins. And Brock Lesnar is ready and willing to unleash hell on anyone who’s anywhere near the Universal Championship.

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