Sasha Banks def. Bayley to become the new SmackDown Women's Champion (Hell in a Cell Match)
The third time inside Hell in a Cell was the charm for Sasha Banks, who overcame ex-best friend Bayley at WWE Hell in a Cell to win the SmackDown Women's Championship for the first time.
Bayley arrived with her trusty steel chair, but the most experienced Women's Hell in a Cell competitor in WWE history pulled it from her grasp and tossed it out of the lowering cell, leaving The Role Model without her equalizer.
The champion resorted to a different weapon, opting for a Kendo stick, though Banks avoided it, and it marked the first of many attacks with foreign objects. The Boss wedged Bayleyagainst the cell with a table, scaling it before delivering a spectacular Meteora. Banks was far from finished, as she deployed unique offense and later sent Bayley face-first into the chain link with a headscissors.
But Bayley showed she could administer pain in creative ways as well, sending Banks through a Kendo stick and into the steel steps with a devastating drop toe-hold before slingshotting Banks into two more Kendo sticks.
Sasha rallied to hit a sunset flip powerbomb into the cell, but Bayley later tore a page out of her opponent's playbook, hitting her own sunset flip to propel Banks back-first into a chair.
Bayley wasn't satisfied with merely brutalizing Banks, preferring to humiliate her as well. She covered her in spray paint but the time it took to execute proved costly, as Bayley missed a huge diving attack with a chair, leaving her vulnerable for Banks to hit a Bayley-to-Belly — Bayley's own signature maneuver — on a ladder.
Though The Role Model recovered the same chair she originally brought to the ring, it proved to be her downfall. Banks wrapped it around Bayley for a chair-assisted Bank Statement, ruthlessly stomping on her hand just as she did at TakeOver Brooklyn until Bayley tapped out.
And with the final bell, Banks ended the longest SmackDown Women's Title reign in history at 380 days and realized an unparalleled moment of catharsis all in the same moment, snapping her previous 0-for-2 mark inside Hell in a Cell in the most satisfying of fashions.
