What we really want to know is why Vince McMahon reportedly made a last minute decision to run Charlotte Flair’s record in pay-per-view (PPV) singles matches to 14 - 0 by having her defeat Sasha Banks this past Sunday, Oct. 30 at Hell in a Cell in Boston.
In the meantime, we’re going to have to settle for some knowledge - via Charlotte’s father, the Nature Boy Ric Flair - that there were also changed the match itself.
Naitch was on Busted Open Radio on SiriusXM on Monday, and told hosts Dave LaGreca and Doug Mortman:
They took two huge spots out of the match, during the match, because they were afraid Sasha was going to get hurt. If the original plan had been, there were two things and I don't want to say what they were, but you can only imagine. One of them involved a moonsault.
This is interesting - partly because of how much is still open for interpretation. For the changes to be made during the bout itself, they needed to come from whoever was calling the match, and/or from someone communicating with the official via his earpiece.
An obvious place to wonder about changes was the controversial finish, which felt impromptu after table failed to break under Sasha’s weight even after she landed on it twice. That doesn’t seem like a place for a moonsault, which might have been used when the table the women placed on the floor seemed to break before they thought it would. But that doesn’t seem to be a change which you’d make with the sole purpse of preserving Banks’ health.
Flair is a lifelong worker who has an incentive to tell a version of the tale that favors one of the performers involved, so he’s probably not going to tell a tale that doesn’t make Charlotte sound like a complete professional.
Whatever your interpretation, it seems like we’ll keep talking about the history making encounter between Banks and Flair in Boston - and not just because of the firsts they achieved.