Brad Maddox Hell in a Cell storyline reportedly booked on the fly with no WWE plan to explain it

CM Punk defending his WWE championship against The Ryback at Hell in a Cell this past weekend brought with it a million questions, mostly regarding how the company would solve its last second booking crisis with John Cena injured.

These things happen when you book yourself into a corner and have to come up with a creative finish to a pay-per-view (PPV) show with thousands of potentially pissed off customers instead of carefully planning ahead.

What was ultimately chosen was an angle with a rogue referee, Brad Maddox, low blowing Ryback just as he was about to deliver his finisher to win the title and then quick counting him down once Punk went for the pin. Ryback then went on a rampage to keep his heat by beating the ever loving shit out of everyone involved.

The finish deserved praise because it was WWE actually making the best of a bad situation.

This even led to intrigue on how WWE would handle the situation on Monday Night Raw the next night. Unfortunately, the company went right back to its disappointing ways, basically blowing off the storyline altogether, explaining away Maddox's absence by simply saying he was hurt and nowhere to be found.

And what's the explanation for that? According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, no long term plans were in place and they're just figuring it all out on the fly:

"There was a plans change. They didn't, you know like a lot of things, as you can tell from (Raw), they had a lot of ideas, they did a lot of things and they had no idea where they were going after them. I think that was one of them. Brad Maddox was the most obvious one. I asked what's the story on Brad Maddox and it was just like, it's not like they planned anything. It was just an idea that they came up with at the last, not necessarily at the last minute, but it was the idea that Vince (McMahon) picked at the last minute. There were a lot of ideas that were talked about. They can do something with Brad Maddox or they can't but right now they haven't figured out what that's going to be. We'll see."

We've heard it constantly from Chris Jericho and most recently, we heard it from WWE Champion CM Punk himself at a Q&A session.

"Trust me when I tell you, they have no idea what they're doing."

Indeed.