Every time a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats offers predictions for all of the advertised matches on the card. This data can be used to calculate a simple predictability rating for any event.
Six different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place at Hell in a Cell (Sun., Sept. 16, 2018) from the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas. Staff members received credit for a correct prediction of the winner of any match, even if they were wrong about the context of that victory.
The Cageside Seats match preview articles for Hell in a Cell 2018 also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.
The Cageside Poll results for two matches were omitted. The results were discarded for the main event because the match ended in a no contest, but that voting option was not presented as a choice. In the case of New Day’s match, we made a mistake with the poll and allowed Cagesiders to keep voting on it well after the match was finished, so it’s not appropriate to use those results for assessing predictability.
The following chart contains the prediction results for every match. The leftmost column includes the full match list. Below each staff member's name, the number "1" is a correct prediction, the number "0" is an incorrect prediction, and empty spaces indicate that no prediction data was available. The rightmost column contains the overall predictability rating for every match, and the very last row shows the overall accuracy of each individual staff member.
The line for Orton’s match can be interpreted as follows: “6 out of 7 predictions for Orton’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 85.7%.”
Staff Predictions for Hell in a Cell 2018
Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
New Day vs. Rusev Day | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 83.3 | |
Hardy vs. Orton | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 85.7 |
Flair vs. Lynch | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 42.9 |
Ziggler & McIntyre vs. Ambrose & Rollins | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 85.7 |
Styles vs. Joe | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 71.4 |
Brie & Bryan vs. Miz & Maryse | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28.6 |
Rousey vs. Bliss | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
Reigns vs. Strowman | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | |
Total | 62.5 | 75.0 | 62.5 | 62.5 | 62.5 | 37.5 | 66.7 | 61.1 |
These numbers add up to 33 correct predictions and 21 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Hell in a Cell 2018 is 61.1%.
The staff of Cageside Seats completely whiffed on predicting a No Contest for the main event Hell in a Cell match. We probably should have been a bit more suspicious considering that Vince McMahon is hell-bent on keeping Braun Strowman’s shoulders off the mat.
This increases the overall predictability rating for 2018 WWE PPVs from 57.1% up to 57.4% (356 correct versus 264 incorrect predictions). For comparison's sake, the overall predictability rating for 2015 WWE PPVs was 63.4%, in 2016 it was 61.1%, and in 2017 it was 61.6%.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a decent night with predicting the winners at Hell in a Cell 2018. How did you fare, Cagesiders?