Former WWE boss Vince McMahon once tried to spin a Spider-Man gimmick for Hell in a Cell.
On Chris Jericho's Talk is Jericho podcast, reported via Inside the Ropes, the former undisputed WWE champion and current ROH champion in AEW reflected on his Hell in the Cell match with Triple H at Judgment Day 2002 and McMahon's creative approach to them. During a production meeting before the event, a bizarre idea from the now-retired WWE CEO came straight out of his viewing of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film. "So we said, let’s make this match a bridge to where people don’t expect to have someone fall off every time," Jericho explained. "Because sooner or later, you can’t do that all the time, you know? So then we thought well why don’t we do the finish on top of the cage? Fascinatingly, the method by which the wrestlers were to ascend the structure involved Spider-Man web shooters.
WWE's Canceled Spider-Man Spot
Jericho continued, "And then think, well, maybe we can crawl up the inside? Vince said ‘Well, there’s not a hole in the top of the cage and how you going to crawl across?’ And then Vince goes ‘Why don’t you take your arms and shoot some web to the top of the cage and slide up there?’ Like what? Triple H goes ‘He went and saw Spider-Man last night.’ Can you imagine Vince McMahon at the movies? Imagine you’re at the movies and you see Vince sitting there. I remember once I asked him if he wanted to go to AC/DC with me at the garden. And he’s like [undecided] and I’m like, what if he says yes? He’s going to show up in a suit. What Is he going to do?"
McMahon's over-the-top idea was ultimately nixed since the wrestlers physically "couldn’t use a spider’s webs." The WWE championship match inside the cell went forward -- minus the Spider-Man gadgetry -- with Jericho and Triple H battling on top of the cell with barbed wire 2x4s. The Game went on to retain the title after hitting his Pedigree finisher on Y2J.
The first Hell in a Cell match was held at the Badd Blood PPV in 1997 between the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels; a contest that notably culminated with the debut of Kane. Since then, the match became a fan favorite and turned into a stand-alone PPV event starting in 2009. The cell created such iconic moments as Mick Foley taking a dangerous bump off the cage at the 1998 King of the Ring and the controversial Universal title match between Seth Rollins and "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt in 2019 that ended in a no-contest.
Source: Talk is Jericho via Inside the Ropes