In early 2009, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) ran a poll on their official website in which fans could vote on the name of that year's October pay-per-view (PPV), which would replace the previously annual October PPV, No Mercy. Hell in a Cell was chosen over No Escape, Locked Up, and Rage in a Cage. The 2009 Hell in a Cell PPV, which was held on October 4 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, thus became the inaugural event of a now annual gimmick pay-per-view for WWE, generally held in October—the only exception being the September 2018 event and June 2021 event. The concept of the show came from WWE's established Hell in a Cell match, in which competitors fight inside a 20-foot-high roofed cell structure surrounding the ring and ringside area. The main event match of the card was contested under the Hell in a Cell stipulation. The show featured wrestlers from the Raw, SmackDown, and ECW brands; it was the only Hell in a Cell to feature ECW as the brand disbanded in February 2010.