6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Bad Blood (Results & Review)
Punk and McIntyre settle their (literal) blood feud, Dom hangs around, and an electrifying return.
The era of WWE PLE super-cards is well in the rear-view mirror, leaving shows like Saturday’s Bad Blood as the new normal: a five-match show that featured a Match of the Year contender, an angle-heavy main event, and three middling matches that could easily have taken place on free television.
That’s not to say that Bad Blood was a bad or uneventful show; far from it. Plenty happened here, even in those less-than-stellar matches, to advance stories. But the bar has been consistently raised across wrestling in recent years, and delivering average matches – or worse, sloppy ones – on Premium Live Events is simply something that can’t be overlooked or brushed aside.
Still, WWE delivered probably its best Hell in a Cell match in years with Drew McIntyre and CM Punk leaving it all – including their blood – in the ring, restoring (for one night, at least) the true magnitude of what a cell match should encompass. This battle, along with the main event, made Bad Blood worth a view and worth an overall thumbs up.
However, WWE’s continued bizarre obsession with trying to artificially make its Saudi shows more important via sportswashing took center stage once again, dragging the PLE to a screeching halt right in the middle of the event.
Thankfully the closing 10 minutes delivered a couple of huge surprises to wash any bad taste out of fans’ mouths.
Let’s get to it…