McGuire’s Mondays: Over-thinking WWE Bad Blood

A Premium Live Event on a Saturday means a whole Sunday is left to think about everything that happened on said Saturday. That’s right, friends. It’s time for Overthink Mondays – Bad Blood Edition.

HELL. IN A CELL

A few weeks ago, I half-complained about the steel cage match between Swerve Strickland and Hangman Page that took place at AEW’s All Out in Chicago. I wondered if I was becoming a prude, if pro wrestling had finally gone too far, if the type of violence Swerve and Page depicted was necessary. I say that here only in the spirit of fairness. How can one blood bath be acceptable while the other is ridiculed? A blood bath is a blood bath is a blood bath.

So, it would be somewhat hypocritical to praise CM Punk and Drew McIntyre’s Hell In A Cell match on Saturday night (even if they did decide against the hypodermic needle, unlike their steel cage brethren). What is fair, however, is to note how much of a punch it packs to see something like this come from the WWE corner of the world in this day and age.

It’s a testament picking your spots. Use blood sparingly, it means something. Use violence sparingly, it means something. Use cages sparingly, it means something. It’s fun to have these things mean something.

As I think it was CM Punk who put it in one of his recent interviews, they wanted to have a match that needed a cell and not a cell that needed a match. Mission accomplished. You can argue these two have been building to this for nearly a year if you think back to when Punk returned last November and McIntyre stormed to the back in disgust. Since then, McIntyre and Punk have managed to keep things hot even as Punk injured his arm and had to stay on the sidelines for months.

As such, Punk and McIntyre need to be commended for making something like this happen in WWE. For so long, the product has been watered down, sporadic, unreliable. We all know that’s changed since Paul Levesque took the helm, but the Punk/McIntyre program all but solidified the fact that change is here to stay in WWE. Outside of Bloodline shenanigans, nobody has been able to pull off a heated rivalry like this for such an extended period of time in that company for decades. And for the first time in what feels like centuries, a Hell In A Cell match actually lived up to its purpose.

Attention must be paid. And credit must be given.

RUN THE JEWELS

And while all of that was well and good … the following is not. Placed smack in the middle of Saturday’s show was a segment with Levesque in the ring introducing a new title that will be won at Crown Jewel and feature “the top champions” in WWE. To which I say …

Excuse me?

First, the logistics. I don’t understand them. Is this a belt that will only be defended at Crown Jewels? Will this be linear? If so, and, say, Gunther wins whatever this match is this time around, but Gunther is not a champion by the time the next Crown Jewel comes around, will he still be called upon to defend this thing even if he isn’t a top champion at that time? Does this become, ostensibly, the most prestigious belt in WWE? How do you beat one of your top champions and have them come back to remain champion-like on Monday?

I hate this. I understand that WWE/TKO/All The Aasshats are slaves to money, but my God, what, exactly, is that company getting by going to Saudi Arabia a couple times a year? We all understood it was a boatload of cash, but it feels like the Crown Prince is the one driving the bus each time WWE books a show over there. There is always a gimmick, always some type of “We are establishing the best wrestler in the world right now” type of match that is quickly dispatched once the show returns to the States. There have been tournaments, Greatest Royal Rumbles, the list goes on.

And now this. I’m curious to see how the creative minds work around making one of their top champions look lesser than, but I’m willing to reserve judgment until I see the finished product. No, wait. Check that. I’m not reserving anything. This sucks. And at some point, WWE needs to tell those powerbrokers over there that enough is enough.

ADAPT OR DIE

And WWE isn’t dying. The post-show made-to-go-viral angle between Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens was brilliant in so many ways. But you knew that. Instead of rehashing all the reasons why it was brilliant, let’s take a second to consider what this might mean moving forward. Or, at the very least, what doors might be open now that a pro wrestling company isn’t beholden to reserving major story developments for their time on traditional television screens.

Social media promos have been the norm in most every pro wrestling company in the past handful of years. What hasn’t yet become the norm, though, is extending possibilities for viewership growth across untraditional platforms. In a lot of ways, doing something like this was ballsy if only for how much of a dud social-specific programming has been for WWE. Think back to Facebook and the Mixed-Match Challenge. Think about the current day and how little WWE Speed matters to anyone who likes WWE, Twitter (X) or, well, speed, I guess. Intentional crossovers into the viral world haven’t always worked out well in the pro wrestling space.

The Kevin Owens heel turn might be the first step towards changing that. If nothing else, it might have cracked the code for how companies can maximize these forward-thinking tools in ways traditional fans don’t expect. And how is that code cracked? Reality. The thing about the KO/Cody video is that it simply feels real. There isn’t a camera crew around. There’s no announcement attached to it. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you really were catching two co-workers having a disagreement in a parking lot after a day at work.

That, I think, is going to be key to anyone who wants to try something similar in the future. No more faceless voices asking questions off-camera to sweaty wrestlers who are walking the halls of an arena after their match. Figure out ways to make the news interactive and have onlookers be the ones to disseminate the message. The more pro wrestling can get this right, the more it’ll be ahead of its entertainment industry peers. And after what happened between Cody and KO outside of Cody’s bus on Saturday night, it’s safe to say that it’s already out in front of a lot of its contemporaries.

BLOODLINE RULES

It’s good to have Roman Reigns and The Rock back in the fold. Now that they’re here, though, let’s take a first-thought/best-thought look at how the Bloodline (and, for that matter, WWE) fared after those two disappeared following WrestleMania 40. First, the bad. Smackdown suffered. A lot. The star power simply hasn’t been there on Friday nights and Cody, try as everyone involved might, hasn’t been able to single-handedly carry the brand or show as his stories have become formulaic and too predictable. In the meantime, Raw has emerged as the WWE Show Du Jour each week.

Next, the good. It’s easy to dismiss Solo Sikoa’s version of The Bloodline as second-rate (because, well, it is), but someone needs to say the quiet part out loud: He’s done a very good job taking such a heavy opportunity and making something of it for both him and those around him. No, he’s not The Rock or Roman Reigns, but who is? This guy was tasked with stepping into a role that featured gigantic shoes typically reserved for legends and icons. And, like it or not, he didn’t fall on his face.

The additions of Tonga Loa, Tama Tonga and especially Jacob Fatu certainly helped, but it takes a village and considering that it’s been about six months without Rock or Reigns (save for a SummerSlam return and a TV spot here and there for Reigns), you have to give credit where it’s due, and where it’s due is within the evolution of Solo Sikoa, a guy who very easily could still just be your NXT North American Champion.

The question now will be the most important thing in all of wrestling: How can everyone involved follow up on the work everyone put in over the summer to get this guy to the next level? Will The Rock and Roman Reigns overshadow the young fella too much or will Sikoa be able to hold his ground under the biggest lights the business has to offer? Here’s hoping for the latter.

PASSING JUDGMENT

I think we’re just about done with the Judgment Day, don’t you? Ripley and Priest were always going to be the breakout stars of the group, and to that end, things have worked out perfectly. But save for Rhea inevitably regaining a title she never lost, why keep either Priest or Ripley tethered to that faction any longer? Liv and Dom don’t need Finn Balor or JD McDonagh or Carlito in order for them to keep their spots as the Main Attraction Couple on WWE programming. Dom, it feels, will never not be over, so they don’t need a merry band of loser misfits (my specific apologies go to Finn Balor because never did I think he’d be lumped in with a merry band of loser misfits, but here we are) in order to keep their heat.

In the meantime, what’s the point? I actually think McDonagh and Balor could be an interesting full-time tag-team as anything other than representatives of the Judgment Day, so there’s an option. Carlito has wrestled a total of something like three times since returning to the WWE, so he’s a non-starter. And now that Raquel Rodriguez is back, it’d be more intriguing to have her serve as the Diesel to Liv and Dom’s Shawn Michaels rather than have her get lost in the Judgment Day shuffle.

It’s time. Over-thinking or not. It’s time for the Judgment Day to meet its fate.