One of the topics discussed on social media following WWE Bad Blood was the amount of blood in Drew McIntyre’s Hell in a Cell match with CM Punk. Blood was used frequently on WWE TV in the 1990s and early 2000s, but for the most part, Vince McMahon has been opposed to it, and in the last 20 years or so, there has been an edict out for wrestlers not to blade themselves, and anyone who does so faces a large fine.
With Vince McMahon gone and Triple H a fan of old-school wrestling, blading is now permitted only for “key matches and angles,” according to Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
The toolbox spot at Bad Blood caused McIntyre to bleed, but this was not the plan. Meltzer reported in the Observer that Punk was expected to bleed during the match but not McIntyre. In either case, expect to see blood in matches whenever it is deemed appropriate for the storyline/match.
The blade edict is just one of the many changes to WWE since Triple H took over. Expect even more changes when Raw launches on Netflix in January.
