Look away if you must, for whatever reason, but the WWE is once again a bloodsport — at least to some degree. In the years that followed the famed Attitude Era, Vince McMahon opted to pivot completely to a PG-13 format that banned foul language and blood from being shown in broadcasts with the goal of reeling in more sponsorships and young fans.
The Rock took that edict out back and shot it in the face, though.
When “The Final Boss” launched his full heel turn in the feud between The [original] Bloodline and “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes heading into Wrestlemania 40, he intentionally lobbed plenty of F-bombs mixed in with timely S-words and the occasional MFer.
And then came a rather visceral beatdown of Rhodes outside of an arena at the hands of The Rock that saw Rhodes drenched in not only torrential rain, but also a hell of a lot of blood that left his face painted like a mural of violence.
"It’s very fun to see,” said the WWE [Universal] Champion, one day prior to successfully defending his title against “The Phenomenal A.J. Styles” in a match that saw Rhodes bleeding early.
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It looked like the WWF for a moment, only it wasn’t just a moment, because Paul “Triple H” Levesque has continued to let that fur fly in the post-McMahon era and Rhodes, the babiest of babyfaces right now, has no problem with it whatsoever.
If anything, he is cheering it on.
“Blood is part of sports entertainment, part of pro wrestling,” Rhodes continued in an interview with The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast. “It’s, in a weird way, I don’t mean to sound toxic at all, it’s nice to see it celebrated in the packaging and in this moment.”
What it does is harken back to the bloodied matches that took place during the Golden Age of wrestling, and especially with other promotions that took bloody bouts to new heights — such as ECW — followed by a renewed investment in it by AEW, the company Rhodes helped launch in 2019 that hosted a seriously bloody brawl between Cody and his older brother Dustin (former "Golddust" of WWE).
Seriously, what would wrestling have been back then if Cactus Jack was slapped with a PG-13 restriction, or if matches like Ric Flair’s fight in a steel cage against Triple H in 2005 was as clean as a bleached sheet?
And then there’s the late, great Eddie Guerrero versus JBL in 2004, but maybe that one was a bit over the top.
Maybe.
So be it in 2019 and/or now, Rhodes has helped lead the charge back to wrestling and the WWE being more feral, and it’s helped draw fans of previous generations back to their monitors.
“Actually, I gave myself a nice pat on the back for it,” Rhodes said. “Recently going into WrestleMania, I was the first WWE shirt that got a little blood on it as well, they had done the skull with a little cut up top after Rock beat the hell out of me in the rain.”
It’s all going according to plan for Levesque, Rhodes and the entire WWE as this era embraces some of the best attributes of eras past, like not pretending humans don’t bleed if you throw their face into a set of steel stairs.
And would you look at that?
Neither young fans nor sponsors have gone anywhere.
*pretends to be shocked*
See the full interview from Rhodes here.
