TJRWrestling WWE Bad Blood 2024 Preview
It’s WWE Bad Blood featuring CM Punk-Drew McIntyre inside Hell in a Cell, Roman Reigns & Cody Rhodes teaming up against The Bloodline, and more.
The WWE Bad Blood PLE name is back for the first time since it was Raw brand PPV in 2004 when Triple H beat Shawn Michaels in a Hell in a Cell match. There was a Bad Blood in 2003 too. The Badd Blood PPV (with an extra “D”) name was also used in October 1997 when Shawn Michaels beat The Undertaker in the first Hell in a Cell match, which was incredible and also featured Kane’s debut. That show was on October 5th just like this one will be.
It has been reported that the CM Punk-Drew McIntyre Hell in a Cell match is going to open the show rather than be the main event. In the main event spot. It’s expected that the Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes teaming up with Roman Reigns against The Bloodline’s Solo Sikoa & Jacob Fatu will be the main event of the show. It will be Roman’s first match in about six months while Cody is the WWE Champion, so it does make sense in terms of star power.
This is a typical five match WWE card with the company choosing to put Gunther defending the World Title against Sami Zayn on the October 7th edition of Raw rather than at Bad Blood. A report about that claimed that WWE felt that Bad Blood didn’t need Gunther/Zayn on it and they wanted to strengthen that night’s Raw card. It should be a great match that Gunther will win to keep his title reign going.
My feeling on the five match card that Triple H loves to do is that I believe this year and last year have both been very strong. They have arguably been the best years in WWE PPV/PLE history. With that said, I think they could easily have seven matches on these cards and fill up three hours or go a bit over three. They could cut back on the time between matches and still have plenty of time for everything. A 25-minute match would be fine going 18 minutes. You can find ways to get more matches on these shows. It’s just my opinion.
Lastly, Bad Blood has a 6 p.m. ET start time on Saturday night because there’s a UFC PPV on Saturday night at 10 p.m. ET. Since WWE and UFC are together under the TKO Group umbrella, it’s a TKO call to start Bad Blood earlier. Bad Blood will probably run for three hours or a bit more than three hours, plus the post-show press conference, so the whole thing will be done by 10 p.m. ET most likely. I don’t mind the earlier start time. I am looking forward to the show.
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Hell in a Cell Match: CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre
As I mentioned in the introduction, this match is likely going on first. I think it’s going to be the best match on the show and the best match in their three match series. Drew beat Punk at SummerSlam due in part to Seth Rollins’ questionable refereeing and then Punk beat Drew soundly at Bash in Berlin in Strap Match. Drew attacked Punk on Raw after that, so the feud continues and here we are in the Hell in a Cell match. The best rivalry in WWE this year? Yeah, I think so.
CM Punk and Drew McIntyre have both done a great job in terms of doing promos about how much this match means to them. They have put over how violent it’s going to be while each man has spoken about making the other guy bleed. I know WWE in general is against blading and heavy blood in matches, but I think there will be leniency here and I expect both guys to bleed heavily in a match like this.
When it comes to picking a winner, I’m going with CM Punk. I think WWE is going to push him strongly as a top babyface on the Raw brand and as somebody who could be the guy that takes the World Heavyweight Title off Gunther. It may be a while until that happens like at WrestleMania 40 or before that if WWE feels the need to do that. I think in order for Punk to really be seen as a top guy, he has to win this match to kind of show the world that he is still the “best in the world” or close to the best of the world even though he’s going to be 46 years old later this month. The good thing for Punk in terms of age is he was out of wrestling for seven years so even though he might be injury prone to some, I think he has a few more healthy years ahead of him.
Anyway, I think this will be an awesome match. They are two talented veterans who obviously know eachother very well and I think the crowd will be strongly invested in the match. There’s certainly a chance that Drew can win, but I think it makes more sense for Punk to win.
Winner: CM Punk
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WWE Women’s Championship: Nia Jax (c) vs. Bayley
This is the weakest match on the card in terms of story and in terms of my interest level. Bayley is a very good performer obviously, but as a babyface, there’s just not much depth to the character. She is cheered out of respect for her success over the last ten years, but there’s nothing really special about the character as a face.
The long-term story with Jax as the WWE Women’s Champion is that she is friends with Miss Money in the Bank Tiffany Stratton. We have seen Jax act selfish and bitchy toward Stratton, so it’s likely going in the direction of Stratton eventually turning babyface against Jax when she gets sick of dealing with her. That’s probably coming in 2025, so I think the next few months are going to build up to that before Stratton gets sick of Jax, cashes in MITB and Stratton will be the babyface champion. Until then, Jax is going to keep her title against Smackdown babyface women like Bayley, Naomi, Michin and even Charlotte Flair when she comes back soon.
When Bayley and Naomi each pinned Jax in the Tornado Tag Team Match I thought it would lead to a triple threat here. Instead, Bayley beat Naomi to make it a singles match. It’s a SummerSlam rematch, which Jax won cleanly. I think perhaps this time it might be a cheaper win for Jax, but I expect the champion to retain.
Winner: Nia Jax
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Damian Priest vs. Finn Balor
There is a long-term story here since they started as heels in The Judgment Day together, they held the Tag Team Titles together and now Balor’s version of J-Day turned on Priest. The story from Balor’s perspective is that the group was supposed to have no leader, yet when Priest was World Heavyweight Champion he developed a big ego (in Balor’s opinion) so now they have an issue because of that. As for Priest, he is getting the support of the fans and doing well in the babyface role.
I think it could be argued that this match should be on Raw this coming Monday in a main event spot and the Gunther-Sami Zayn match should be here, but this is how WWE set it up. I certainly don’t think this is a bad match or something that will hurt the show.
Most of the build for this match has seen Balor and his Judgment Day buddies beating up Priest repeatedly and then celebrating about it. Due to the way it has been built up, I think it’s probably going to be a win for Priest even though Balor’s buddies like JD McDonagh, Carlito and Dominik Mysterio will probably try to help Balor win. Perhaps Priest will get some help from the LWO guys if they are there or maybe even Jey Uso if he’s at the show. I’m going with a Priest win.
Winner: Damian Priest
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WWE Women’s World Championship: Liv Morgan (c) vs. Rhea Ripley (Dominik Mysterio will be in a Shark Cage above the ring)
The Shark Cage gimmick is an entertaining stipulation that was added to prevent Dominik from helping Liv win. This is a rematch from SummerSlam when Dominik, who was already a heel, turned on Ripley to help Morgan and Dominik has been “with” Liv ever since. Anyway, that whole thing was done to officially turn Ripley into a babyface, which was pretty obvious since the fans have loved her for a long time anyway.
I have been disappointed that Liv and Rhea have barely wrestled on television. Liv’s last televised match on Raw was three months ago when she won a mixed tag team match with Dominik. As for Ripley, she has literally had one television match on Raw this year and that was on New Year’s Day. A lot of other women on Raw get televised matches and that’s great, but it’s weird how Liv and Rhea are being kept out of the ring on television. Both women have wrestled a decent amount at live events and even Smackdown dark matches, but they just aren’t being put in the ring on Raw that often.
As far as the match goes, Morgan has had the title for over four months and has barely defended it although she did beat Ripley at SummerSlam in that match where Dominik turned. In this case, I don’t know if they are going to do a spot where Dominik breaks free from the shark cage to somehow get involved in the match or maybe Dominik drops some object to Liv for her to use when the referee is bumped. Something nefarious like that certainly could happen.
A title change is also a possibility, but I’m not going with that. I think Morgan keeps the title somehow in a cheap manner because that’s the kind of heel champion she is. Plus, Ripley losing clean is very rare, so that seems unlikely. Even though I don’t know it will happen, I’m leaning towards a Morgan victory in this match.
Winner: Liv Morgan
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Roman Reigns & Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes vs. The Bloodline – Solo Sikoa & Jacob Fatu
This one should be very interesting and there are a lot of things to dissect here. I want to shoutout Jacob Fatu for absolutely killing it in WWE since he arrived a few months ago. A lot of us wanted WWE to sign him years ago, but obviously he was with another company (MLW) and had issues from his past that may have prevented his signing. However, now that he’s here, you can see how special of a talent he is. Clearly, WWE can see it as well since they keep pushing Fatu as a special athlete who is going to be tough to beat.
I am fan of Solo Sikoa and have covered his entire WWE journey going back to his NXT run, but I think Jacob Fatu has more long-term potential as a main event star. That’s not a knock on Solo because he knows his role. He does it well. I just think Jacob is a special kind of athlete who can get even better when the WWE machine truly gets behind him.
For Roman Reigns, this is his first match in six months since he lost the WWE Championship to Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 40. Now Roman is back in a babyface role for the first time in over four years. Roman didn’t do anything to turn face other than stay home for four months, and let the story develop with Solo taking over as the “Tribal Chief” and it made the fans miss Roman. Now there are a lot of questions about whether Cody can trust Roman, who did assure Cody that he could be trusted.
When it comes to a match prediction, I feel like I know who I’m going with, but I don’t know if it’s an easy call. Earlier on Friday, I wrote about how The Rock was in the state of Georgia on Friday to attend a high school football game at a school that had a horrific school shooting last month. Where is Bad Blood taking place? Georgia. Earlier this week, Pat McAfee & Cody Rhodes had a brief chat where Pat mentioned “the big guy” is coming back this week and Cody no sold it by asking questions when he realized there was a camera on them. That has led to many people speculating that “the big guy” could be The Rock. (Sorry to Ryback and his six fans.)
After Bad Blood is Crown Jewel on November 2nd, which Cody has talked about recently saying that there’s something that will be announced at Bad Blood concerning the Crown Jewel show. Four weeks after Crown Jewel is Survivor Series on November 30th featuring the WarGames match, which will have a 5 on 5 or 4 on 4 men’s tag team match. That makes me ask, is it possible for The Rock to come back at Bad Blood to set up his role in the WarGames match? It’s possible. I don’t think it’s a crazy thought at all. Maybe The Rock wants to experience a WarGames match for the first time in his career. He is a wrestling historian, after all. Anyway, I think this could all be a storyline where The Rock is the mastermind behind Solo being the Tribal Chief, he instructed Solo to do it and Rock signed the rest of the Bloodline guys to WWE (because Rock is on the WWE Board of Directors). The Rock can say he did all of this because Roman Reigns lost the WWE Title to Cody at WrestleMania 40.
All of this ties into my official prediction. I’m going with Cody & Roman to win because I think WWE will want to give Roman a big win in his first match in six months. After the match is when I think The Rock will show up and lead The Bloodline in an attack on Cody & Roman to end the show. I could be way off and that’s fine. I just think an appearance from The Rock is likely at this point. Even if he’s not going to be there, I still think Cody & Roman are going to win.
Winners: Roman Reigns & Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes
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BONUS TOPICS
The Match I’m Looking Forward To The Most
CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre in a Hell in a Cell Match.
The Match I Care About The Least
Nia Jax vs. Bayley.
Longest Match
CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre going about 30 minutes.
Shortest Match
Nia Jax vs. Bayley going about 12 minutes.
Excitement Level on a Scale of 1-10 (1 being low, 10 being high)
I’m at 7.75 out of 10 for this show. I say it every time that most WWE PLEs are very good, and sometimes great so this one should be no different. What could hurt the show in some people’s eyes is that three of the matches are rematches (Punk/Drew, Ripley/Morgan and Jax/Bayley), so it doesn’t feel that fresh. However, I do like the lineup. It’s just weird that my favorite current WWE wrestler Gunther isn’t on the show, but I addressed it in the opening of the preview. If The Rock does appear on the show like I wrote in the preview then that would certainly bring a lot of attention to the Bad Blood PLE, which is a good thing. I think the WWE product is really good right now, but it’s a tough time of year with a lot of sports competition (NFL, college football, MLB Playoffs, NHL starting, NBA getting ready, etc.) so it’s important for WWE to do some big things. Anyway, bring on Bad Blood. I’m looking forward to it.
I’ll be back with a review of WWE Bad Blood on TJRWrestling.net on Saturday, so check that out live or after it’s over. You can also tweet me on X/Twitter at @johnreport as well.
If you want to send an email, send it to me at mrjohncanton@gmail.com. Thanks for reading.