WWE's Lost Art: Was Extreme Rules a Sign That Blood Is Coming Back to the WWE?

Blood. 

It’s something that has been missing from the WWE ever since the company officially went PG in 2008, and it has been a controversial topic since the day it went away. 

We used to see blood all the time. Blood—and more specifically, blading—was as big a part of wrestling and the WWE as body slams and suplexes. 

Just go back and look at some of the biggest matches of all time, such as Bret Hart vs. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13 or Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit at WrestleMania 20. 

What did they feature? Blood. 

Heck, the WWE even once held “First Blood” matches, where the winner of the match was whichever wrestler was able to make his opponent bleed first. 

And when you watched Ric Flair wrestle, it seemed like there was at least a 50/50 chance that he’d blade and bleed in just about every match he participated in. 

But over the last four years, the WWE’s newfound focus on entertainment for the entire family has almost completely eliminated blood from its TV shows and pay-per-views. 

There is the occasional accidental bleeding that can’t be prevented, but for the most part, the WWE has attempted to cover up that bleeding before anyone can really see it. 

We’ve seen this happen on numerous occasions, such as when the WWE medics interrupted a match between CM Punk and Rey Mysterio at Over the Limit in 2010 to tend to Punk, who was busted open early on in the match. 

Punk didn’t hide the frustration on his face, as he appeared to be incredibly agitated by the medics halting the flow of the match simply to stop the bleeding from a minor gash. 

This was one of the first times when the lack of blood in the WWE was seen as incredibly detrimental to the product. It hurt the quality of Mysterio vs. Punk, it killed the crowd and those two guys had to work their tails off to get them back into it. 

Since that match, the bleedings have been few and far in between. 

Well, that was until this Sunday at Extreme Rules in the main event Extreme Rules Match between John Cena and Brock Lesnar. 

Early on in the match, Cena was busted open (seemingly hard way), and once again, the medics came out to stop the blood from pouring from the gash on Cena’s head. 

Yet, later on in the match, Lesnar was also busted open (seemingly hard way as well), and the match carried on as the blood of both Cena and Lesnar drenched the ring and everything around it. 

Coincidence? That’s the million-dollar question. 

Now, the fact that medics tended to Cena mid-match will lead some to believe that there was no intention for him to bleed during the bout, but Lesnar bleeding, too? 

I find it extremely hard to believe that both he and Cena being busted open wasn’t planned. 

We rarely see blood in today’s WWE, and, in fact, have rarely seen it over the last four years. Yet, we saw it not once, but twice, at Sunday’s Extreme Rules PPV. In the same match.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will, but I think that both Cena and Lesnar were meant to bleed, even though the WWE would probably never admit to it. 

Even if neither guy actually bladed, Lesnar likely threw those nasty elbow strikes to cut Cena open, and Lesnar was likely busted open on purpose as well. 

The reasoning behind this? To bring that “legitimacy” back to the WWE that John Laurinaitis was talking about. 

The fact that we saw two main-eventers bleed in a huge match in the PG era, however, should open up a can of worms. 

Fans will wonder if the PG era is coming to a close, if blood will be seen more frequently or if this was just a one-time occasion where blood was necessary for the storytelling of the match. 

No matter what is actually the case, though, I still maintain that Cena and Lesnar bled intentionally and that this could—let me stress that could part—be a sign of some major changes coming to the WWE. 

There has been no uproar from outraged fans and parents about the fact that they saw blood in a PG show, and if Lesnar and Cena purposely made themselves bleed, then that is essentially blading without a blade. 

Now, if Cena and Lesnar bladed and the fans weren’t upset about it, then wouldn’t that signify a potential change in the WWE’s philosophy? 

I would think so, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him onTwitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.