Bad Blood 2004: A Strong Upper Card Trapped Inside a Thin Raw Pay-Per-View

The opener is competent television-style tag wrestling stretched into a pay-per-view slot, with Edge doing most of the early selling before Chris Benoit supplies the hot tag. La Résistance keep the structure simple, and the match gains some energy once Benoit begins throwing suplexes and threatening the Crossface. The Kane interference is the real destination, however, and the delayed disqualification undercuts the cleanest stretch of action just as the bout is starting to peak. At 5.4, the work is organized enough to avoid being poor, but the match feels more like setup for Benoit-Kane than a satisfying championship attraction in its own right.

Chris Jericho gives Tyson Tomko a compact six-minute match built around movement, brief power spots, and Trish Stratus creating a distraction at ringside. Jericho supplies most of the timing and variety, while Tomko's offense remains basic and the match never develops a sustained rhythm beyond getting from one transition to the next. The enzuigiri finish arrives before the bout has created much tension, which is probably preferable to asking the matchup to carry several more minutes. A 4.0 reflects a limited but professionally executed match that fills time, advances the Jericho-Trish story, and offers little reason to revisit the bell-to-bell action.

Randy Orton and Shelton Benjamin deliver the first match on the card that feels worthy of a pay-per-view audience, using Benjamin's speed and repeated near falls against Orton's increasingly desperate title defense. The crowd buys Benjamin as a real threat, especially once the T-Bone Suplex and late rollups begin stacking up, and Orton is effective as the champion constantly trying to slow the pace. Ric Flair's interference becomes excessive enough to cap the ceiling, but it also fits the Evolution presentation and gives Benjamin another obstacle to overcome. The crossbody reversal with the tights is a sharp heel finish, leaving a 7.2 B-minus as a strong midcard title match without overstating it as a classic.

The Women's Championship four-way packs a surprising number of exchanges into less than five minutes, but the speed is also the problem because nothing has enough time to develop. Victoria, Lita, Gail Kim, and Trish Stratus move rapidly through saves, submissions, and signature offense before the match settles on the familiar rollup finish. The title change matters to Trish's heel run, and there are flashes of athletic chemistry that suggest a longer match could have offered much more. At 4.2, this is not a disaster so much as an abbreviated championship change: too compressed to build drama, too busy to breathe, and over almost as soon as it establishes its shape.

Eugene against Jonathan Coachman is the card's clearest pay-per-view miss, a comedy match that lasts long enough for the joke to become the entire wrestling experience. Nick Dinsmore can execute the borrowed mannerisms and crowd-pleasing spots, but Coachman is not positioned as a credible wrestler and the interference with cookies and a stuffed animal pushes the segment even farther from competitive tension. The audience reacts to some of the character work, yet reaction alone cannot turn seven-plus minutes of sketch comedy into a strong match. The 2.6 score acknowledges that the segment has a recognizable purpose while grading the actual wrestling attraction as a substantial failure.

Chris Benoit and Kane give the World Heavyweight Championship a straightforward clash-of-styles match that grows steadily better as Benoit attacks the leg and searches for ways around Kane's size. The structure is easy to follow: Kane controls with power, Benoit keeps returning to the Sharpshooter and Crossface, and the champion has to improvise when his preferred submission cannot finish the job. The six German suplexes, Chokeslam near fall, and late Crossface escape finally create the urgency missing from much of the undercard. A 7.7 B recognizes an effective eighteen-minute title defense with a strong closing stretch, even if it never reaches the emotional intensity of WWE's best world-title matches from the period.

Triple H and Shawn Michaels attempt a forty-seven-minute blood feud epic, and there are stretches where the scale works exactly as intended: hard cage shots, escalating blood, heavy weapon use, and finishers saved for the closing minutes. The problem is the enormous amount of dead space required to sustain that length, with repeated floor brawling and exhaustion selling slowing the match well before the final sequence arrives. Both wrestlers sell the punishment convincingly, and the ladder-table elbow plus the late Pedigree and Sweet Chin Music near falls produce genuine drama. At 7.4, the match is good rather than great: ambitious, physical, and memorable, but too indulgent to justify the epic treatment it demands from the viewer.