"I would think that with these two guys, they're performers, and in the back of my head, they may want to do it," says Dave Meltzer, editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. "There's a policy, but those guys can kind of do what they want." The WWE would not make Calaway or Levesque available for comment for this article. "They don't do interviews prior to WrestleMania," spokesman Kevin Hennessy wrote in an email. Requests to speak to WWE officials about the evolution of Hell in a Cell and the no-blood policy were not immediately returned.

Angle knows the cell all too well, having been locked up with Calaway and Levesque during the only six-way match in the history of Hell in a Cell, winning it in December 2000. Looking around the cell that night in Birmingham, Ala., Angle, a bloody mess by the match's end, understood that the men involved were going to go above and beyond the call of duty in regard to multiple men bleeding and risky spots, noting how Mick Foley being thrown off and chokeslammed through the cell by the Undertaker in 1998 set the bar for fans' standards of what to expect in the match. Case in point: Undertaker would toss the 400-pound Rikishi off the top off the cell onto the bed of a truck, causing the Rock and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin to look up from inside the ring and take in the spot. It's a different match now, focusing more on telling a better story and using the cell for more than just death-defying spots, but the risks associated with the match have not been vanquished.

"If I could be exact about this, [Hell in a Cell] really has turned the business around," Angle says. "In pro wrestling, since it is so dangerous, safety is always first. But in this type of match, there is no safety. You go and do it, and God willing you don't get hurt."

The evolution of the match is not all different from that of the company's PG-friendly business model. When Hell in a Cell matches first began in October 1997, they served as the culmination of long-time feuds. But that has changed as recent Hell in a Cell matches have now sprung up at any time during storylines, especially since the company implemented an annual Hell in a Cell Pay-Per-View. Before the no-blood policy was implemented, the match was seen as a "spot fest," with performers such as Mick Foley taking risky falls from the top of or through the cell. There was also more emphasis put on the use of weapons. Though there was initial success in WWE's thinking to parlay the match's past success into its own Pay-Per-View event, there have been significant drops in domestic buy rates for the last two Hell In A Cell Pay-Per-Views. In October 2011, the event drew about 182,000 domestic buys, still making it an alright draw for a B-level Pay-Per-View despite being down from the 210,000 buys in 2010 and the 283,000 buys from the 2009 event.