10 Most Brutal Acts Of Wrestling Revenge

10. The Blood Oath

"This is an ax, and this is an arm."

On August 5, 1978, Joe DeLuc entered the convivial confines of Lance Russell's Memphis wrasslin' studio...and sliced his arm open...on a Saturday morning. DeLuc was such a convincing mad man that he terrified grown men, let alone the young children he traumatised here. Wearing proudly the seeping head wound opened by rival Jerry Lawler, DeLuc, the whites of his eyes peeled like the manifestation of intensity he was, his disturbed head bobbing to mirror his internal derangement, promised revenge.

"So what?" he said, of the untreated wound. "I had a busted head when I was born!"

DeLuc took a blood oath, on what was once family-friendly programming, to remind himself of the revenge he was to dole out to the 'King'. In the old lumber camps in Canada, he explained, a man would scar himself to never forget the oath he has taken. DeLuc then took that oath by taking a non-gimmicked ax - DeLuc was no gimmick - and opening a hole in himself so deep that Jim Cornette swears he could have lost his index finger inside of it. This angle has become enshrined into legend so thoroughly that it has taken on an aura of some idealised version of pro wrestling's genuinely rugged, badass past - but it was measurably real.

At the sight of an open gash, Lawler, for once, was terrified.