10 Awful Injuries Which Led To Amazing WWE Matches
It's sometimes possible to salvage fantastic silk purses out of big muscular sow's ears.
Despite how it sometimes comes across, WWE is a highly-planned, tightly scripted spectacle that generally is worked out down to the smallest detail.
As the old saying goes, however, 'Man plans and God laughs', and God laughs quite often at the WWE.
Injuries are uncontrollable, for the most part. They can be managed, yes, and precautions can be taken, but sometimes the unavoidable happens and a wrestler gets hurt. Sometimes it's during a match, sometimes it's as a result of a match, and sometimes it's a long-term injury that can be career-threatening.
This list is a mix of misery, with all three of these injury scenarios represented. The thing is, despite their unpleasantness, they all had the spin-off effect of creating great, memorable matches, either at the time of the injury or as a consequence of it.
Those who decry professional wrestling will often say that wrestlers are not 'real' athletes, that they are just entertainers, an impression that, sadly, the WWE fosters through its use of language and its business practices.
But make no mistake, WWE wrestlers are indeed athletes, who put their bodies through hell yet do everything possible to keep the show going.
With the above in mind, let's take a look at ten times these injuries led to amazing matches.
10. Sabu Almost Bleeds To Death, Terry Funk Doesn't Fare Much Better - Born To Be Wired '97
Since WWE has absorbed all of ECW's properties, we're going to argue this is OK to include.
Sabu and Funk are two of the most extreme wrestlers of all time, willing to put themselves through almost anything for the sake of the art. Probably the epitome of this attitude was their no-ropes-barbed-wire-match at the Born to Be Wired PPV in 1997.
Both ended up covered in cuts and bleeding heavily. Sabu, at one point, missed with a splash and ripped his left bicep open with a 10-inch gash that he simply taped up with trainer's tape. Despite the massive blood loss and what must have been an incredibly painful injury, Sabu finished the match and pinned Funk to win the ECW Championship.
Was this an amazing wrestling match? No. Was it an amazing spectacle? Yes. By the end both Funk and Sabu were covered in so much barbed wire that clothes were shredded and Sabu couldn't properly put Funk's shoulders on the mat. They both needed to be literally cut out of the wire with shears.
On a podcast, when asked about the most violent thing he had seen in ECW, Joey Styles answered without hesitation that it was this match.