10 Genius Wrestling Decisions Made Up On The Fly

For years in their highlight and promotional videos, WWE featured the legendary image of Stone Cold Steve Austin wailing in agony and drenched in his own blood as Bret Hart had the sharpshooter locked in on him.

What’s so astonishing about that spot is it was called on the fly and went against all company policy.

WWE had a strict no blood code in 1997, but Bret strongly believed if Austin was going to pass out in the sharpshooter he needed to get some colour to save face, so suggested the idea to Austin prior to the match. Steve was unsure, being relatively new to the company, and didn’t want to be part of anything that would end up burying him. He had seen firsthand how the Curtain Call had severely stalled Triple H’s push. So Steve and Bret decided to make a judgement call in the ring whether or not he would bleed.

Feeling the momentum of the classic match they were building, Steve chose colour. It happened when Hart threw Austin hard on the guard rail and amazingly bladed Austin in front of ringside fans and Vince McMahon on commentary, with no one being none the wiser and thinking Austin cut himself hardway.

Austin has spoken of the spot on Talk is Jericho noting that:

“I’m so glad he did because, had I would have done the same exact thing, the way I sold that, I can’t say I’m blowing smoke up my a*s, but, I sold it like a motherf*cker. Had I not had all that red sh*t on my face, streaming through my teeth, and then you see how much blood I actually lost, and it wasn’t one of those gore fests, because you can go too hard and get too much and it becomes distracting and hard to watch. This was not hard to watch. This just added so much level to the struggle that I was going through, but was not just a turnoff. So, it became one of the most iconic images, in my opinion, in the history of the wrestling business. I’m not going to say the most, but one of the most.”