10 Times Blood & Guts Made Wrestling AWESOME
3. The Muta Scale Is Born (NJPW Final Battle - 14 December 1992)
The Muta Scale is the barometer used to judge the volume of spilled in a wrestling match, stemming from the legendary gusher suffered by The Great Muta when he faced Hiroshi Hase on New Japan's Final Battle tour back in December 1992, replacing his red-and-blue face paint with a glistening mask of his own bodily fluids.
Hase had already used the sole of his boot to brutally rub Muta's paint away, symbolically trashing the gimmick to leave the man behind it exposed. Muta was cut soon after. Hase gashed him a crowbar shot designed to mask a proper blade job, creating one of the most infamous examples of deliberate colour in wrestling history, the blood pooling on the mat.
Muta vs. Hase stands as a very good to great wrestling match given genuine historical significance by its bloodletting. "The Muta Scale" became a common phrase amongst certain breeds of wrestling fans soon after and even today, people compare big-time colour spots with what happened to Keiji Mutoh back in 1992, with Cody vs. Dustin the most recent example at a mainstream level.