Though it's common knowledge today, at one point, one of the best-kept secrets in wrestling was the art of blading, or using a razor to draw blood from oneself. In the old days of wrestling, blood was seen as necessary for putting over the violence inherent in a heated feud, with many promoters feeling that using it properly drew a lot of money. Rather than taking unnecessary risks to draw blood, wrestlers would surreptitiously take a piece of a razor blade and run it across their foreheads mid-match in order to get the proverbial "crimson mask." It was a relatively painless and harmless (if you don't think about blood-borne diseases) way to add that element to a match. Today, the practice has largely fallen by the wayside - WWE banned it when they moved to a PG product in 2008, while New Japan Pro Wrestling also no longer allows it. Still, there are many wrestlers whose foreheads bear lines from years of blading, and of the more modern crop of major superstars, none are more scarred than D-Von Dudley. A master of the bladejob before it became taboo, Dudley would often be left in pools of his own blood while selling attacks from hated rivals, or covered in it during brutal bouts. As he's back in WWE, he won't be doing it anytime soon, but the evidence of his acuity with the razor blade still remains.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
