10 Wrestlers Who Inflicted The Most Damage To Their Bodies
3. Atsushi Onita
Atsushi Onita was a true pioneer.
He was never the best wrestler, though he was far better than shorthand history would suggest. While not the most technically gifted nor influential, he went hard as a junior, using the furious charisma and commitment with which he became a megastar in the '90s to burst through the ropes when executing a dive. His first run was shorter than most; a gruesome knee injury forced him out of action in the mid-1980s, and when he returned, he simply wasn't the same. He retired - which meant he didn't, because this is Atsushi Onita - before forming the Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling league. His ingenious selling of a memorable Chavo Guerrero angle - the man looked terrified and near-death bleeding heavily from his arm - convinced him that there was a market for this style in the east.
FMW evolved into a literally explosive sensation, at which Onita was the heart. He was devoted to selling (or barely selling) for his adoring public. When Onita bled, he bled; knowing that he had to put over the most extreme style in the most extreme manner, he gigged himself silly and threw himself onto bombs, which is to say nothing of the deep gashes suffered from the barbed wire that seems quaint in comparison to C4 explosives, when it very much isn't.
Onita burned 60% of his skin in one match, and in 2019, was instructed to undergo double knee surgery lest he spend his remaining days in a wheelchair.