Blood. The word alone adds a certain power to its circumstance. Deliberately opening one's self up, otherwise known as 'blading' has been a staple of professional wrestling for decades now. Done to add story and drama to an intense battle between two hated rivals, blading is a child of the classic generation of pro wrestling, when protecting Kayfabe was everything. Anything to maintain the illusion that the battle in the ring was real. The blood these men spilled was real. In various times, blading has either been encouraged or outright banned depending on the image the given promotion was portraying. For example, in the late 1980s, blood was banned in the Jim Crockett hemmed WCW, a rule that cost Dusty Rhodes and booker Mike Graham their jobs when Dusty bladed in one particular match. Eric Bischoff's attempts to pitch WCW to adult males in the mid 90s saw this rule revoked. Then you have WWE. Vince McMahon has done a hairpin turn on the use of blood more than once and he himself has been the subject of some of his company's harshest blade jobs over the years. The early 90s and current PG product sees an absolute ban on blading, whereas the Attitude Era through until going PG in 2008 saw a form of blading at seemingly every other pay-per-view. Whilst it definitely adds to the drama of a match, on occasion, whether due to too much adrenaline or too little control, the blading jobs of WWE have been so extreme they've gone beyond merely adding to a bout, causing genuine concern for the wrestler's health. Indeed some gory, gruesome scenes. This is a list of those jobs. The ones that cut too deep.
Betting on being a brilliant brother to Bodhi since 2008 (-1 Asian Handicap). Find me @LiamJJohnson on Twitter where you might find some wonderful pearls of wisdom in a stout cocktail of profanity, football discussion and general musings. Or you might not. Depends how red my eyes are.
