Blood, Injuries, and Death in Professional Wrestling 2:54pm, January 15, 2010
Professional wrestling. No matter what’s “real” or not, one thing is for sure - almost all of the blood you see IS. Take a close look at the forehead of any of your favorite persona – federations aside. Complete scar pits., from Ric Flair to Abdullah the Butcher. Leatherface never wore skin so bad. And its all for the love of the sport. The extreme side of it. In the 1980s you would hear of Jerry the King Lawler fighting Texas Death matches down south, and find pictures of the goriest matches ever known to mankind in some rustled up wrestling magazine. Later came the days of exploitation Natural Born Killers style, with federations like ECW, which housed awesome maniacal freaks like New Jack, who would come to the ring with a staple gun and really put one in your head. From that woman who snapped her elbow back in the 80’s GLOW wrestling federation, to the Sid Vicious’ career ending compound tibial fracture that almost pierced through his boots – there has been a lot of bloody and disgusting violence in the squared circle. If you think everything that goes on in the ring is theatrical bullshit and/or fake – have a look:
BLOODIEST MATCHES OF ALL TIME
Blood in wrestling? Nah, that’s fake. Yeah, right! Whats the commonly known trick to the trade? A taped finger with the corner of a razor blade broken off and in it, sticking through somewhere. Wrestler takes the apparent blow from the illegal object and hits the mat, covering their face with their hands. That’s when they go to work, and slice a good slit into their forehead or scalp. Not much of a cut, but the head bleeds good. It mixes with sweat and streams down the wrestlers face. In some cases they go too far. As earlier mentioned, probably the scariest human being I’ve ever come across while watching this feigned sport is a man known as Abdullah the Butcher. He had cuts in his forehead that looked like they were made by machetes. Just look closely at his head in the picture at the top of this article. If that’s your bag – check out some of these vids and remind us in the comments of some of the bloodiest matches you can remember in your lifetime… hell, leave a link!
OWEN HART
Many of you already know and perhaps remember what tragically happened to Owen Hart one night in the ring. Here is the sum of it all, as extracted from wikipedia.org:
Hart died on May 23, 1999 when an equipment malfunction occurred during his entrance from the rafters of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City at the WWF's Over the Edge pay-per-view event. He was to begin a dramatic entrance, being lowered to just above ring level, at which time he would act "entangled", then release himself from the safety harness and fall flat on his face for comedic effect—this necessitated the use of a quick release mechanism. Something went wrong with the stunt harness, apparently triggering the release mechanism early as he was being lowered. Hart fell 78 feet (24 m) into the ring, landing chest-first on the top rope, approximately a foot from the nearest turnbuckle, throwing him into the ring. He attempted to sit up and did so before falling back. Owen was worked on by medical personnel inside the ring, and was then transported to Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Some believe he died in the ring. The cause was later revealed to be internal bleeding from blunt chest trauma.
There was much controversy over this after the occurrence, creating what many thought to be an unmendable rift between Owen’s brother Bret and WWE owner Vince McMahon, who was found not to be responsible for the accident. Many years have gone by with incredible tension between the two – including a video where Bret apparently knocked out Vince in one blow, leaving him stunned with a rapidly swelling black eye.
CHRIS BENOIT – WTF
Nothing is professional wrestling can quite match the shock and sickening awe of the whole Chris Benoit incident, where his wife and young boy were murdered, and he himself hanged. It spread across the news like wildfire. Chris Benoit. Steroid abuser. Violent wrestler. Murder/suicide. But the situation just reeks. Id personally watched Chris Benoit from his inception into WCW early in his career, and through to the WWE. Even as crazy and physical as he was, he always exuded and air of professionalism and underlying kindness.
What is most odd about the entire story is the background behind it. His young disabled boy was strangled/suffocated. Benoit’s put away move was the Crossface Crippler – a suffocating submission hold that snuffed the life out of you. If applied for real, it can be deadly. But why would Benoit, a man who adored his kid, kill HIM in a “fit of rage” over his wife Nancy? Nancy was found face down, her arms tied behind her back and ankles taped together, left under a sheet. If it was testosteronal rage, common sense indicates that it might not have gone down quite that way. It would have been more of an instant blast of unleashed, pent up hormonal anger.
It gets odder. Nancy’s first husband was the Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan, a dark and dirty guy in real life, who was powerful within the business holding the position of booker – someone who guides the whole show and story and cast. He’d always kept Benoit down in the business. Nancy left Kevin to join and eventually marry Chris Benoit. Kevin Sullivan absolutely hated Benoit, and had for years leading up to the event. The Benoits had martial problems like any other family, but had worked through them, and almost everyone who knew them had known them to be a happy, even if sometimes tumultuous, family. So why would it go down like that.
Someone as smart as Kevin Sullivan could surely organize such a peaceful entry into the home one day perhaps when Chris was away, and to return imminently. To strangle the wife and child and then subdue Benoit, only to hang him, would surely lead any entering law enforcement to immediately assume – strangled, murders, suicide… steroids… open and shut. Many people who knew the growing situation over the years feel its highly possible that the culprit is still out there.
Add to all this the FACT, as printed by wikinews.org, that Chris Benoit’s wikipedia page had been edited just hours before the police entered the home of the Benoits and found the bodies. These edits added that Nancy had been murdered. This was approximately 17 hours before the scene was discovered. The IP address was tracked to a location in Stamford, CT, where WWE headquarters is towned.
In professional wrestling there have always been strange deaths and atrocious injuries. What do you think of all this? Leave your comments below.
I remember I went with my brother to houston to some wrestling thing,,,Benoit was supposed to wrestle that day but they told everyone he had some personal problems to take care so he was replaced,,when we got home we found out about the tragedy.
Good article man and very well said. Plus the Butcher is a madman when he brings out the fork. I watched that guy about 10 years ago go apeshit digging into his skull with that thing.
I have always felt the same about the Benoit situation. It never seemed that he would be the type of person to do something like that. Especially to his child. As rough as he was, you could always tell he tried not to really hurt anyone he was wrestling. He helped the younger guys. Everyone seemed to love Benoit. I still believe there is more to it. There has to be....
I've always felt there was more to the Chris Benoit story than what we know. Too many facts just don't add up. Sadly, I doubt any of us will ever know what truly happened.
Chris Benoit was a wrestler I always liked to watch, When this went down I remember thinking "no way, can't be right". The media jumped all over the martial problems, steroid abuse,I think there were suppossed to text messages from him to wwe( i think that was how the cops found out to look for him) but I don't recall ever hearing about some of the things you wrote. Why didn't anyone bother to look further into this? Because the media had an easy story? I don't think we will ever know either. RIP Chris and Family
The funniest part of all this for me, as a FORMER pro wrestling fan(atic), the stuff like this and the hot chicks having nip slips (lol, watch pretty much any WWE Raw episodes before 2005, you're sure to see some tits a-poppin') that used to be selling points of the sport are now seen to be bad things. They're aiming it toward kids and women now, so good luck seeing anything brutal or truly sexy/awesome nowadays. I can't even watch the crapfest it's become lately.
Slipknot - on a personal note - I agree. I watched WWF since Bob Backlund lost the belt to Iron Sheik and Hulk Hogan won it for the first time at MSG. All the way thru WCW. I quit watching wrestling once I saw Vince McMahon's disgusting face pop up on a WCW Nitro one Monday night. Broke my professional wrestling loving heart. I never took another step after the real WCW went down, and ECW was absorbed. WWE is for clowns, kids, and women now - exactly. Used to be more. Thus is the destruction that came upon fans when the cartoony WWE took over the whole scene. Count me out, forever more....
Also, about the whole Chris Benoit thing, I'm glad to hear that other folks think the whole situation stunk to high hell. Nothing about it made any sense at the time it occurred, and it still doesn't now. Trying to make Benoit out to be some lunatic monster who killed his family in a fit of rage? I still don't buy it. Sad thing is, like most celebrity murders, we probably won't ever find out the truth. He was one of my favorite wrestlers, one of the guys (Undertaker, Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Eddie Guerrero and others) who shed blood, sweat, and tears to make the sport as awesome as it became in the 90's and some of the new millenium... and WWE just hasn't been the same without him. RIP, Chris.
Don't forget Slipknot that they've erased his entire legacy in WWE. Say with highlights of WM they don't show him winning the belt at 20 and they even go as far as editing out his bouts on past ppv dvd releases. Even if the guy did do it or not "which I believe he did" that's still no reason to forget a guy who gave all he had to a company.
SiCK WRESTLiNG CLiPS.. EWWWW.. SID ViCiOUS LEG!
RODDY PIPER RULES!
AND.. CHRiS BENOiT.. THAT WHOLE THiNG DOESNT ADD UP.. iT MAKES ME SAD.. AND i WiSH THERE WERE REAL ANSWERS.. R.i.P CHRiS.. :-(
I met Benoit the morning after Wrestlemania 18 in the airport, along with about 25 other wrestlers. He and Jerry Lawler were easily the friendliest, most "normal" and down to earth of the bunch.
A quick mention about the new jack/vic grimes video...it called it an accident, but if you've seen the "Forever Hardcore" dvd then you now that New Jack admitted to trying to seriously hurt Grimes after Grimes boasted about hurting New Jack in a previous match...and lets not forget the "Mass Transit Incident", when New Jack sliced some kids head open...
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