Does blading still have a place in wrestling? Let us know in the comments...
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If you've ever wondered how wrestlers bleed during matches it's a thing called blading, if you knew that already, you may not know that it's actually been part of the craft for many many years. Laurie takes a deep dive into the history of the practice, a journey which takes him from the 1930s through Ric Flair cutting himself on a weekly basis to now where it's mostly banned, but there are still some blading hold outs.
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48 HOUR EARLY ACCESS: https://bit.ly/3nB5PmX
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
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If you've ever wondered how wrestlers bleed during matches it's a thing called blading, if you knew that already, you may not know that it's actually been part of the craft for many many years. Laurie takes a deep dive into the history of the practice, a journey which takes him from the 1930s through Ric Flair cutting himself on a weekly basis to now where it's mostly banned, but there are still some blading hold outs.
#partsfunknown #wwe #wrestlingdocumentary
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SportsTranscript
00:00 So there's this old adage in wrestling that red equals green.
00:21 And no, that isn't just wrestlers getting their green cross code muddled up though,
00:26 that would go some way to explain the number of car accidents broadcast on national TV.
00:31 It's to do with blood.
00:37 Crimson copper smelling blood.
00:40 His blood.
00:41 Or his blood.
00:42 Or his.
00:44 Blood running over a wrestler's face forming a crimson mask and creating an image that
00:48 is somehow both terrifying and sympathetic.
00:52 Just as if we need this stuff to live and here it is, buckets of it pouring out over
00:58 the mat.
00:59 It can make you wonder how your favourite babyface is still standing, it can feel like
01:03 poetic comeuppance for your hated heel or it can show you how much these two men despise
01:09 each other as they beat seven bells and six pints of the red stuff out of each other.
01:14 Blood in wrestling has been used to shock audiences for years, creating the kind of
01:18 visceral response that gets people talking, which usually increases ticket sales and has
01:23 people coming from miles around to see the spectacle.
01:26 But it also did something much more useful for wrestling back when it was in the kayfabe
01:31 closet, it added a dose of reality.
01:35 Problem is though that bleeding on cue isn't in many people's repertoires.
01:39 So over the years wrestlers turned to many cunning tricks and thousands of slicing nicks
01:43 in order to get colour.
01:45 But with a litany of incidents occurring around blading, new knowledge of infections and a
01:51 shift towards family-focused entertainment, does the practice have any place in modern
01:57 wrestling?
01:58 I'm Laurie Hailing from partsFUNknown and this is Blading Explained.
02:10 So before we crack on with the episode please consider giving us a subscribe so you never
02:14 miss content like this or support us on Patreon.com/partsfunknown for loads of awesome rewards and early
02:22 access to all future videos in this series.
02:30 For the uninitiated among you, blading is the practice of cutting oneself during a wrestling
02:36 match or a segment in order to produce blood, or to put it in cutesy wrestling terms, juice.
02:42 Historically the most popular way to produce this sanguiness sunny delight is with the
02:46 use of a small razor blade to nick the forehead, which due to the number of blood vessels present
02:51 tends to get the juice flowing like a birthday party during dry January.
02:54 The added benefits of this particular spot is that it also mixes with the sweat mid-match
03:00 and begins to truly cover the face in crimson.
03:03 It also heals really quickly to boot, just don't try it at home because it's actually
03:08 really stupid and quite old.
03:11 Because purposefully bleeding in pro wrestling goes back at least as far as the 1930s and
03:17 a man named Kirby Watkins, who learned how to wrestle in the Navy and went on to make
03:22 a name for himself as Sailor Watkins.
03:26 Say what you see.
03:27 Watkins was wild in the ring and described by one newspaper as "climbing the ropes
03:31 and beating his chest like a monkey" but he also had to add a little zest to some of
03:36 his matches by drawing blood from his opponents, either with his teeth, his sharpened fingernails,
03:41 or the metal tips of his boot laces.
03:44 Now you know why they call drawing blood without a blade 'hard way'.
03:50 His success spawned imitators in Iker like dangerous Danny McShane, who was already infamous
03:55 for a stiff working style opting to just deck his opponents rather than affording them the
03:59 opportunity to merely act like they'd been hit.
04:02 He also pioneered a piledriver finisher that involved just dropping people on their heads.
04:06 Nowadays he'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen.
04:09 Back then, really big star.
04:11 Anyway, he added to his roughhousing repertoire by adopting blading to add some much needed
04:16 realism to his matches.
04:20 Blading only grew in popularity from there, becoming common around the middle of the 20th
04:25 century as blood made the transition from this grotesque extra to a featured event stipulation
04:31 with the advent of first blood matches, where the loser was the first to bleed.
04:38 The weakling.
04:40 And this was when the wider industry cottoned on to the idea that red equals green, i.e.
04:46 blood is money.
04:47 For example, during a match in the 1950s Mark Lewin accidentally kneed Mike Sharp in the
04:52 face, busting him open hard way.
04:55 Lewin then said in an interview after that "there was no blood in San Francisco at
04:59 the time, so that was the first thing people saw, and business just shot up."
05:05 So promoters were basically yelling "come and see the amazing bleeding man" and people
05:09 were handing over their dollars in droves, which did in fact cause kickbacks for the
05:14 performers too.
05:15 Don Fargo of the Fabulous Fargos used to say he'd let people bust him open over the eye
05:20 for an extra $25.
05:23 One walking bloodbath attraction was The Sheik, aka Edward George Farhat, who throughout the
05:30 60s and 70s would conceal bits of wood, pencils and other sharp objects about his attire to
05:36 stab his opponents with.
05:38 He is the uncle of Sabu, which frankly explains quite a lot.
05:43 Despite the graphic nature of his particular brand of grappling, word often spread of The
05:49 Sheik's coming and folks would flock to bask in the Blood and Guts glory.
05:55 One man who turned his notoriety for blading into a nightmare for his opponents was Abdullah
06:00 the Butcher.
06:06 The Sudanese sadist with deep rivulets dug into his forehead from aggressive attempts
06:11 to get colour.
06:13 Like The Sheik, Abdullah's reputation for recklessness preceded him and he was used as
06:18 a special attraction on wrestling shows throughout Canada and the United States in the 60s when
06:23 blood put bums on seats.
06:26 But Abdullah's violence wasn't always vetted with his opponents and he would often
06:31 overstep boundaries, as described by superstar Billy Graham when recollecting a show he worked
06:36 on with The Butcher.
06:37 "He just started slicing this Indian's face up and his neck and his shoulders and
06:46 my God it was like, it was like manslaughter.
06:52 And we went back to the locker room and I get back there and I see this Indian standing
07:00 there covered with blood from his head to his wrestling boots, literally covered in
07:10 blood and he was a dark skinned Indian and he was starting to turn white from losing
07:18 blood and I said this guy is going to die.
07:22 It was chilling."
07:24 And when Billy asked why Abdullah had mutilated his opponent without consent.
07:28 "I had to give him a heat baby, I had to give him a heat."
07:35 Wrestling.
07:36 But perhaps most notable among Abdullah's transgressions is reportedly infecting Devin
07:42 Hannibal Nicholson with Hepatitis C by blading him without consent during a series of matches
07:48 around 2007.
07:50 Nicholson later sued and won a 2.3 million judgement in 2014.
07:55 But this is the thing, during the 60s when Abdullah was growing in infamy for his ferocity,
08:01 the secrets of wrestling were closely held and it wasn't until the mid-1980s when the
08:06 veil was lifted and the true dangers of blading became apparent for all.
08:11 During an expose on the business by 2020 that also peeled the curtain back on kayfabe, former
08:17 NFL quarterback turned pro wrestler Eddie Mansfield not only taught John Stossel how
08:21 to take a bump but casually showed off how wrestlers cut themselves to create some claret.
08:45 During the course of the interview Mansfield lifted the lid on a few of wrestling's big
08:50 secrets but none of them were quite as grisly as blading.
08:54 It seems like there's a certain power to blood being used during a performance and
08:59 often the feeling is that more is better, which is why some wrestlers would take an
09:04 aspirin before the show or have a beer in order to thin their blood and get the gush
09:09 just right.
09:10 It's also why some overzealous individuals likely cut too deep and ended up needing stitches.
09:15 Oh and by the way, Tyler your sex tape for the gush thing.
09:19 One big work.
09:22 Blood is something that isn't easy to fake.
09:25 So it's no wonder that promoters were protective of the practice of blading.
09:45 As discussed earlier, bleeding hard way sucked.
09:48 Like in the 50s before blading hit the big time guys used to get bloody by being hit
09:53 with a bare knuckle right above the eye and yet as that wound became scar tissue that
09:57 particular spot became a little easier to bust open.
10:01 But yikes.
10:02 There's also tales of people tenderising their foreheads with a fork before matches
10:06 so they bust open better, which hardly sounds sanitary.
10:11 Which is one of the major concerns when it comes to blading and bleeding in wrestling
10:15 matches in general as I was told by trained nurse Carla who has worked as a medic on wrestling
10:20 shows up and down the UK for a few years now.
10:23 "My main concern though is if they're blading and then they're still in the ring
10:29 for a while afterwards, those canvases aren't the cleanest.
10:35 I've seen wrestling canvases.
10:37 Usually if someone's going to blade it's usually the main event so it's after a lot
10:42 of people have been in that ring.
10:44 And even though I know that it is wrestling etiquette that you don't wear outside shoes
10:49 in the ring, you don't do anything like that, there's still people that do before
10:54 the show starts, they jump in, they have a little roll around, they do things like that.
10:59 So you don't really know what's on that canvas.
11:01 They're so big, how often are they being cleaned?
11:05 So that's one of my worries for anything that could get into there that would cause
11:10 some sort of infection.
11:12 So just the cleanliness of the blade, where are they keeping this blade throughout the
11:15 match?
11:16 Are they tucking it in a boot?
11:19 Are they tucking it in their wrist tape?
11:23 Anything like that?
11:25 Then there's the risk of if it's in their wrist tape, if they then fall on it, if it
11:30 goes funny, end up cutting somewhere else, if they just discard it afterwards, where
11:37 are they discarding it to?
11:39 Who's going to get hold of it?"
11:40 From talking to Carla it seems that one small slash can really set off a whole chain of
11:45 questions and concerns for medical professionals that, man, you've got to weigh up the importance
11:50 of the spot in terms of the storytelling and impact before you bother going through with
11:55 it.
11:56 And just in case you needed some, here are even more reasons not to.
11:59 "One thing that does worry me is that if it's someone, especially someone who isn't
12:03 experienced at blading, once you're in that ring or you're under that spotlight, you've
12:10 got everybody watching you, your adrenaline is pumping, they may not necessarily realize
12:14 how deep they are cutting.
12:16 So if they do it too deep or if they do it too many times, there's always the risk of
12:22 too much blood loss and they're just going to make a mess of their faces as well.
12:29 And then there's also risks of anything that might be bloodborne.
12:33 So any bloodborne infections, so your hepatitis, things like that.
12:40 If someone just decides on the day that that's what they're going to do, they probably haven't
12:45 had relevant tests or anything like that and it's have they had immunizations.
12:50 Even just small blood splatters can go quite far.
12:54 And if you're an audience member, you're sat front row and someone spins around and you
13:00 get some of that blood, it goes in your eye, it goes in your mouth, anything like that,
13:07 you run the risk of getting an infection as well."
13:09 And these risks are definitely why blading died out in the mainstream environment.
13:14 As wrestling tilted towards family entertainment in the mid 80s and the AIDS epidemic was causing
13:19 global headlines, the WWF tried to stomp out the practice, while WCW carried on well into
13:25 the 90s, but they eventually outlawed it as well.
13:29 And there are other factors to take into consideration too, like having to re-edit live sections
13:33 for reruns or the ratings of things when they eventually make their way to DVD and VHS.
13:39 Even now, if someone bleeds, they have to make the video black and white on YouTube
13:43 to get around the algorithm.
13:44 I have had to be so careful editing this video.
13:48 I mean, I haven't done it yet because I actually have to do this bit to do that bit, but I
13:53 will.
13:54 I will have been careful and you will have noticed by this point in the video.
13:57 So with the risks of being sued, hurting relationships with broadcasters or brand partners, it means
14:02 you've got to have regulations in place when it comes to this stuff.
14:07 Like pre-contract testing to root out blood-borne infections, but also a zero-tolerance policy
14:13 to the act itself.
14:14 WWF have enforced that with fines, like when Batista bladed against Jericho in a steel
14:20 cage match on Raw, for which he not only got slapped with a band-aid, but also a $100,000
14:26 fine.
14:27 And you've just got to think, did it make the wrestling better?
14:33 Did the mass transit incident make that match any better?
14:37 Was Batista's blade jobs $100,000 worth of drama?
14:42 Is it actually good wrestling?
14:46 Is it Luke?
14:47 Errr, no.
14:48 By the late 1940s we'd begun to see a handful of boys who regularly used blood in their
14:56 matches, and they used it for one simple reason.
14:59 They couldn't do anything else.
15:02 It was the cheapest way of attracting attention, but it worked and it was a way for them to
15:07 stay employed.
15:08 And in a world of PG wrestling on mainstream TV, blood has been deployed to good effect
15:13 by the likes of AEW to differentiate themselves from their closest competitor.
15:19 Cody with his flare blonde hair has been dying it red on the reg just like Ric did.
15:24 You've got Joey Janela in his predilections for thumbtacks and a champion in Jon Moxley
15:30 who left WWE exactly so he could go back to this hardcore style of wrestling.
15:36 And yeah a lot of the times that blood is hard way, but this certainly wasn't.
15:40 It's one of the most powerful moments of wrestling storytelling for a good few years.
15:45 Naturally Vince McMahon slammed them for the blood and guts and gory things they've been
15:49 doing, but since then WWE popped somebody's eye out on pay-per-view, so it's the pot
15:54 calling the kettle black.
15:55 And it just proves that the impact of this more extreme violence hasn't exactly gone
16:01 unnoticed by WWE.
16:03 Because like I said earlier there's just something powerful about blood, some primal
16:08 responses the sight of it provokes in us, one that won't let us look away.
16:13 Psychiatrist Dr David Henderson said that this plays into our response to tragedy.
16:17 He said "Witnessing violence and destruction, whether it's in a novel, a movie, on TV,
16:23 or in a real-life scene playing out in front of us in real time, it gives us the opportunity
16:28 to confront our fears of death, pain, despair, degradation and annihilation while still feeling
16:35 some level of safety.
16:37 We watch because we are allowed to ask ourselves ultimate questions with an intensity of emotion
16:43 that is uncoupled from the true reality of the disaster.
16:47 If I was in that situation, what would I do?
16:50 We play out the different scenarios in our head because it helps us to reconcile that
16:54 which is uncontrollable and our need to remain in control."
16:59 Then you chuck into that roiling cauldron of emotions what psychologists call the negative
17:04 bias.
17:05 As psychologist Dr Rene Carr put it "Negative bias is the tendency to automatically give
17:11 more attention to a negative event and negative information than positive information or events."
17:17 Which a cursory glance at the YouTube analytics for the WrestleTalk News episodes would prove.
17:22 The more negative the headline, generally speaking, the more views.
17:26 It's also meant the instances where wrestlers have bladed, or at least bled, become lasting
17:31 memories.
17:32 Whether it's Austin passing out in the sharpshooter, Eddie Guerrero pouring pints against JBL or
17:38 that image of Dustin Rhodes crying out covered in blood which is seared into my mind.
17:46 Sociologist Emil Durkheim posited that blood was one of the bases of human religious experience,
17:53 that our earliest ancestors would create totems with it or paint their histories with it and
17:58 that this has trickled down to all of our social and spiritual existences.
18:03 There's something almost poetic and almost certainly gross about blading's legacy in
18:09 wrestling.
18:10 As wrestler Damien Demento wrote to his New York State Senator in order to pressure them
18:14 to ban blading.
18:16 "Sadly, many wrestlers feel this practice is a tradition and feel a kinship to the business
18:21 if they perform this."
18:23 So it's a ritual, in a kind of macabre witchy Bray Wyatt mould.
18:28 You could show more dedication to your craft than giving your blood for it, to bleed onto
18:33 the same canvas your forebears did, to become part of the fraternity.
18:38 And just to bring it all back to why that is not a good thing, Carla said this.
18:43 "As a medical professional, no.
18:46 There is no place for blading within wrestling."
18:50 But then she said.
18:51 "Ultimately, the medical professional in me overrides it all and I would say no.
18:56 But as a wrestling fan, if I was just a wrestling fan, I wouldn't like to see it every show,
19:02 I wouldn't like to see it used too often.
19:04 But occasionally, when it's just a shock and you just think, 'wow, oh my goodness',
19:10 it really can enhance the story."
19:13 And isn't that kind of what all of wrestling is?
19:15 Like a conflict between the head and the heart?
19:19 Of knowing you shouldn't enjoy something and that you should really look away, but
19:23 not being able to tear your eyes from the ring for even a moment.
19:27 Of screaming 'please don't die' and 'holy shit' as someone does something
19:31 you know deep down is monumentally stupid for the purposes of your entertainment and
19:38 fuck me are you not entertained but you're also seriously considering calling an ambulance.
19:44 And then you know in the back of your mind that if done correctly, as is the case with
19:48 most wrestling, people shouldn't actually be badly hurt.
19:51 So then when it comes to blading and the very real risks involved, not just for the performers,
19:56 but everyone involved in the show right down to the audience, you have to think it's
20:01 probably too real for modern wrestling.
20:11 Thank you so much for watching this video, if you liked it please give it a thumbs up
20:14 or share it around on social media and reddit as that would really help us out.
20:19 Leave a comment down below answering the question whether you think there's a place for blading
20:22 in modern wrestling and let's keep the conversation going.
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21:18 So thanks again for watching and if you're new to Explained or just looking for something
21:22 to watch, why not check out the videos I did earlier this year, like this one on the creation
21:28 of The Fiend where I spoke to the amazing artist who helped design the mask, or this
21:33 one on Green Mist and its mystical origins.
21:40 Until next time, Jam That Jam.