Further to the brief discussion today as to if Haystacks cut himself of used fake blood I ask how many bloody bouts were real cuts with a blade and how many were not. We know wrestlers werent paid a great deal and I wonder if they got a few quid more if they did cut themselves? The cuting would have had to be done very quickly so there was absolutely no gaurantee the cut wouldnt need a stitch or two afterwards which would have ment a long wait in Casualty, and we all know how much fun that is! And lets not forget it takes a lot of bottle to take a razor blade to your own head or even let the ref do it. I know it did happen a fair bit but I wonder how much?
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During this lockdown period I wouldn't want a razor within two metres of my knackers; although I believe that it may be one metre by July 4th!
Am I the only one here who thinks jumping around a wrestling ring with a razor blade in your trunks has to be the most frightening thing ever? I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want a razor within a mile of my knackers!
It was probably more of a nick market than a niche market. As I have stated before on this topic, and has also been stated this time around, I never heard of capsules or fake blood being used. Certainly, on my shows, it was the nick of a razor blade done usually by the wrestler to himself or by the referee bending over the downed wrestler seeming to examine the severity of the bleeding but actually causing it. The most common way a wrestler would nick himself would be with a skirmish developing at ringside with one wrestler smashing his opponent face first into the corner post then returning to the ring where he and the referee would get into an argument, often with a little bit of pushing, which would take the attention of the crowd. The fallen wrestler would fall under the ring covering where the blade would be waiting for him, give himself a quick nick, rub it in and emerge from under the ring a bloody mess.
I forget the name of the wrestler who enjoyed bleeding the most on my shows but he was a Blackpool lad who would travel up with Bobby Barron and wrestled for me as Omar Khyam; a sort of Kung Fu figure without the mask. He really got off on it.
I think it happened more in UK wrestling in the 1990s with the newer fledgling Promotions as we started to see companies such as ECW, CZW in the states , death matches in Japan, and even hardcore matches in WWF &WCW. One or two Promotions had a go in this country but it's a niche market and soon becomes boring and has very little to do with wrestling, but it seemed for a while that blood seemed to be a regular occurrence on shows in the 1990s, I probably saw it on around 15% of shows, which I believe is high.
There are of course horror stories of people making a mess of "blading" and needing stitches afterwards.
I remember as a younger man (probably late teens) making a mess of shaving with a safety razor, cutting my chin, and due to my face being wet, the blood quickly ran down my neck and it looked bad. The cut was really just a tiny "nick".
Years later I realised that the vast majority of cuts in wrestlng (real ones) occured when the wrestler had been wrestling for a while and was sweating profusely. A small cut would look like a huge gash, and people would have blood running down their face.
Of course, it would also lead people to think "hmmm that guy took smacks to the face with no sign of a fat lip or a bleeding nose or a black eye, and yet he seems to have badly gashed his forehead....hmmmm..."
Not sure, but I think this has been covered in a previous topic some time back.
It was not as bad as one would assume! I was on the same bill as a wrestler, who I will not name and he was showing us in the dressing room how he manages it:
He would have a one-sided razor blade taped, so that only the tip of one end would be showing. This he placed then in a small inside pocket in his trunks.
The cut to the forehead would be very minimal, but of course the amount of blood would be very efectful.
Cheers & keep well
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I do not know how prevalent blading was in England, but I don't think the cut is as dramatic as you think. If you've ever nicked yourself shaving you'll know how much blood can appear from a small cut. Some wrestlers have a few drinks beforehand to thin their blood or take a couple of aspirin. Others cut the accumulated scar tissue. Some bleed hard way without a blade.