Blood in Wrestling… Good or Bad? – The Wrestling EstatE

Masochists rejoice! In this week’s roundtable, The Wrestling Estate staff discusses the finer points of blood in wrestling.

Does blood have a place in modern wrestling?

Steven Jackson

I feel blood has a place in pro-wrestling, just as it does in any sport or entertainment medium. Granted, you need to moderate it, for not only the entertainment aspect, but more importantly, the health and safety implications. But yeah, used in the right way, blood can elevate a match to a whole new level.

Russ Good

For the reasons Jon Moxley mentioned and more, yes! I love surprise blood, because it reminds viewers that this is both a combat sport and a choreographed fight, but with the emphasis on fight. They’re still moves that can very easily become dangerous, and a miscalculation that results in a boot to the face, impacted teeth, or a spot of blood cements that fact.

Even when the blood is intentional, it often adds to the story the performers are trying to tell. Not just bleeding for the sake of a cool visual, but to impress upon us the high stakes of every contest.

Harvey Garcia

Blood always has a place in pro wrestling. It’s a dangerous sport. People can bleed from the head, nose, and mouth area doing what they do. It comes with the territory.

Jack Goodwillie

Absolutely. I sort of debated this with one of my old colleagues at Wrestling Inc. last week on Twitter, but without spoiling the rest of my answers, it’s like anything else in life: it’s great… in moderation. I’m a huge MMA fan. I make no bones about the fact that I cover MMA on the side over at MMA Sucka. If you’re a wrestling fan who can’t get enough of blood, tune into ESPN+ on a Saturday afternoon and you will see men AND women spill buckets of blood over a five or six-hour stretch.

In wrestling, the use of color can add a lot to a match, but too much can take away from it too.

John Corrigan

As long as pro wrestling exists, blood will always have a place in it. When used correctly (and sparingly), it’s still effective at telling a story or getting someone over.

How much blood is too much?

Steven Jackson

“Too much” blood is really hard to decipher. Probably ‘too far’ is what I would say and that’s when it’s putting a wrestler, or wrestler’s life in danger. Eddie Guerrero at Judgment Day 2004 and David Arquette at GCW LA Confidential stand out to me in answer to that.

Russ Good

There was a Supreme Court Justice who, when asked to describe his ruling on an obscenity-based case, replied, “I know it when I see it.” I feel like that standard can be applied here, too. Like, Rhodes versus Rhodes at Double or Nothing 2019? That’s me seeing it. Your mileage may vary.

I realize that the amount of blood that’s gonna come out of you based on a random cut with a razor or an accidental strike is unknowable, but there’s definitely a point where it’s simply uncomfortable to watch. And this is coming from a guy who primarily watches horror movies – you’d think I’d be immune to copious amounts of bloodshed!

Harvey Garcia

There is too much that is easy to spot, such as the stupid guys squirting blood from light tube cuts. It’s also when the blood is viscous like a dip for fries or lumpia. But too much for me is also just too often on one single card. My cap is about 1 in every 3 matches. I’m okay with blood, but I don’t look for it.

Jack Goodwillie

This is a difficult thing to quantify, but grudge matches and high-leverage title matches can certainly warrant it. On one hand, you might have two wrestlers competing in a high-stakes athletic contest. If someone gets busted open, it could change the entire complexion of the match. On the other hand, two guys or girls with a score to settle with one another are going to try and maim each other if given the opportunity. Sometimes, a match can exist for the sole purpose of two guys bleeding out in the squared circle. Typically, when you see two wrestlers come to the ring wearing nothing but white, like that BJ Whitmer-Steve Corino match from Ring of Honor seven or eight years ago, get ready to see red – literally.

John Corrigan

Moxley bleeding every week isn’t too much because that’s his calling card now, but if every wrestler in every match was bleeding every week, that would be too much.

Thoughts on Jon Moxley’s take that blood should be in every match?

Steven Jackson

I agree wrestling is a combat sport, but not every combat sport has blood spilled during every encounter. The human body doesn’t work like that. If you want to get ‘colour’, it’s no issue with me. Just know that all you’re doing is affecting your own health and body with it, as well as your opponents.

Russ Good

It’s hard to disagree with Mox on anything involving wrestling, especially when my experience is from my couch or the stands, and Moxley’s is in the middle of a ring. However, I’ve always used the comparison of an action movie – it’s cool, it’s planned to look as cool as it does, and it minimizes risk to the performers.

Blood in every match is a little overkill – there isn’t even blood in every UFC or boxing match, even those that end in a knockout! The human body is a pretty squishy thing, honestly, but it does have some resistance built in, more so for folks who actively take strikes on a daily basis.

But, on the other side of that argument are guys like Mox and Ric Flair. Guys who simply bleed a lot. Plenty of folks are built that way too, and for them blood is just a part of the match. That’s fine too – a balance between blood and just fun matches is probably the best approach.

Harvey Garcia

Pro wrestling is both a sport and a show. I think many people focus too much on the showbiz of it, that it undermines that what wrestlers do to each other is a sport you have to professionally train for.

I think what Moxley is arguing for is that all matches should have the potential for blood. Maybe it’s unlikely that a card will ever have a 100% bleeding rate, but he’s positing that blood shouldn’t be “reserved” for special occasions. Or in his words, “less blood but more often.” And I agree with the idea, but I’d prefer a pro wrestling world where I’m not expecting blood.

Jack Goodwillie

I don’t agree with Mox, but I see his point. I, like Mox, like wrestling that suspends my disbelief. However, there are plenty of ways to do that without having to spill blood night in and night out. Sure, if this was real, wrestlers could be susceptible to getting cut at any given time. But that’s just it – Moxley called wrestling a combat sport. Pro wrestling is not a combat sport. It is a contact sport and a performance, and too much blood can take away from those big moments where blood really enhanced it. Think about the visual of Austin passing out from Bret Hart’s sharpshooter at WrestleMania XIII. How would that moment be remembered if the fans had seen blood in every match that preceded it? It probably wouldn’t remembered in quite the same favorable light.

I think a lot of these guys, maybe even Moxley included fancy themselves more as fighters than wrestlers. If that’s the case, I can think of plenty of MMA promoters who, as The Ultimate Warrior once said in regard to a potential MMA fight, “help them fulfill their fantasy.” But I see no reason to make blood more than a delicacy in pro wrestling.

John Corrigan

While I follow Mox’s logic, I don’t agree that there should be blood in every match. While pro wrestling is a contact sport, some matches follow the Greco-Roman or amateur style, in which grappling and submissions take precedence over punching and kicking. Blood wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be necessary in those instances. On the other hand, someone should get busted open in every single steel cage match from now to the end of time.

Hard-Way or Blade?

Steven Jackson

Russ Good

As a guy who has only ever bled hard-way (I do not wrestle, to be clear) that seems more…natural? I appreciate both methods, and it seems like it’s a results-based kind of choice. It’s gonna be pretty uncomfortable either way.

Harvey Garcia

Blading makes no sense. I get wrestling is a spectacle, but bringing a blade with you expecting the other guy to pummel you enough that you’ll then cut yourself open “for the visual” is such a weird concept. So I guess I prefer the one that’s not that.

Jack Goodwillie

Blades. As I mentioned, wrestling is not a combat sport, so when I think of that time when Brock Lesnar tried to hard-way Randy Orton by smashing him repeatedly with the point of his elbow, I have to laugh. It just seems stupid and impractical to take that kind of unnecessary punishment when there is a totally valid way to get color otherwise. Some guys may thrive off that type of thing, but if I were Orton in that equation, I would shy away from that type of thing at all costs.

John Corrigan

I can’t tell the difference so blading is probably safer.

What examples of blood in wrestling stick out to you the most?

Steven Jackson

Russ Good

Oh boy, Eddie Guerrero versus John “Bradshaw” Layfield at Judgment Day 2004 stands out not just for the blood, but for the amount of time after the bleeding that the match went on. Eddie ate a brutal chair shot and still chose to blade to sell it, and he apparently hit the largest and most blood filled vein in his body because he was COVERED in crimson by the end.

Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard, mentioned by many of us at The Wrestling Estate in our “I Quit” roundtable, is another that used the blood and the stakes to really sell the desperation of the fight, and show the lengths both men would go to take home the title.

And Bret Hart battling “Stone Cold” Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13 is just an all-time great match, a technical wrestling masterpiece painted in blood. Audiences believed the two truly hated each other, and Austin’s defiant middle fingers before he succumbed to Hart’s Sharpshooter in a pool of blood is an ending scene to rival any action classic or anime standout.

Harvey Garcia

Blood was an integral part of Cody Rhodes v Dustin Rhodes at AEW’s first event. Similarly albeit to a greater extent, Pentagon Jr v Vampiro in the Ciero Miedo match was made by the blood. Both very different matches stylistically, but they stick out to me because the images of blood are emotionally charged. Cody wants to kill a past generation. Pentagon has to break arms for his master. But the men they battered don’t want to just bloody them back. They want something greater, they want a legacy.

I think this is what people mean when they say they want blood to feel special. But I remember these matches not because blood is rare, but because these matches made me care where the blood went.

Jack Goodwillie

Fun fact: Judgment Day is one of the bloodiest WWE pay-per-views of all time, hosting back-to-back crimson-covered main events that coincidentally both involved JBL. The former SmackDown pay-per-view played host to Eddie Guerrero vs. JBL in 2004 and John Cena vs. JBL in 2005, with both matches being for the WWE Championship. Both Eddie and Cena left a lot of blood in the arena in those matches, but at least Cena’s match was an I Quit match where blood was to be expected. Eddie may have hit an artery with his blade job and had to be rushed to “the local medical facility,” though he and Cena both recovered fully from the blood loss. The visual of both of them donning the crimson mask down their torsos really helped cement them both as babyfaces willing to go as far as they need to smack around heels like JBL.

I also have to point to WrestleMania XIX when Mr. McMahon took on Hulk Hogan in one of my favorite matches. That match needed blood. Plus, the visual of McMahon peering over the apron, steel pipe in hand, to literally put a dent in Hulkamania does not hit the same without blood dripping off his face. Hogan got a fair bit of color too, as much as he ever has, in fact.

John Corrigan

Eddie Guerrero basically dying at Judgement Day 2004 was gruesome. That’s the perfect example of why blood is still necessary in pro wrestling. It was a world title match with a seemingly dud challenger at the time (JBL, just a few weeks into his new gimmick) on a ho-hum post-WrestleMania pay-per-view, yet, Guerrero’s bloodbath still sticks in my memory. You could argue that the performance elevated both Guerrero to cult-like hero status and JBL to the main event level.

Also, the trickle of blood on Hulk Hogan’s chest after Andre the Giant ripped his cross and shirt was simple, yet effective at signifying how monumental their showdown — and Andre’s betrayal — was. The usually frantic Roddy Piper uttering, “You’re bleeding,” to his arch rival illustrated just how dramatic and different this whole situation was.

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