By Dominic Arthur, Senior Reporter.
Imagine watching “The Walking Dead,” and nobody bleeds and zombies don’t explode across your screen. Sounds boring, right? Television shows and movies, which feature an array of gory goodness, are popular because the entertainment industry has trained viewers to believe that a certain movie or television show isn’t good until some blood and guts are shown. This is similar to journalism in the sense that “if it bleeds, it leads,” and the same can be said about your favorite show as writers, directors and producers use gore as a way to keep audiences engaged.
Deathmatch wrestling — and blood, in general — started because fans thought dropping someone on their head just wasn’t enough. Deathmatch wrestling involves no rules, as many household or foreign objects as one can find, and the fortitude to want to give and receive kayfabe-breaking, concussion-inducing blows from said weapons (search Combat Zone Wrestling, CZW, to see what I’m talking about). Deathmatch wrestling was big in the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s with wrestlers like Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher and others because they were stapling, branding, and slamming opponents on thumbtacks (search Extreme Championship Wrestling, ECW, for another example of this style).
Fans ate it up, and constantly wanted to see the wrestlers bloody themselves up in a sick, sometimes uncomfortable, to watch way because it made the matches and the storyline more intense and “real.” It’s no secret that, more often than not, the wrestler themselves or their opponent would take a small piece of a razorblade (often provided by the referee, or tucked in their tape) to “blade,” but it wasn’t until the last 10 years that the professional wrestling industry moved away from the blood and gore of yesteryear, and into a new direction when matches are stopped when wrestlers get “color” the “hard way” due to an alarming concern of talent transmitting diseases (see Abdullah the Butcher’s Hepatitis C court case).
Now, talent are fined when they’re caught blading in the ring, and promoters are no longer pushing for their stars to go out and bleed to elevate the story being told. The decision to get rid of blood in the ring has created a lot of controversy because a majority of the “extreme fans” want to see what they saw from the “best bleeders” in the past. They want to see bloodstained faces and mats because it makes these over-the-top, untouchable characters, human.
The current products decision to stop matches when talent are “busted open” the hard way is smart because it prevents diseases from being spread that may have gone unnoticed, and it saves the talent from future health issues. Professional wrestling is a tough business to begin with, as talent are constantly walking a tightrope when they get in the squared circle. Accidents can happen in an instant where careers and lives can end for the sake of entertainment.
The professional wrestling industry and its fans — along with the entertainment industry as a whole — should look past the idea of blood and guts because it’s a cheap way to keep audiences engaged as writers and producers should be able to create engaging enough characters to do that. If there were more focus on the story and character development, there wouldn’t be a need to have blood drawn to “get over” with audiences as they’d invest themselves in the character and storyline.