Blading (professional wrestling)

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In professional wrestling, blading, is the practice of cutting oneself to provoke bleeding ("juicing"). Similarly, a blade is an object used for blading, and a bladejob is a specific act of blading. The blood in pro wrestling is almost never, as often suspected, theatrical makeup, but actual blood, and the scars borne by longtime pro wrestlers are real ones. The act is usually done a good length into the match as the blood will mix with the flowing sweat to make the wound look like much more blood is flowing from it than there actually is.

The forehead has always been the preferred blading surface, due to the abundance of blood vessels. A cut in this area will bleed freely for quite some time. It is also not uncommon for some wrestlers to consume aspirin before the match, in order to thin the blood and allow for more profuse bleeding.

In modern North American pro wrestling, blading is almost exclusively performed by and on male performers; blading of women is extremely rare due to the risk of adverse publicity and the increasing use of female performers as "eye candy".

Typically, a wrestler will use a razor or other blade hidden in the tape covering his fingers or part of his hand(s). However, the wrestler always runs the risk of cutting too deeply and slicing an artery in the forehead. This has happened several times; in one recent instance, Eddie Guerrero did this during the 2004 Judgment Day PPV, resulting in blood loss severe enough to affect him for the next two weeks of shows.

Perhaps the most famous such incident was a bladejob performed by Japanese wrestler The Great Muta in a 1992 match with Hiroshi Hase; the amount of blood Muta lost was so great that many smarks to this day judge the severity of bladejobs on the Muta Scale.

Another such incident was during an ECW house show when a young wrestler known as Mass Transit forged documents and lied to ECW General Manager Paul Heyman about his age and amount of training. He then asked his opponent, New Jack to blade him. According to New Jack himself on the Forever Hardcore DVD he did it deliberately because he didn't tell him specifically what he wanted and because he plain didn't like the guy.

Some wrestlers like *Abdullah The Butcher, *Dusty Rhodes and Devon Hughes (Brother Devon / D-Von Dudley) have massive,disfiguring scars on their heads from frequently blading throughout their careers.