Blading (professional wrestling)

In professional wrestling, blading is the practice of intentionally cutting oneself to provoke bleeding. It is also known as juicing, gigging, or getting color. Similarly, a blade is an object used for blading, and a bladejob is a specific act of blading. The act is usually done a good length into the match as the blood will mix with the flowing sweat to make it look like much more blood is flowing from the wound than there actually is. The preferred area for blading is usually the forehead, as scalp wounds bleed profusely and heal easily. Legitimate, unplanned bleeding which occurs outside the storyline is called juicing the hard way.

Prior to the advent of blading, most storyline blood in wrestling came from one wrestler deliberately splitting the flesh over their opponent's eyebrow bone with a well placed and forceful punch. In his third autobiography, The Hardcore Diaries, Mick Foley cites Terry Funk as one of the few remaining active wrestlers who knows how to "bust an eyebrow open" in this way. 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 and will heal quickly. A cut in this location will allow the blood to mix in with the sweat on the wrestler's face, giving them the proverbial "crimson mask" effect.

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 blade that is hidden somewhere on their body. The wrestler, however, always runs the risk of cutting too deeply and slicing an artery in the forehead. In 2004, Eddie Guerrero accidentally did this during his match with JBL at Judgment Day, resulting in a rush of blood pouring from the bladed area. Guerrero lost so much blood because of the cut that he felt the effects from it for two weeks.

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