AEW Remains Devoted to the Way of the Blade
Some Thoughts on Why Red in Wrestling Still Matters
I remember the first time I saw blood in a professional wrestling ring. Dusty Rhodes had been betrayed by Ole Anderson and left in a heap in the Omni. On television he came out with bandages on his forehead, prompting a fierce playground argument at my school about whether professional wrestling was on the up-and-up.
As much as we hated to admit it, this shit was rigged. That was the consensus, at least, of the young fans gathered around the swingset on a Monday morning after the attack aired. The case against pro wrestling as sport was strong indeed.
Even as elementary school kids, most of us had noted some of wrestling’s logical flaws—most prominently the way pro wrestlers managed to punch each other in the face repeatedly without leaving a single mark of any kind. Boxers, by contrast, wore their blues on their faces, noses, lips and eyes left disfigured by their violent trade. They also didn’t need to comically stomp their feet in sync with each blow.
There was just one problem: the cage match. When wrestlers settled their differences behind the steel fence, blood flowed. Some claimed it was ketchup or a Hollywood blood packet. But my friend Tyler’s uncle had been ringside at the Township once and seen the blood dripping from Greg Valentine’s forehead. That couldn’t have been fake. He’d swear to it—and the man was a middle school football coach who rode a motorcycle and wore a mustache, an authority figure on all things masculine if there ever was one. If he said the blood was real, it was. As simple as that.
Scars were created and bloomed as well, leaving some men like Abdullah the Butcher and Bruiser Brody damaged for life. Even Dusty had a forehead full of them, a horrific road map that filled in the story of his professional life, a tale written in crimson.
That, the panel eventually concluded, could not be fake. There were, it seemed, some issues between wrestlers that couldn’t be settled through a cooperative show or a regular match on the SuperStation. Some beefs were so fierce that they required payment in blood. And those matches? Those were as real as it gets.
More than 40 years later, decades after Vince McMahon went to court to say wrestling was predetermined and a bevy of behemoths, muscle turning soft after the business had taken all it could from them, revealed the secrets of the trade in shoot interviews, there remain matches that can bring that feeling back. That can make even the most jaded fan wonder, if only for a moment, if this ridiculous pantomime isn’t real after all?
Most of those matches, on the national scene at least, happen in All Elite Wrestling. WWE, years ago, swore off blood, going so far as to zoom the camera out at the sight of even a drop of the stuff, like a glimpse of it would so offend the families they were courting that they would immediately change the channel en masse for a repeat of Arthur on PBS.
And, look, they weren’t wrong. Blood in wrestling is real, the product of subterfuge and a sliver of razor blade, barbarism in the name of art. Do I love it? Yes. Do I realize it comes at a human cost? Again, yes.
But so does wrestling generally, as witnessed by the bottles of pain pills and piles of broken bodies the business leaves in its wake. Wrestling is violent theater and no one who participates in it will the leave the industry intact.
That’s the price paid for our entertainment, something you’ll never forget if you’ve ever been backstage at a show and seen the physical toll these matches take on the participants long after the crowd has stopped cheering. You can either stomach it or you can’t. It’s the nature of the beast, and the beast will always need fed.
I digress.
Even if they can’t intellectualize why, blood makes nearly every fan sit up and take note. It’s visceral, universal and more than a mere visual effect. The crimson mask is a wrestler’s life force slowly leaking from their body. It, by its very nature, adds gravitas, even to something as potentially trivial as people pretending to fight.
When done right, blood raises the stakes of these human car crashes. Comedy can turn deadly serious with the single swipe of a blade, adding an instant clarity to the proceedings. “Oh yeah,” the flowing blood says, “this is serious business.”
When done wrong? Well, it’s still pretty gnarly and rad. Adding blood to a professional wrestling match is like putting cheese on french fries—it’s hard to have too much of it. Not every match needs to end with the mat soaked in red. But some do. And, when it doesn’t happen, something feels missing.
AEW owner Tony Khan understands that. Like many reading this right now, he’s all in on wrestling, a product of the message boards our authors created and the matches they promoted there, many of them bloody showcases for violent excess. AEW opened with an unforgettable bloodbath between the Rhodes brothers and the tradition has survived the years. It’s a welcome return to wrestling’s roots and, arguably, Khan’s greatest contribution to the culture.
Last night, Swerve Strickland and “Hangman” Adam Page added to the promotion’s red-tinged legacy of gore. This wasn’t your grandfather’s bloodbath. After all, I don’t remember Ole Anderson opening his mouth to drink directly from Dusty’s forehead the way Page did against Swerve—the claret synonym more apropos that ever.
But even the most hoary traditions can use a little updating from time to time.
Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.