#4 Freddie Blassie vs. Rikidozan - July 25, 1962
Very few copies of this match exist today. But if any wrestler got the reaction that Blassie and Rikidozan got, they’d be fired faster than you can say ‘blade job’.
Back in the days when Freddie Blassie was an active wrestler, he was one of the many ‘evil foreign heels’ that tried to defeat Rikidozan, the man now known as the Father of Puroresu. To sell his viciousness to the audience, Blassie had filed his teeth before the match, and during the actual bout, he made it look like he had bitten into Rikidozan’s forehead.
Shortly afterwards, Rikidozan bladed and Blassie created the illusion that he was an actual vampire (which was a nickname the Japanese press had given him) that was drinking his opponent’s blood.
Though this would be considered hokey (not to mention extremely risky from a health perspective) in today’s WWE, this match gained infamy in Japan because it was alleged that numerous senior citizens that were watching this match suffered heart attacks and died after watching the bloodbath unfold.
If WWE were to do something that was to cause a fan watching to have a heart attack, it would bear serious consequences for the company. Most critics of wrestling are quick to point out negatives and tend to overemphasize wrestling’s dark side instead of highlighting the good things wrestlers do and the stories they tell.
Even if one elderly fan suffered a heart attack while watching a WWE show, the media would be all over it, blaming WWE for this instead of that person themselves. And just like that, WWE would witness more bad publicity and Vince McMahon would be out for blood himself (metaphorically-speaking, of course) and would thus fire someone for doing something like this.
Teddy Long snaps when Swerve Strickland's race is brought up HERE
