Ten Sentences: The Crimson Mask

Watching Last Man Standing on Sunday, which was just superb, the one thing that continued to permeate my brain was that this kind of match, on any level, needed a sense of the "real" to add the extra level of drama.

Accidental color isn't the same as the tried and true methods and you have to wonder if a guy like Triple H, who felt compelled to gig in so many matches throughout his illustrious career, ever watches and wishes that mentality still existed in his company.

It's hard to watch heads bounce off tables and steps and weapons of the opponents for a half hour and not see blood because ONE of those kind of shots to the cranium would open up most people in most situations.

Blood in many ways was overused during the attitude era, in the same way trash can lids and cookie sheets were, but in moderation, everything can enhance a match in certain situations.

There's another school of thought though that accurately depicts the kind of color that so many guys got in the decades leading up to and including the Attitude and Monday Night War era...and that belief structure sees unnecessary pain and barbarism in the practice.

In a vacuum, this opinion absolutely has merit, but maybe not for the reasons intended, because nothing should be decided based on tunnel vision.

Because Vince McMahon and the WWE have gone to painstaking lengths to remind us on a weekly basis that their product is "sports entertainment" and not a true competition, the idea of its now accurately described "actors" cutting themselves seems incredibly unnecessary and dangerous.

So I'm torn as I watch Three Stages of Hell from 2001 or the first Elimination Chamber match or the Foley/Triple H wars from 2000 and am engrossed in the "up a notch" sense of desperation that comes attached to all the blood of those high profile bouts.

With HIV and AIDS not in the news except in movie representations of the 1970s and 1980s and so many other diseases of similar variety out of the cycle or certainly below the newspaper fold, how big are today's risks considering physicals and other medical work-ups?

But then I remember driving with two workers to the emergency room, one that almost died from a bad blade job...couple that with the truth that the proverbial cat is out of its bag in terms of kayfabe and so many of the secrets are gone, is it worth it to potentially scar oneself when everyone watching knows it wasn't genuine?