The Best Badge of Honor Scars in Sports
Not for the squeamish. Or the dishonorable.
When England takes on Ukraine in a World Cup Qualifier tomorrow they’ll be without Wayne Rooney, the goal-scorer who has been in the middle of a bit of a stormy transfer window. However, it’s not his team status or soccer politics that is keeping him out of the squad; it’s the giant nightmare gash that he procured on his recently-plugged head in a collision with a teammate in practice.
The cut should leave something of a scar down Rooney’s forehead, striking fear into the hearts of his opponents. Well, at least the ones who haven’t realized this yet. Here are a few other guys who wear their pain on their sleeve (and also on their face).
Ronnie Lott
Remember when you were going through the mail and you got that nasty paper cut, but you decided to finish going through it because you only had like two envelopes left to open? Well, you essentially did what football player Ronnie Lott did, except, like one billion times less badass. In 1986, a doctor gave him two choices on how to handle his repeatedly mangled pinky finger – he could get surgery to repair it and sit out some games, or they could straight cut it off. Did he choose the sensible option, to have his finger fixed and rehabbed? We’ll answer that question with a question – do you think he’d be on this list if he had?
Abdullah the Butcher
(Photo via Wikipedia Commons/ Marty555)
When you’re talking scars, you can pretty much choose any wrestler out of a hat and have them be a shining example of scarring, but Abdullah the Butcher takes this to a new level. He looks more like he repeated fell headfirst onto a buzzsaw, instead of just razor-blading his head. As the story goes, he would stick poker chips into the scars to entertain people at casinos. Oh, sorry, did we say entertain? We meant repulse and horrify.
Kevin Ware
(Photo via Instagram/)https://www.instagram.com/p/agKHiwoRZ4
Last year’s most famous horrifically injured basketball player, whose March Madness was really and truly mad, recently took to Instagram to reveal the scar left over from the compound fracture and numerous surgeries that most likely made him half-cyborg.
BorjeSalming
This former NHLer, whose name sounds like either a doom metal band or a pickled fish delicacy, got sliced up like a horror movie victim during a 1986 game. He was checked into his opponent’s net, only to take a face-full of icy cold skate blade. Unfortunately, Borje elected to get reconstructive surgery on his face (after he got the 200 stitches taken out, of course) instead of skating around like a huge badass. This would have never happened if he took advice from this guy.
Clint Malarchuk
What could be worse than getting a hockey blade directly to your face, right? Oh, apparently getting one right across the neck. Yeah, that’s way worse. It seems that when you make a sport where people move around very quickly and hit each other while wearing razor-sharp knives on their feet, something bad is bound to happen. Oh well, at least he was ok and it never happened again. Wait, WHAT? CANCEL HOCKEY IMMEDIATELY.
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