No matter how much you might despise the Manning brothers and take pleasure in their pain, no one likes to look at blood spewing from a human skull ‘ even if it is Eli Manning‘s head.
Or do you?
Can you keep your dinner down after witnessing knees shatter and pupils pop out? Are you the type to be fascinated or horrified by throats slit by hockey skates and faces crushed by line drives?
You be the judge, but proceed with caution. Here are 10 of the most grisly sports injuries ever.
The bloody, three-inch gash Manning received Monday during the Giants‘ preseason opener against the Jets is nothing compared to some of the sickening sports injuries athletes have endured on the field of battle. Eli’s 12 stitches really are child’s play, when placed up against the 250 sutures Maple Leafs defenseman Borje Salming got after Red Wings forward Gerard Gallant accidentally stepped on his face with a skate in 1986.
And that’s only the first item on this list.
10. Borje Salming stepped on by a skate
On Nov. 26, 1986, in a game against the Red Wings, Salming was knocked to the ice in the middle of a scramble and got the brunt of a misstep by Gallant. In the scuffle, Gallant was pushed back and accidentally stepped on Salming’s face with his skate. It took 250 stitches and facial surgery to close the gap running from the Swedish skater’s forehead to his chin. Though it was only one of many injuries Salming would suffer over his 18-year career with the NHL, it is by far is most remembered ‘ and most haunting.
See The Toronto Star’s photo of the 250 stitches that just miss Salming’s eye here.
9. Oupa Ngulube’s leg stomp
During a South African soccer game between the Mpumalanga Black Aces FC and the Carara Kicks, what started out as a regular 50-50 race to the ball down the sideline of the pitch transformed quickly into one of the most disturbing images of the human shin in sports. Felix Muamba-Musasa of the Black Aces went to step into the ball and got Ngulube’s leg instead, severing it in two places. Muamba-Musasa did issue an apology to his Kicks opponent, although it included him saying, ‘People should understand that soccer is a contact sport. At the end of the day, such accidents happen in the field of play.”
8. Bryce Florie clobbered by line drive
On Sept. 8, 2000, the Red Sox righty was the brutal victim of a line drive off the bat of the Yankees‘ Ryan Thompson at Fenway Park. The image of Florie crumbling to the ground and flailing his legs in pain speaks for itself. The baseball smashing into Florie’s face caused multiple broken bones ‘ a broken cheek bone and broken orbital socket ‘ plus severe eye damage. He was able to recover and return to the mound in 2001, but he only pitched in seven games before being released by the Sox midseason.
Speed up to see the line drive’s impact at 0:59.
7. Ewald Lienen’s thigh ripped to the bone
On Aug. 14, 1981, Lienen, a midfielder for the German soccer team Borussia Mönchengladbach, got the wrong side of someone’s soccer studs deep into his right thigh, leaving a gaping laceration exposing his muscle tissue and thigh bone. There’s no flopping in this reaction; as soon as Lienen gets a glimpse of his flesh, he is up and off the field running for assistance.
6. Jessica Dube clipped by partner’s skate
Figure skating isn’t always graceful. Just ask Canadian skater Jessica Dube. Dube was competing in the 2007 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships with partner Bryce Davidson, when Davidson accidentally kicked Dube’s face in the middle of their side-by-side flying camel spins and sliced her cheek and nose. Dube sustained a laceration through her left cheek and left side of her nose and underwent emergency facial surgery for the wounds.
5. Allan Ray’s eye-popping injury
Ray, playing for Villanova in the 1986 Big East Tournament, suffered a shocking eye injury in 2006. Pittsburgh’s Carl Krauser poked Ray in the eye, plucking his pupil from behind his eyelid. The footage is gruesome enough, even though it was later reported that Ray’s eyeball never actually came unhinged from its socket, as it appears to do. Ray would regain his vision and return to the court to play in the NCAA tournament and lead his team in scoring his next time out, suffering only mild soft tissue damage in the incident.
4. Napoleon McCallum’s knee sling shot
You’ll be rubbing your knee after you watch the Raiders running back’s leg get folded the wrong way in a pile of 49ers during a Monday Night Football game in 1994. Even the commentators say, ‘Don’t look at this if you don’t want to see it.’ Yet millions of fans would watch and rewind the image of McCallum’s knee snapping backwards as 49ers linebacker Ken Norton pulled him back just as McCallum tried to push his body forward. Doctors would diagnose McCallum’s career-ending injury, which simply resembled a limb dangling on a thread, as a knee dislocation coupled with a ruptured artery and four damaged ligaments.
3. The rocky landing of Shaun Livingston
Doctors figured the career of the Clippers guard was over when he landed on his knee the wrong way following a missed layup against the Bobcats on Feb. 26, 2007. However, he was allowed to resume playing basketball in 2008. Notorious for having a fragile frame to begin with, Livingston landed from his layup and his knee seemed to explode, resulting in a tear to his anterior cruciate ligament, his posterior cruciate ligament, his medial collateral ligament and his lateral meniscus.
2. Joe Theismann’s compound knee fracture
A sack by Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor brought the Redskins quarterback to his mangled knee, and his career to a halt on Nov. 18, 1985. One of the most famous injuries in football occurred during the Redskins’ attempt to run a flea-flicker. Needless to say, the defense caught on to the strategy and came hard after Theismann. Taylor sacked the QB and as his hip swung into Theismann’s lower right leg, he forced Theismann’s foot/mid-shin to lie flat on the ground, while the upper portion of Theismann’s shin to his knee bent into a 45-degree angle from the lower part of his leg ‘ fracturing both the tibia and fibula. Even Taylor was horrified by what he’d done; he screamed for medical attention as soon as he got out of the pileup.
1. Clint Malarchuk’s slashed throat
The six-inch gash that opened up Malarchuk’s interior carotid artery makes a splash on the grisly injury scene as one of the worst sports injuries ever witnessed. On March 22, 1989, in a game between Malarchuk’s Sabres and the visiting Blues, as St. Louis’ Steve Tuttle and Buffalo’s Uwe Krupp collided into the right post against Malarchuk, Tuttle’s skate caught the goaltender’s neck as the net skidded backward. The gasps and panic expressed by Sabres broadcasters Mike Robitaille and Ted Darling says it all, as they watch in horror as Malarchuk keels over with blood spurting from his throat. Somehow Malarchuk got up and off the blood-soaked ice with the help of trainer Jim Pizzutelli. It’s no surprise that Malarchuk was convinced he was going to die that night; he asked an equipment manager to tell his mother he loved her, and requested a priest’s presence.
