Most gruesome sports injuries?

Now THAT is a hematoma!

 

For me it's"
1) Mallarchuk - not just the blood pooling, but the blood shooting out of his neck, plus the rarity
2) Prothro - the short sock allows his ankle to dangle just a little too much
3) McCallum - the leg just was not supposed to bend like that

Where Zanardi and other car wrecks fall short is that you physically don't see anything happen to the boddy, I guess. It is usually a spectacular/catastrophic (I have a hard time separating the two in car racing) event, but you don't see blood shooting out of his neck, or the leg bending in three directions. It's the crash and then worst case the guy being airlifted.

 

Back in 1999 a magazine did its list of the 20 "gnarliest" sports injuries of all-time (question - are gnarly and gruesome synonyms?)

20. Aug. 22, 1965- Juan Marchial hitting Johnny Roseboro over the head with his bat
19. Sept.27, 1988 - Greg Louganis hitting the diving board with his head during preliminaries at the Seoul Olympics
18. Oct. 26, 1997 -during a massive tug-of-war event in Taipei featuring 1600 people, two Taiswanese men - Yang Chung-ming and Chen Ming-kuo had their arms ripped from their sockets when the rop snapped. An additional 45 people were injured in the mishap.
17. June 16, 1983 - Luis Resto vs. Billy Ray Collins Jr. Resto's trainer (Carlos "Panama" Lewis) removed the padding from Resto's gloves. By the end of the fight Collins was left partially blind in one eye. Resto and his trainer were banned from boxing and served 2.5 years in prison for assault, conspiracy and possession of a deadly weapon.
16. oct. 6, 1951. Mickey Mantle blowing his right knee out on a sprinkler at Yankee Stadium chasing a fly ball.
15. July 14,1970 - Pete Rose plowing down Ray Fosse.. separating Fosse's shoulder
14. Aug. 23, 1997 - Troy Flavell got caught shoving his thumb deep into the eye socket of Steve Skinnon during an Australian rugby match (can't find the photo online, but it's in the magazine). Skinnon suffered no permanent eye damage and Flavell's year long suspension was reduced to three weeks.
13. June 28, 1997 - Tyson takes a bit out of Hollyfield's ear.
12. Aug. 18, 1967 - Tony Conigliaro hit in the face with a curveball from Jack Hamilton
11. Nov. 20, 1960 - The Eagles' Chuck Bednarik blindsides Frank Gifford. Gifford was out cold for 20 hours.
10. Feb. 24, 1961 - Lee Petty's car goes airborne during a crash at Daytona. Petty's doctors were picking glass out of his eyes. He also had a splintered leg, punctured lung, broken ribs and a tremendous loss of blood.
9. Aug. 15, 1989 - Dave Dravecky's arm breaking
8. March 22, 1989 - Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuck takes a skate across the neck when St. Louis Blues Steve Tuttle rushed him. The skate cut Malarchuck's jugular vein. Thanks to the quick work of the trainer and team physician, he was back in net 11 days later with 300 stitches.
7. April 8, 1996 - Premier League soccer. David Busst and Denis Irwin clash going for a loose ball. The collision snapped the tibia and fibula in Busst's right leg in two. It took nine minutes for groundskeepers to wash Busst's blood from the field. The bones had to be manipulated back into his leg and straightened before the splint could be put on and painkillers administered.
6. Dec. 27, 1980 - John Tonelli checks Mark Howe into the goal, knocking it off its support, and Howe's anus was impaled on the exposed post. He lost 3.5 pints of blood on the ice. He was taken to the hospital screaming with dad Gordie holding his hand. A year later he was back on the ice, but suffered from a "pain in the ass" for five years.
5. March 28, 1950 - Gordie Howe fractures his nose, cheekbone and skull when he flew headfirst into wooden molding above the boards while trying to check Ted Kennedy. He was unconscious on the ice in a pool of blood and spinal fluid seeping into his brain. After emergency surgery and a quick recovery he was on the ice just a few weeks later.
4. Jan. 22, 1989 - Bengals' Tim Krumrie breaks his leg in the first quarter of the Super Bowl while helping to tackle Roger Craig. Since he wasn't allowed to play with a broken leg, he watched the rest of the game from a stretcher in the locker room, having a couple of beers before going to the hospital.
3. Dec. 9, 1977 - Rudy Tomjanovich vs. Kermith Washington's roundhouse right.
2. Sept. 16, 1993- Moises Alou dislocating his ankle and fracturing his fibula
1. Nov. 18, 1985 - Joe Theisman meets LT

 

Now that's gnarly.

 

I watched this fight, it was on the undercard of the Duran-Davey Moore fight at MSG.

Collins, a decent prospect at the time, looked like he'd been worked over with a baseball bat by the end of the fight. He died a couple of years later, driving his car off a cliff in what many view as a suicide. It is an absolute fucking disgrace that Lewis is able to work with fighters in Europe. Don't get me started on what he had in one of Aaron Pryor's water bottles in his first fight with Arguello....

 

I'm sorry...any most-gruesome injuries list that has neither McCallum's nor Kendall's injuries ain't a true list.

 

And Rudy T?

The result was nasty.

But it didn't have the reality-defying grossness of any number of these mishaps.

 

And then stomping it into the ground (or bag, I forget) on his next step. Guh-ross.

 

For the list I posted... it looks like Kendall's injury happened after the magazine went to press. McCallum's injury happened four years after the magazine published its list.
Also for the list I posted, are "gnarly" injuries the same as gruesome ones?

 

Our wire didn't have anything on Prothro and a soundless TV showed PTI giving a "Happy Trails" to him. Is his career officially over?

McCallum's injury still makes me shudder. Prothro's was nasty, too. Those are the top two for me.

 

I have read a ton of stories about this, heard Bednarik talk about it and others say it was the worst decleating they've ever seen on a football field.

But I've never seen it.

I could have sworn McCallum's thermonuclear injury (it was on MNF Labor Day, if I remember right) was in 1994. It's up there with Malarchuk's as the two worst on my list.

 

He's on "medical scholarship", which apparently means he's done.