A list of the most gruesome, graphic, and most painful sports injuries ever

Happy Halloween!

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Sports can either be exhilarating or emotionally traumatizing. Today, for Halloween, we are talking about the latter.

Anyone who has watched sports for a few years has likely seen some injuries. A player tears an ACL has an Achilles pop maybe rolls their ankle or something like that. However, sometimes injuries are far more gruesome and nauseating than a simple run-of-the-mill ankle sprain. Sometimes, an injury is so extreme that it makes you want to turn off the TV and go to church to pray for the player that you’ve seen writhing in pain on the court, sideline, or field. Those will be the ones we highlight today.

It’s Halloween and this post is NOT for the faint of heart.

Recently, we saw Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott suffer a version of one of these injuries when he completely rolled his ankle, breaking it so that it was virtually sideways. No fun if you’re a Cowboy’s fan like Skip Bayless or Charlamagne Tha God and certainly no fun for Dak and his teammates. Fortunately, Dak is scheduled to make a full recovery like all of the other athletes on our list. So, while these will be very hard to look at, you can take solace in the fact that none of them were career-ending and ultimately, all the ballers came back to play the sports that they, and we, love.

1. Kevin Ware

Take, for example, former University of Louisville baller Kevin Ware. Kevin’s injury was one of the worst we’ve ever seen.

Kevin Ware suffered an open fracture of his tibia that left the bone sticking several inches out of his shin when he landed awkwardly after attempting to block a shot on March 31, 2013 against Duke.

Kevin recovered and finished his college career at Georgia State University.

2. Shaun Livingston

On February 26, 2007, Shaun Livingston dislocated his knee cap in a game against the Charlotte Bobcats. Not only did his dislocate his kneecap but ripped apart every single piece of his knee including the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), and the lateral meniscus, badly spraining his medial collateral ligament (MCL), and dislocating his patella and his tibio-fibular joint.

He almost had to have his leg amputated. Luckily, he did not and went on to win an NBA Championship with the Golden State Warriors in 2018.

3. Gordan Hayward

Gordan Hayward infamously broke his leg in game 1 of the 2017 NBA season against the Cleveland Cavaliers. It also marked his very first game as a Boston Celtic after being traded from the Utah Jazz the previous year. On October 17, 2017, Hayward fractured his tibia and dislocated his ankle. He has since made a full recovery.

4. Clint Malarchuk

Hockey goalie Clint Malarchuk suffered the bloodiest sports injury we’ve ever seen when in March 22, 1989 a skate slashed his carotid artery and instantly spilled ounces of blood onto the ice. He legitimately thought he was going to die and asked the team for a priest to read him his last rites. The sight of the injury affected everyone in the building as eleven fans to fainted, two more to had heart attacks, and three players vomited.

Malarchuk was saved by team medics. After getting 300 stitches to close the wound, Malarchuk returned to play just ten days later.

5. Anderson Silva

Anderson Silva broke his leg in a match against  Chris Weidman on December 28, 2013 when he was leg-checked in the second round. He required orthopedic surgery to stabilize his tibia and his fibula was reset. He made a full recovery months later.

6. Hasim Rahman

Cam’ron once rapped “…get your head rocked, man, like Hasim Rahman”. The quippy bar was inspired by a devastating knot that bulged from Rahman’s head after he was head-butted by Evander Holyfield.

7. Evander Holyfield

Speaking of Evander Holyfield, he suffered one of the strangest and most violent sports injuries we’ve ever seen when he had a piece of his ear bitten off by Mike Tyson. Everybody remembers this one.