14 DAY TRIAL // What better motivation can one find than to win in order to keep intact pieces of one’s body, like one’s ears. Even if the level of motivation was strong enough because of the competition rules and of the amount of alcohol ingested, the two Russian men, that couldn't decide upon the winner of the arm wrestling match, ended up in the hospital after severing their ears.
Siberia's drinking games have a more extreme and bloody outcome as two bold participants ended up self-mutilated because of a game tie. The two drunk men were celebrating Orthodox Christmas on January 7 when they decided to raise the stakes and engage in an extreme arm wrestling tournament with a rather bizarre outcome.
The rules of the contest where quite uncommon as the loser had to cut off one of his ears, notes The Telegraph. After the first round, the loser demanded a rematch, which he won and started an entire debate on the matter of the actual winner and loser.
Being unable to decide, they agreed upon the fact that it was a tie and both of them had to comply with the rules and to cut off one of their ears. The competitors each took a blade and rapidly proceeded to self-mutilation in a Van Gogh-like display, but replacing the artist's depression with booze-induced behavior.
They both ended up in the hospital, one with his left ear completely severed and the other one with just a partial mutilation. The Gurev district hospital staff, alerted by the incredible happening, immediately called police officers that are still trying to figure out if they have enough grounds to open a criminal case.
The heavily drunk men were hospitalized after inflicting mutilation upon themselves and it is still unclear if the doctors managed to save their ears. The incident got the name “the Van Gogh-like injuries” after the famous Dutch post-Impressionist painter who cut off his ear in a depression episode.