1400 Piercings Per Hour: Piercing World Record

Written By Paul Malakai Messina

On May 16th 2015 In Piscataway, New Jersey, Paul AJ Rathbun set out to beat a world record set previously by himself back in Feb 2012 where the old record set at 946 needles pierced through skin in one hour.  Paul, being a side show performer did a routine called the “HUMAN PIN CUSHION”. Which involves taking a needle and skewering it through a portion of his skin. He had been doing this routine for so long that one day he literally just thought… Hey I should set a piercing World Record. His old show partner asked him what he would do to set the World Record  and Paul said strongly… Maybe I’ll do a pincushion never seen for the most “Surface Piercings” in one hour which consists of piercing the skin with a 18 gauge needle with an entrance of the needle and an exit.  And then It just kind of went from there and Paul Rathbun made it a reality. To beat the previous WORLD RECORD of 946 piercings, Paul brought together a team of professionally trained Body Piercers from all over the state of New Jersey. That crew consisted of Yours truly… Paul Malakai Messina “MASTER PIERCER”, Allison Lahikainen, John “BOOTS” Flerchinger and Jamie Di Palma. All Piercers are professionally trained in the Arts of Body Modification and were all there to make the new WORLD RECORD of 1400 piercings through human skin in 1 hour. It takes skill and precision to execute piercings such as these and this is and was an extremely dangerous procedure so kids… DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!! All the needles were pre sterilized in an autoclave prior to the event. “MASTER PIERCER” Paul Malakai Messina personally threw 767 needles into the calfs and lower torso of Paul Rathbun and the rest of the needles were performed by the remaining 3 EXTREMELY talented Body Piercers. WE GOT 1399 NEEDLES into Paul’s body just one minute under the hour mark and the LAST 1400th needle was entered into Paul’s body by the man himself. This was and is a memory I will forever cherish. At first when I received the call where a voice on the other end of the phone was asking me if we had a Body Piercer that would like to help out and set a World Record for 1400 piercings in one hour, I said to myself… HELL NO!!!… Im not even gunna attempt to do this.. Then I asked who is the lunatic attempting to do such an insane number of piercings in one hour and was told.. A guy named WYCK aka Paul AJ Rathbun. So… I knew this guy from being tattooed by Alex Pea at our former studio Inksanity Tattoo in Somerset, NJ and I knew I could help the amazing Piercing team he already had so I said “YES” and the rest is WORLD RECORD HISTORY…