Former WWE employee reveals how much better infamous gimmick match could have been
Whether you loved or hated WWE's Punjabi Prison match, it was initially envisioned to be something much different from what it turned out to be.
MLW owner Court Baurer was the latest guest on GameSpot's Wrestle Buddies podcast to discuss a wide variety of topics. When talking about the infamous Punjabi Prison match, Baurer revealed that match was supposed to be much different than how it ended up, noting that Vince McMahon himself signed off on the original idea for it to be more along the lines of an Onita-style deathmatch.
"Now, full disclaimer, I had pitched Vince [McMahon] on that match, but it wasn't that match. It was — I'm not going to bury myself. Actually, I showed him a tape of an [Atsushi] Onita deathmatch with the exploding ring," Court Bauer said. "I said I wanted to do that in WWE, and he signed off on it--members of the creative team have gone on record backing the story. And it goes to Kevin Dunn, who we didn't hear from for a while, everything was close to the vest. But hey, if Vince says it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen."
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WWE's Punjabi Prison match was originally envisioned to be more along the lines of an Onita deathmatch
Things, unfortunately, changed when the idea got to Kevin Dunn. By the time Bauer and the rest of the creative team saw it roughly ten days before the pay-per-view, it was nothing like the match he originally pitched to McMahon.
"We start seeing the mockups for what the exploding cage was going to look like. First of all, there was no explosions. This was about 10 days before the PPV. And the second thing we learned was it's bamboo. And it's almost like an Indiana Jones playset from Temple of Doom. And you're like, 'This is so perversely not what we talked about. Oh my god. This is going to bury the creative team once again.' Of course, we took the heat for that one. But it's interesting how you take risks, and sometimes, in different systems, it either turbo-charges the idea, or it mutates into a Punjabi Prison match."
There have only been three Punjabi Prison matches in WWE history, with the first one featuring The Undertaker vs. The Big Show in 2006. If we're lucky, there will never be a fourth.
Behold!
EVERY. PUNJABI. PRISON. MATCH. EVER.
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What do you think of the original vision for the Punjabi Prison match? Do you think it would have been received better by the WWE Universe? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.