Over the years wrestling fans have seen a lot of gimmick matches, and while some of them are well received others leave behind a legacy of shame. Back in 2006 WWE introduced the world to the Punjabi Prison match, and the match has become infamous even though it’s only been used a few times.
The Undertaker and Big Show faced off in the first Punjabi Prison match, and the concept of two bamboo cages surrounding the ring was not very well received. Former WWE writer Court Bauer discussed the original idea during an episode of GameSpot’s Wrestling Buddies podcast, and he revealed that he pitched an exploding ring match.
“I was at WWE, when we did the infamous Punjabi Prison Match, as you might remember. 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. 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.
“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.”
The last Punjabi Prison match took place at the Battleground pay-per-view in 2017 when Randy Orton faced off against Jinder Mahal. The full match can be seen below.
