Jim Ross On Why Fans Have A Hard Time Investing In The Punjabi Prison Match

Sunday night Jinder Mahal defended his WWE Championship match against Randy Orton in a Punjabi Prison match, and the two stars did their best to entertain the fans. It’s been a long time since the Punjabi Prison match has been seen in WWE, and when Jinder Mahal announced that the match was returning a few weeks ago, many fans were left scratching their heads in regards to why the company would bring it back.

There’s no denying that the actual structure looks intimidating, but the match isn’t fun for fans to watch because their view is constantly obstructed due to the way the Punjabi Prison is set up. WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross recently addressed this issue in his latest blog, and he noted that fans have a tough time investing in a match that they can’t see.

“Any time two major, main event level matches have little to no ‘near falls’ included due to the structure of their match i.e. the Punjabi Prison bout and the Flag Match, it’s a risky premise. I’m still not sure that I could pass a quiz on the rules of the Punjabi Prison match which had challenging sight lines for TV through all the bamboo, etc. Those basic challenges can make it hard for the live audience to emotionally invest.”

Natalya won a fatal 5-way match at Battleground, and now she’s set to challenge Naomi for the SmackDown Women’s Championship at SummerSlam next month. Ross noted that he was surprised Natalya won, and he also addressed fan complaints in regards to the winner of the match.

“Surprised that Nattie won the women’s bout but not displeased. Many fans are complaining that Charlotte did not win but that was not a concern for me as its simply a matter of getting more talents, in this case Nattie, better ready for higher profile bookings. Charlotte is ‘ready’ whether she won Sunday night or not but Charlotte needs more, viable opponents going forward and Nattie, for one, can certainly fill that void.”

On this week’s episode we’re talking to Simon Grimm, aka Simon Gotch about what’s next for his career and more. In the episode Simon goes into some interesting ideas that he pitched to WWE creative, where he wants to wrestle next, and he also shares the story of how he found out The Vaudevillains were getting called up to the WWE main roster. We’re also sharing our predictions for the WWE Battleground pay-per-view and more. You can subscribe to Still Real Radio on iTunes, and you can also check out the latest episode below.