Vince McMahon oversaw so many violent match types over the years such as the Hell in a Cell match, Inferno Match, Buried Alive match etc. There was still one dangerous match that never took place in a WWE ring, the Barbed Wire Death Match.
Many fans may be shocked to hear that Vince McMahon once considered the idea for a death match in a WWE ring. MLW owner Court Bauer revealed during his appearance on The Insiders podcast, that Vince McMahon approved the idea for the barbaric match to take place.
I’d want to do a DeathMatch, an Exploding DeathMatch in WWE and I thought, they were trying different things at this time, it was the time when, hey, let’s try to relaunch ECW, let’s try different stuff, so, I showed Vince an Onita exploding DeathMatch and he said “yeah, let’s do it!” And from there they said “okay, get with Kevin Dunn and his team and let’s get to work on it.” Now, I wasn’t the lead writer, I was just a suggest for one of the writers in the room, so, you know, okay it’s a win for me, Vince liked an idea, now it’s on someone else’s plate, we’ll circle back. That’s the lead writers job to kind of communicate with KD and his team on whatever that project is. , The head writer at SmackDown at the time, he, you know, tries to keep in contact with KD’s team, but he’s not getting the clear answer, it seems very vague and maybe it’s like “hey, we got pictures, if you want to talk mock ups, what do you need from our end? Do you need anything? Here’s a video.” And, it’s very quiet. And then, about, twelve, fourteen days out, we finally see the first photos of this being being built and were like “oh, that’s not a, that’s not a exploding DeathMatch.” It was supposed to be Undertaker in one of these things I think, and it turns out it’s what you would see as this thing out of Indiana Jones and the temple of doom or something. It’s an action play set come to life, and I guess its, for WWE, it is impressive what the structure did end up being, from Matt’s point of view, it was very brutal because there was no give on that bamboo and then they had all these, we were going through the wellness process, and all these people failed some test for elevated enzymes and liver issues and what was once a match with Taker vs. I think Khali, ended up being Big Show, who, poor guy just didn’t have any prep time to lay this out, wasn’t given a match where he could do much in it and this match did not feel good in that kind of setting so, it was one of those things where it was a spectacle and maybe it’s like, I don’t know, chamber of horrors style thing, and I remember Dusty just watching this shaking his head like “oh, baby we got a long night” and yeah, it was a rough night. I feel for all the parties involved. But, that was originally supposed to be a DeathMatch, an exploding DeathMatch and you know, changes, I don’t know if Kevin just felt is wasn’t feasible, we never got an answer why they took the creative from exploding DeathMatch to Indiana Jones and the temple of doom play set, but it happened and I think [?] still to this day is baffled at what happened there but, you know, I can also see doing that in doors, doing a DeathMatch with those kind of Pyro qualities could be problematic, but we never got an answer. I assume it had something to do with that, but I don’t know.
Court Bauer to The Insiders
How do you think a WWE Barbed Wire Death Match would have looked in McMahon’s WWE? Let us know in the comment section and on our social media pages.
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