10 Terrible Iterations Of Legendary Gimmick Matches

Another cage match variation here, and just as a heads-up, this won’t be the last!

The Punjabi Prison match was first introduced by the WWE around the time of the Great Khali’s initial main event push. Despite that, the match’s founder wouldn’t even participate in the inaugural contest, as elevated levels of enzymes in his liver would prevent him from being cleared to compete in the inaugural version at the 2006 Great American Bash (he was replaced with The Big Show).

As strange as Khali's liver troubles may sound, though, the Punjabi Prison match itself was even more unusual. The ring would be surrounded by two bamboo cages, the outermost one standing at 20 feet and the innermost standing at 16 feet. Each wall of the inner cage featured a small door that could be opened at a wrestler’s request, but only for 60 seconds. After that, it would be padlocked, and if all four doors would suffer that fate then the combatants would be forced to climb the structure to escape instead.

As you can probably tell, the biggest problem here was that the rules were simply too convoluted. Plus, the layers of intricate bamboo-work made it difficult to actually see what was going on in the ring, resulting in constant camera cuts to keep track of the action.

A fleeting concept, the Punjabi Prison match only ever saw two outings, which tells you just about everything you need to know about the popularity of the stipulation.