10 Wrestlers Who Innovated New Stipulation Matches
5. Carlos Colón - Inferno
The Inferno match is a strange one to parse.
Visually, it's compelling pro wrestling theatre, and the shooting flames add a totally cosmetic and pointless - but stupidly fun - spectacle element, which is ideal, since every version in WWE involved boring old f*cking Kane. But it never drew, the oxygen-deprived talent hated working them, and the very fractional increase in entertainment value probably wasn't worth the very real risk of incineration and, in the not too improbable event of those flames torching the crowd, mass litigation.
TL:DR: not worth the effort, as pretty as that picture^ looks.
An inherently dangerous match that hardly facilitated a technical classic, almost naturally, its origins can be traced to the mythically wild and scary Puerto Rico territory. "Once the show starts, chaos is there," as Savio Vega told Kayfabe Commentaries.
The 'Fire' match, an invention of legendary, controversial WWC figurehead Carlos Colón, functioned in much the same way as a Japanese barbed wire death match; a suspenseful thriller in which the drama is engineered mostly in the space between the action.
It's an on-the-nose take, but the visual of the fire fused perfectly with legendarily rabid locals to create a spectacle you'd be afraid to take in live.