Remember the days before gimmick matches?
No, me neither.
In the modern era, the WWE calendar is absolutely littered with them, with just about every other pay-per-view seeming to have some kind of gimmick-theme attached to it. But fanciful stipulations and specialist matches have been a staple of pro wrestling for decades now, from the early days of cage matches and bull-rope bouts to more recent concepts like Money in the Bank or the Elimination Chamber.
Still, for all those gimmicks that we do see these days, there are a number that have fallen by the wayside over the years as the business, and attitudes, have steadily evolved. Some have disappeared because they were just plain bad, while others have been scrapped due to changing priorities of the powers that be.
Today, we take a look at some such examples, rounding up five WWE gimmick matches and the reasons why we don’t see them anymore.
#1 First Blood match
As the name would suggest, the winner of a First Blood match is the first to make their opponent draw blood. It’s a simple enough concept, but one that’s also directly at odds with the company’s loosely-defined ‘no blood unless your name is Brock Lesnar’ policy.
The unofficial ban on bleeding in the ring came into play after an overzealous bladejob from Shawn Michaels at the 2008 Great American Bash. Michaels revealed on Talk is Jericho that he ‘sincerely only meant to get a little’ but ended up bleeding much heavier than planned, and in doing so forced Vince McMahon’s hand in drawing a line under bleeding in the ring.
Even before that incident, though, First Blood matches had gradually become tamer. Back at One Night Stand 2008, John Cena beat JBL in a finish that saw the latter use the old blood-capsule-in-a-condom trick, as opposed to blading or drawing blood the hard way.
That kind of gimmickry could still work today, but given the current nature of today’s product it seems unlikely we’ll be seeing any more First Blood bouts for the time being.
#2 Inferno match
Just as drawing blood doesn’t fall in line with the company’s current PG stance, neither does the act of trying to set your opponent on fire.
That’s the basic premise of an Inferno match, in which the ring is surrounded by a low wall of fire that opponents attempt to throw one another into. As you probably guessed, the idea was born out of the Attitude Era, but since the company officially went PG we’ve yet to see it return to WWE programming.
The closest we came a modern-day Inferno match was Kane vs. Bray Wyatt in a Ring of Fire match at SummerSlam 2013. There, the ropes were surrounded by—surprise, surprise—a ring of fire, similar to that of an Inferno match, but the key difference was the removal of the ‘set your opponent on fire’ stipulation.
Instead, Wyatt won via pinfall, and after Luke Harper and Erick Rowan had negated the ring of fire with a flame-resistant blanket. All in all, it made for a fairly anti-climactic match and one that thankfully we haven’t seen since.
#3 Bra and Panties match
Another match we can thank the Attitude Era for—or not, depending on your point of view—is the crassly named Bra and Panties match.
Here, the aim of the game was to strip your opponent down to their unmentionables. Or rather, her unmentionables, as it was only ever women who ‘competed’ in these matches.
The early 2000s saw Bra and Panties bout became an accepted part of WWE programming, wowing teenage boys the world over. But that soon changed when somewhere in the years between the Attitude and PG eras, people began to realise that trying to strip a girl down to her underwear in front of thousands of people was a little too demeaning.
These days, with the women finally being awarded parity with the men and the company arguably more consciousness of its brand image than ever before, it seems highly unlikely that WWE would ever regress to the trashiness of Bra and Panties matches.
#4 WarGames
Long before the days of Hell in a Cell or the Elimination Chamber, the NWA, and later WCW, were busy pioneering their own cage-based multi-man match.
Concocted by Dusty Rhodes himself, the WarGames gimmick involved two teams of four or five squaring off inside a pair of rings placed side-by-side, which were in turn surrounded by a giant steel cage. Pretty creative stuff for 1987.
There were plenty more rules, such as staggered entrances at various time intervals, which in some ways made the match a little convoluted. Still, the fact that two separate WarGames matches have received the maximum five-star rating from Dave Meltzer pretty much speaks for itself.
Unfortunately, the concept essentially died with WCW, although Dusty’s son Cody did reveal there were rumblings of a potential return for the gimmick at the inaugural Battleground PPV back in October 2013. But given its association with WCW, and with WWE seemingly reluctant to do anything but tarnish the memory of its old rival, at this point it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll ever be seeing that WarGames revival.
#5 Punjabi Prison
The fact that we’ve only ever seen two Punjabi Prison matches in history should tell you everything you need to know about the match’s popularity.
Named after the home state of the Great Khali, the Punjabi Prison saw two bamboo cages surround the ring, with the innermost one standing on the apron and the outermost on the floor at ringside.
Small doors in each of the four walls of that innermost cage could be opened for 60 seconds at a wrestler’s request. However, if that time elapsed, they’d be locked for good and the only way out would be to climb over the top.
If that makes the match sounds convoluted, that’s because it very much was. And on top of all that, the audience could barely even see the actual wrestling that was going on due to the thickness of the bamboo structure.
Long story short, the Punjabi Prison match didn’t have a great deal going for it. Plus, it was introduced as a speciality match of the Great Khali, and since he’s no longer with the company, there’s been no logical reason to revisit the stipulation.
Then again, if recent rumors are anything to go by, that could soon be set to change now that we’ve got a WWE Champion of Punjabi descent, with Jinder Mahal rumoured to face off against Randy Orton.
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