Vince McMahon Was Open To Exploding Deathmatch In WWE

Vince McMahon may have grown tired of 'blood and guts' wrestling, but he was open to the idea of presenting an Exploding Deathmatch on a WWE pay-per-view in 2006. 

Former WWE writer Court Bauer pitched the extreme stipulation for The Undertaker and The Great Khali's match at the Great American Bash. 

Ultimately, however, WWE would go with the problematic Punjabi Prison gimmick, instead. 

Bauer, speaking on The Insiders podcast for AdFreeShows.com, detailed the process of his pitch and how it turned into something else: 

"I had wanted to do a Deathmatch, Exploding Deathmatch in WWE, they were trying different things at this time, this was a time when they said 'let's try to relaunch ECW, let's try different stuff'. I showed Vince an Onita Exploding Deathmatch and he said 'yeah, let's do it'. From there, they said 'get with Kevin Dunn and his team, let's get to work on it'.

"I wasn't the lead writer, I was just one of the writers in the room...Vince liked an idea, and now it's on someone else's plate, we'll circle back and that's the lead writer's job to communicate with [Kevin Dunn]...About 12, 14 days out we finally see the first photos of this thing being built and it's like 'oh, that's not an Exploding Deathmatch'. It was supposed to be Undertaker in one of these things and it turns out to be what you'd see out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or something". 

Khali wouldn't make it to the first Punjabi Prison match after being medically disqualified (due to elevated liver enzymes). He was replaced by then-ECW Champion Big Show, who lost to The Undertaker.

H/T Wrestling Inc.