Bruce Pruchard On The Undertaker Waiting For Shawn Michaels After WrestleMania 14 Main Event, Original Idea For Inferno Match

In a recent edition of Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard discussed The Undertaker waiting for Shawn Michaels after the WrestleMania 14 main event, the original idea for the Inferno Match concept in WWE, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Bruce Prichard on The Undertaker waiting for Shawn Michaels with taped fists after the WrestleMania 14 main event: “Yeah, that happened. That took place. Taker was there, kind of like Taker is if he’s not in the last match. He’s usually sitting there in Gorilla anyways watching the last match. I think there was quite a bit of emphasis at this point because Shawn had not been the most cooperative person that day and wasn’t the most popular guy in the locker room that day by any stretch of the imagination. So, throughout the day, there was all kinds of rumor and innuendo on if Shawn was gonna do business. Taker just wanted to be there to confront him on the way back if Shawn didn’t do exactly what he was supposed to do that night.”

On The Undertaker vs. Kane at Unforgiven 1998 and the original idea for the Inferno Match concept in WWE: “When you’re coming up with different concepts and different matches and things that have never been done before, you come up with, what if the ring were surrounded by fire? You have cage matches, Hell in a Cell, Punjabi Prison, everything under the sun. But an inferno match – the entire ring surrounded by a wall of flames. And the only way to win the match is to set your opponent on fire…..the idea stemmed from what if you surrounded the ring in fire. It was not my idea to set your opponent on fire. That grew from it. My idea was an old traditional cage match, no one in and no one out. Paul Bearer is not gonna be able to interfere. Kane is not gonna be able to run. You gotta finish it in the ring. And one of the Vince’s [McMahon and Russo] came back with, ‘Well, that’s how you win the match. You’ve gotta set your opponent on fire.’ Then the question comes up of, ‘How the fuck do you do that?'”

On what ruined mystique of match: “Again, to me, we killed the mystique of the match. The guys got out. They got over the flames and they were outside and able to work outside the ring. So, that kind of killed the whole idea of the wall of flames surrounding the ring. You had to do that so that you could make sure you set someone on fire safely.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit Something to Wrestle with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.