Undertaker and Mankind could have gone from Hell In A Cell to Alcatraz (Picture: WWE / Getty)
WWE once looked into filming a wild fight around Alcatraz prison to take The Undertaker versus Mankind to another level.
The two bitter rivals fought in some of wrestling’s wildest matches, including Boiler Room Brawl, Hell In A Cell and Buried Alive, but they pitched to take things ever further at the iconic prison in San Francisco Bay.
Former WWE commentator and head of talent relations Jim Ross, who now works for rival company AEW, revealed he tried to convinced the higher-ups to film on location for a truly over the top battle between the Dead Man and Mick Foley’s alter ego.
Speaking on his own Grillin’ JR podcast, he said: ‘We kept looking for scenes. We kept looking for settings during that Undertaker-Mankind scenario. We knew the marriage worked. We knew those guys liked working together.
‘So I was just trying to come up with a site that we could utilise that was different. You know, how many times can you give them the boiler room? How many times can you give them Hell in a Cell? You know, they liked that kind of stuff.
‘So I thought well, having a match in Alcatraz where the doors have opened at a certain time and they would be looking for each other and all that stuff, I thought had some intrigue. It would be sort of a unique setting to say the very least.’
Alcatraz could have been the setting for another infamous fight between Mankind and Undertaker (Picture: Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
Sadly, it was never to be as shooting at the former federal prison – which is now a museum after closing in the 1963 – was simply not feasible.
‘There’s so much red tape, much to my chagrin that it just wasn’t gonna work out,’ JR admitted.
Alcatraz Island first housed a military fought from the 1850s, until a US military prison was built in 1910, before being adapted and modernised into a federal institution 24 years later.
During that era, the prison – which was deemed impossible to escape – housed some of the United States’ most infamous criminals, including the likes of Bumpy Johnson and Al Capone.
The matches Foley and Undertaker were still legendary, and the former has opened up about the financial and physical impact of their iconic Hell In A Cell clash at King of the Ring 1998, when he got thrown off the structure through a table, and then through the roof of the cell itself.
Speaking in 2020, he exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘Oh wow. Yeah, I would say Hell In A Cell – I think it may have shortened my career. It was definitely the point from which I believed in my own mortality, so everything was different following that cell match.
‘I don’t have any regrets – I have some small regrets about things I did later in my career. But no, I don’t regret starting that match on top of the cell.’
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The company wanted to take their feud to the next level.