Celebrity Deathmatch Creator Thinks Show Would Be Even Bigger Today — with These Celebrities in the Ring (Exclusive)

Eric Fogel combined some of his favorite things into a risky show that earned itself a place in MTV history.

The creator of Celebrity Deathmatch first pitched the idea 28 years ago, during his time working at the network.

“As a kid, I always had love for stop-motion animation. I was just sort of taken by those Ray Harryhausen films and some of the claymation that you would see on TV at the time,” he tells PEOPLE. “As I grew older, I became aware that there was maybe a market for a more adult animated content, and I thought that stop-motion animation in that adult space felt like unmarked territory.”

“I started thinking of all the things that I loved — professional wrestling and making fun of celebrities. I thought if I could sort of mix that with that claymation style, you could have something really special.”

The idea didn’t immediately appeal to everyone, but Fogel was persistent in what he believed had real potential.

“The MTV execs, they weren’t quite seeing it, and it took about a year of me and my producing partner at the time, a guy named John Lynn, sort of repeatedly whispering into the ear of the president of MTV. After about a year of annoying him, he said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,'” he laughs.

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Celebrity Deathmatch started as “sort of an experiment” with an original short that premiered on Cartoon Sushi. The matchup was Marilyn Manson versus Charles Manson.

“That was the original celebrity deathmatch, and that was our experiment to test the technology and see if this was something that could work in a larger format,” he explains.

Bringing that short to life, at the time, consisted of “taking over a conference room” at MTV Animation’s offices in midtown Manhattan.

“It’s not really set up to film stop-motion animation. We set up some janky lighting and some, at that time, free chip digital video cameras. We were sort of figuring it out as we went along with those early episodes,” he says.

“Then, there was an opportunity to go bigger. MTV was doing a Super Bowl halftime alternative, and they approached us and asked if we could do a Celebrity Deathmatch halftime show.”

Despite being “only like three weeks out from the Super Bowl,” Fogel told them that they “could do it, but we’d have to keep it really simple — limited characters, nothing too crazy.”

“They said they’d think on it and come back to us. They came back to us and said, ‘Okay, and we know who we would like to feature in the deathmatch,'” he recalls. “It was The Spice Girls versus Hanson, so that was like a total of like eight characters in there, which was exactly what we didn’t want.”

Still, they “locked in” — literally.

“We were in that conference room for, I think, three weeks straight, morning, noon, and night, getting that thing finished,” he says. “It was a labor of love, and it kind of paid off. That was what launched us into a series format.”

Fogel says the success of the show was “what animators dream of.”

“You take everything that you love and you put it out there in the world and hope that other people love it too. And when they do, that’s sort of that magic spark. It was a dream to realize that we had found an audience and that we could keep making these,” Fogel shares.

Week after week, writers would scour through entertainment magazines “to see who was in the zeitgeist that week.”

“We would just create these lists of celebrities that we thought could be interesting and then try to figure out the pairings, and sometimes you know it was a little tricky because you had to have layers, a series of gags you could build a deathmatch around,” he explains.

“Some celebrities were a little more fertile in that way, while others were were not. So it was tricky to choose, and, and then sort of figure out what would make the funniest, most entertaining deathmatch. That was always the challenge of putting those matches together.”

Fogel enjoyed orchestrating some of the more “elaborate matches” that included different settings than the basic ring.

“For one match, we built this Tower of Terror, and we had Russell Crowe against Charlton Heston, and it was sort of this gladiator match, but it was in this tower that had all these booby traps and things that made it really fun and insane,” he recalls. “There was the Dome of Devastation. We had Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins versus Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters. It had musical instruments on the walls of the dome.”

“It was really fun finding those clever, gimmicky deathmatches,” he adds. “We had a time machine too, so we could bring people from ancient history, and pair them with modern celebrities, and that was always exciting.”

While the humor was definitely on the riskier side, Fogel says that many of the celebrities featured “were really good sports about it.”

“I was nervous at times thinking we had maybe pushed things a little too far,” Fogel admits.

“I remember in one instance, we had a match, a three-way match between Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal. Whoopi Goldberg contacted us after that match,” he reveals. “She sent us flowers and chocolate, and she was such a huge fan that we then approached her directly and asked if she would actually come back and be featured as a guest commentator on the show. She said yes and she did provide her own voice for that.”

In 2002, Celebrity Deathmatch came to an end, but briefly returned from 2006 to 2007 without Fogel’s involvement. Despite “a few false starts,” it hasn’t returned to the air in 18 years. However, Fogel thinks that the possibility is there — and always will be.

“That’s the beauty of the show — it’s timeless. These matches are iconic. You could literally open Google and type a few words, and you’ll get a whole bunch of new Celebrity Deathmatch ideas. It’s an evergreen concept,” he shares.

“I was just browsing this morning. Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel hate each other. You know, Will Smith and Chris Rock probably still hate each other? Taylor Swift and Kanye West is still a match I’d like to visit in the ring,” he shares.

“It feels like there are still some unresolved issues there. It’s such a fertile, fertile environment. I feel like you could bring it back tomorrow, and people would tune into it.”

With the introduction of social media, Fogel says he “would love the opportunity to just see what would happen.”

“To me, that would be even more entertaining, to have that interaction where now, celebrities are so vocal and you can get that sort of real-time reaction,” he says. “I think that would make it even more exciting.”

“Politically? We don’t even have to go there, but you know… Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would be a very fertile environment for a celebrity deathmatch. And then, you know, just pivoting back to the social media angle, you know, MrBeast and Logan Paul would be insane, right? You have a whole new sort of stomping grounds that you could play in, and it’s just unlimited.”

Laughing, he adds, “Let’s do it. Let’s make it.”