“WarGames” Suggestions
By Scott Keith on 8 December 2024
I hope that everybody is doing well.
I think we can all agree that WWE has had mixed success with their “WarGames” matches over the last seven years or whatever, but that there are a couple of booking habits that are really holding most (all?) of them back from being truly great.
Obviously, the biggest issue is that they're almost all way too long. Following the rules for a five-on-five match, the last entrant should be entering the match at the twenty-six minute mark. That's almost half an hour of stuff before anybody can even go for a win, and then the final segment usually goes for another ten or fifteen minutes. Can we shorten the intervals? Maybe the first segment is three minutes instead of five, and the rest of the intervals are two instead of three. That brings the last entrant in at seventeen minutes, shaving almost ten minutes off right there.
The other big issue is that practically every entrant grabs a weapon from under the ring, sometimes several weapons. There have also been plenty of times where somebody couldn't immediately find what they were looking for, which is always awkward to watch. What if the match started with a bunch of weapons on the outside, surrounding the ring (like the annual “Trick or Street Fight” match) and allow each person to only take one weapon into the match with them? And since it's so awkward and time-consuming to get multiple tables into the ring, just start with some folded ones in the ring, between the ropes and the cage? Maybe one on each of the shorter sides, with a third one on the outside that somebody could choose.
This is a pretty minor gripe, but I hate the phrasing of “the match doesn't officially begin until all ten competitors are in the cage”. If the match hasn't started, then what were the other nine people doing the whole time? Change it to something like “the match cannot end until all ten competitors are in the cage”.
Lastly, I get wanting to give men and women equal opportunities in terms of big gimmick matches, but if there isn't enough of a story to justify the “WarGames” gimmick – and especially if WG is going to continue to be part of the “Survivor Series” POV – then just do one WG match, and one traditional, Elimination-rules match.
All that said, I don't have a problem with the cage not having a roof, or that the match can be won by pin-fall. It's always a spectacle when someone jumps off of the top, and being able to lose by pin-fall allows for more possible finishes and can given certain people/finishers more credibility.
Thoughts?
All good points. The biggest weakness you didn't mention is booking like an annual event instead of a necessity for a really heated feud. The women's match suffered most from that this year. I'd do shorter intervals, four on four, submission only. And maybe put an exploding ring stipulation so that if the match doesn't end within five minutes of the dramatic staredown mid-ring, then everyone blows up. That'll speed things up a bit.