War Games: WCW's Most Notorious Matches

Last week WWE brought back WCW’s most acclaimed gimmick match, War Games at the latest NXT Takeover special. The week leading up to it seemed like the perfect time to bust open and devour a WWE BluRay anthology release from 2013, War Games: WCW’s Most Notorious Matches (trailer). It is a collection of almost every single War Games match telecasted. Since this is primarily a collection of matches, I am going to go with my same bulleted list format for this entry like I did a few months ago for my piece on Best of Clash of Champions.

-Speaking of that Clash of Champions BluRay, Dusty Rhodes returns to host this War Games anthology too. He is far better here, instead of giving short, over-the-top sound bites that explain nothing, Dusty is interviewed at length about the history of the War Games and how he created the match. An excerpt from that interview is played before each match and it helps set the stage for each encounter. Dusty is more natural and likeable in this interview setting, with my only takeaway is for a couple of the interview clips he kind of rambles on without saying anything of note. Make sure not to skip over them as most of them are must-see material.

-For those unfamiliar with the match, most War Games feature two rings under one cage with usually two teams of four or five competing against each other. Two wrestlers start for five minutes, and then another wrestler comes out every two minutes. After everyone is in, the only way to gain victory is for a submission/surrender victory.

-A lot of the early War Games matches feature the latest incarnation of the Four Horsemen against a team usually involving Dusty Rhodes, The Road Warriors, Paul Ellering and one or two other individuals. The crowds are red hot for most of these matches to the point they drown out the commentary to where the subtitles read ‘Indistinct Jim Ross Commentary.’ The crowds absolutely eat up everything Dusty and The Road Warriors do and I love these moments because you rarely see genuine crowd reactions like these in the WWE today.

-The early War Games are especially grueling endeavors with at least two wrestlers usually drawing blood. The first War Games I counted four, yes four wrestlers dawning the crimson mask!

-There is a different concept of the War Games introduced in 1988 for one time called the ‘Tower of Doom.’ Dusty described it in the interview as the ‘Hollywood’ version of War Games, and that kind of rings true because it is nearly identical to the Triple Decker Cage match in the ‘hit’ film featuring WCW stars, Ready to Rumble. The Tower of Doom has an interesting twist on the wrestlers starting on the top and having the first team to escape win. It was an interesting twist and the booking for it was surprisingly coherent. I was surprised WCW never revisited it (I am pretending the 1996 Uncensored never happened because it is not in this collection).

-Dusty has some fun stories about shenanigans that ensued when they brought the War Games to untelevised house shows in the early years of War Games. I never realized the match was a house show staple for a few years.

-The nastiest-looking spot in this anthology of matches is the infamous powerbomb-of-doom that Sid Vicious delivers to Brian Pillman, as Sid neglects to factor in his height to the roof of the cage and poor Pillman awkwardly bounces off of it as a result.

-The Horsemen were not always the antagonist team in the War Games match, other factions that occasionally subbed for them over the years were the Varsity Club, Dungeon of Doom, Fabulous Freebirds and the Dangerous Alliance. Eventually the nWo took over being the primary antagonist in the final few editions of the match in WCW.

-The Shockmaster gets a lot of well-earned grief for his unfortunate debut in WCW. I hear countless good-natured ribbing about the incident to this day, but I rarely if ever hear people talk about how WCW still had faith in him to include him in the upcoming War Games match that year and be the man to land the decisive submission victory on Booker T. I actually cracked up a bit when Sam Roberts had the guts to jest to Booker T about it live on the Takeover pre-show last week (jump to the eight-minute mark in that video to see for yourself!).

-War Games was not the headline theme for its own PPV until Fall Brawl debuted for WCW in 1993. I was a little surprised to hear from Dusty in the interviews that he said that marked the beginning of the end for War Games as it made it happen at the same time every year instead of there being a reasonable booking decision to have it happen when it was appropriate for the rivalry. I will say that the ’95 War Games match is easily the worst as it features Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage ransacking the faction of former WWF Hogan friends in lame heel attires that is the Dungeon of Doom.

-I feel the last hurrah for War Games was the ’96 and ’97 editions that feature the nWo as the unbeatable force that was making good business for WCW when it was winning the Monday Night Wars. The ’96 version had the controversy of the fake nWo Sting debuting and being the catalyst for the eventual debut of Crow-Sting. The ’97 War Games saw Curt Hennig turn on the Four Horsemen and the nWo go to dastardly measures to get the Four Horsemen to submit. Both matches were masterfully booked and feature the crowds from the Monday Night Wars that only added to the matches.

-The final two War Games were gigantic clusters that were incredibly hard to make sense out of. The ’98 match had three teams of three, but added a stipulation to where the person who gets the pin receives a world title shot at the next PPV. It also involved Warrior in his disastrous run in WCW, and his chicanery in the match is mind-boggling. The 2000 War Games transpired on Nitro when Vince Russo was nearing the end of his booking run in the company and he completely changed up the rules. It now took place in one ring inside of the aforementioned Ready to Rumble triple decker cage. The rules now stated the World Title was at stake and the belt had to be retrieved from the top of the cage and the person to come back down and escape the cage with the title will be declared the winner. Seems straight forward, but when you factor in Vince Russo, you have to be factor in the inevitable nonsense he will throw in like countless run-ins, one of the cages being filled with weapons and naturally Vince Russo himself competing in the match. It came as no surprise that both of these War Games were trainwrecks, but both were entertaining disasters all things considered where the ’95 bout is simply flat-out bad.

-Dusty has a nice final interview clip about the Elimination Chamber match being a proper evolution of War Games for modern audiences. I agree with Dusty as the Chamber involves a lethal cage-like structure and all the brutality that goes along with it and the mystique and intrigue of who will enter the match next and the Royal Rumble-like anticipation of which wrestler is going to be eliminated next and pondering how long the first entrants have endured. That said, I do like WWE’s new take on War Games from the recent NXT Takeover, and I hope it becomes a regular component of NXT when deemed necessary by the booking.

-There are three bonus matches on the BluRay and they are multi-man cage matches from smaller promotions like Smoky Mountain Wrestling and ECW. The SMW match is an oddball as it is joined in progress and takes place in a shoddy-looking cage composed of wood and chicken-wire. The two ECW cage matches are the expected gruesome affairs that up the blood quotient exponentially compared to the early War Games matches I described above. The SMW match is nothing spectacular, but more of an interesting curiosity, but definitely check out the two ECW bouts. There is one final extra where Dusty Rhodes books his dream War Games match up and breaks down the teams and how it would play out in an entertaining manner.

-As far as WCW collections go, this BluRay easily triumphs over the Clash of Champions collection and is right up there with the Nitro collections. There are a few duds in this anthology, but most of the War Games matches are wild, visceral and bloody brawls well worth going out of your way to check out. High recommendation!

Past Wrestling Blogs

Best of WCW Clash of Champions
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3
Biggest Knuckleheads
Bobby The Brain Heenan
Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes
DDP: Positively Living
Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials
ECW Unreleased: Vol 1
ECW Unreleased: Vol 2
ECW Unreleased: Vol 3
For All Mankind
Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection
Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story
Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman
Legends of Mid South Wrestling
Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story
Memphis Heat
OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History
OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History
Owen: Hart of Gold
RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Sting: Into the Light
Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
TNA Lockdown 2005-2014
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns
Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28-Present
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017