Does WarGames Work Today?

We’ve known for a while that much like last year the Survivor Series weekend Takeover would be WarGames. The commentators have mentioned it but we are only now finding out the participants in this years match.

Following a brawl that went all over full sail Regal announced it would be the team of Pete Dunne, Ricochet and the War Raiders vs the Undisputed Era. Last years match received some mixed reviews which has me wondering: Does WarGames work in today’s WWE?

On the one hand it does fall into the same traps that all gimmick PPV’s fall into nowadays in that the gimmick match seems to only be happening because the time of year we have this PPV is coming.  Something that’s more associated with the main roster rather than NXT. Also in the weeks leading up to it it was obvious who would be involved.

It does makes sense that these eight men have been so intertwined over the last couple of months that the only way to settle their differences is with this match. However it took so long that I was waiting for them to just announce it already. Maybe that’s because they wanted Fish to be in the match and had to wait until he was fully healed.

Undisputed Era were involved in and won last years WarGames which while it seems like the same it really makes them look like a threat. They are like the 4 horsemen as back in NWA/WCW it would often be them vs a different assortment of babyfaces usually lead by Sting or Dusty Rhodes. Undisputed Era are still a menace in NXT now with 4 members rather than 3.

I had heard rumours it was going to be 3 teams of 3 like it was last year. It was supposedly going to be British Strong Style vs Undisputed Era vs War Raiders and Ricochet. I think the 4 on 4 format is better to follow and famously the worse WarGames WCW ever did featured the 3 teams of 3. Either way considering who’s involved it should be a great match regardless.

An issue of doing WarGames now is that it still has that name and the history that comes with it. This means any changes made IE taking away the roof could irritated older fans who remember the old WarGames matches. Although I like the fact that there is no roof as it makes it easier to see whats going on in the ring.

They did the smart thing by explaining that escaping over the top of the cage means you forfeit the match for your team. This allows for some great of the cage spots especially from Ricochet. You could even do a spot where undisputed era try to climb out as things aren’t going their way and are forced back in the ring by the other team.

As long as they don’t make it too obvious that they’re building to a particular spot off the cage it will be fine. They did that last year when Adam Cole went to the top.