wrestling / Columns

The World According to Ron: Looking at WWE’s Multi-Man Match Problem

March 11, 2018 | Posted by Ron Gamble
WWE Elimination Chamber Image Credit: WWE

Welcome back, ladies and gentlepeoples, and howdy ho! Hope things have been well with you. Has your rash cleared up any? I told you not to eat boysenberries out of season, but you wouldn’t listen.

Before I move on to other things, I want to look back one week. I wrote a column about the current state of professional wrestling, that sport competition entertainment thing that brings us all here. Some of you think I live in the past, but that’s not completely true. I just remember the past, the good and the bad, and compare and contrast the past and the present. Sometimes, I think things are much better now, like with board games and information access. Other times, I like things better in the past, like with pro wrestling and music.

I wrote that there was bad wrestling in the past, but the big difference between then and now is quantity. I also mentioned the different wrestling shows I could watch in the 80s. At that point, everything I wrote fell apart. What I was trying to say was, if I didn’t like what was going on with the “big man” territory of the WWF, I could watch the “original strong style” of Mid-South/UWF, or the “old school technical” wrestling of the AWA, or the “lucha-tinged/big man/pretty boy” World Class, or the “southern style” of Mid-Atlantic, Georgia, or the Crockett-owned World Championship Wrestling. All of them had their own niches in the same general area, and all succeeded in their own ways.

Today, Raw, Smackdown, 205 Live, and NXT are all owned by the same company. Impact is trying their best to be just like another WWE-owned company. Ring of Honor is fighting against itself, with Japanese-influenced “strong style” competing with American “show business” style. Basically, if you don’t like one style, you are out of luck, because you’re just going to get more of the same on the other channels.

Anyway, that was my plan. What you saw was a failure of execution. For that, I apologize. I will do my best not to waste your time like that again. More on that later.

TONIGHT’S MAIN EVENT WILL BE A BEST-OF-NINE-FALLS MATCH! GOOD LUCK TO ALL TWENTY-ONE PARTICIPANTS!

 photo Elimination Chamber 1_zpswsf975ly.jpg

Did I miss a memo that said every WWE pay-per-view has to have at least one title match that is not just a one-on-one match? Seriously, let’s look at the past few big cards, along with other matches on each card that was more than just one-on-one:

+ Elimination Chamber – Seven-man Elimination Chamber; Six-woman Elimination Chamber

+ Royal Rumble – Men’s Rumble; Women’s Rumble; Brock Lesnar def. Brawn Strowman and Kane to retain Universal Title; AJ Styles def. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn to retain WWE Title

+ Clash of Champions – Dolph Ziggler def. Bobby Roode and Baron Corbin to win US title

+ Survivor Series – Men’s Survivor Series match; Women’s Survivor Series match

And of course, we have Fastlane. When the main event was originally booked, it was supposed to be either Kevin Owens or Sami Zayn vs. AJ Styles. Since then, not only are those theree in the match, but they have added Dolph Ziggler, Baron Corbin, and John Cena. Surely, someone else will be added to this match on Smackdown this week. Otherwise, it wouldn’t seem like Smackdown.

 photo WWE Fastlane 6_zps8u81jcma.jpg

The last pay-per-view (That name seems dated, doesn’t it? You buy the Network, and you get to watch the show, and so much more) that did not have a multi-opponent title match was TLC, in October. Even then, the main event was a 5-on-3 handicap match.

Whatever happened to this strange idea of one person (or team) versus another person (or team), with the winner taking the belt? I know right now all title matches for WrestleMania are scheduled to be one-on-one, but there are a few weeks left before the show, so that may change yet. Why are they doing this? How did this all begin?

That’s sounds like a cue for the Wayback Machine if I’ve ever heard one.

The first time a multiple competitor singles match took place in the US was at “The Night the Line Was Crossed,” an ECW event in Philadelphia on February 5, 1994. Sabu and Shane Douglas started the match, with the stipulation being that they would wrestle for fifteen minutes, and if either one was pinned, the winner would then face ECW champion Terry Funk for the title. If neither one was eliminated, then Funk would join the match and have to beat both of them to retain the title.

Sabu and Douglas both survived fifteen minutes, but Sabu was injured and left the ring just before Funk comes into the match. Sabu came back in after about ten minutes, and a couple minutes later, Funk left the ring for a few. The last twenty minutes or so of the match involved all three men. The match itself is noteworthy simply because it is the first three-way match in America, but honestly, it’s not all that great. Watch it for the history, because there really isn’t much more of a reason to watch it.

Later in 1994, both WWF and WCW had their own versions of “triangle matches,” but not with multiple men in the ring at the same time. WWF had triangle matches throughout the summer at house shows, with Bret Hart, Undertaker, and Shawn Michaels participating. It would start with Bret and Undertaker, for example, and the winner would wrestle Shawn immediately after that match. If Bret or Undertaker won both matches, that man would be the winner. However, if Shawn would win the second match, then the loser of the first would climb in the ring, and a new fall would start. The first man to win two straight matches would be the ultimate winner.

WCW had a similar concept at Fall Brawl 1994 on September 18 at Roanoke, VA. Vader, The Guardian Angel (Big Boss Man, Big Bubba Rogers), and Sting met in the ring and flipped coins, with the odd man out waiting for the second match. Unlike the WWF matches, this was an elimination format. Vader beat Angel in the first fall, then beat Sting in the second fall to be named number one contender to WCW champion Hulk Hogan.

ECW continued to have these type of matches, with the best of them coming on July 13, 1996. Shane Douglas beat Pitbull #2, 2 Cold Scorpio, and Chris Jericho to win the ECW Television title. Meanwhile, on July 16, 1995, WCW had their first traditional three-way match on pay per view, when Harlem Heat defeated The Nasty Boys and The Blue Bloods to retain the WCW Tag Team titles. The first time the WWF had a multiple-way match on pay per view was Summerslam on August 18, 1996, when The Smoking Gunns defeated The New Rockers, The Godwinns, and The Bodydonnas to retain the WWF Tag Team titles. Most of the early multiple-way matches were exciting mainly because they were new, but other than the idea of having three, four, or more men or teams in the same match, they really weren’t noteworthy.

The first match of this type to really make a mark on pay per view was at In Your House: Final Four, in Chattanooga, TN, on February 16, 1997. At the Royal Rumble the previous month, Steve Austin was eliminated, but got back in the ring before the referees noticed, then eliminated Undertaker, Vader, and Bret Hart to be declared the winner. WWF President Gorilla Monsoon declared that Austin was still the winner, but because of how he won, he would not automatically get a title shot at WrestleMania. Instead, the four of them would meet in an elimination match, with the winner becoming WWF champion (Shawn Michaels “lost his smile” three days earlier and gave up the title). Bret Hart won the title in an elimination match, then lost it the next night on Raw to Sid, who lost the title at WrestleMania to Undertaker.

When the matches first came into prominence, they were used sparingly. That period lasted a little over a year, with the absolute apex coming at WrestleMania 2000 (aka WM 16). At that show, the only one-on-one match was Terri Runnels vs. The Kat. The main event was another four-way elimination match for the WWF title, where Triple H beat The Rock, Mick Foley, and The Big Show to retain the title. This was the card that began The Rock’s transformation to Dwayne Johnson, when he first hosted “Saturday Night Live,” with extra special guests Triple H, Mick Foley, and The Big Show.

This was the perfect way to put over the idea that these four guys really wanted to beat each other, right?

Anyway, multiple-way matches started as a special feature. They also started as elimination matches. Now, just like you’ll see on Sunday, there will be two people involved in the decision, and four other guys just standing or lying around, innocent bystanders to the final decision. I will let you figure out my thoughts on that.

NOW, WILL YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU MEANT BEFORE?

Remember above, when I wrote, “I will do my best not to waste your time like that again. More on that later?” It’s later.

When I started writing The World again last year, I decided I was going to do my best to tie current events to the past, to show that everything has a parallel from before. I thought it would work, and it is a good concept. However, I’m not the one to cary it off convincingly. To be able to write in an exciting way about the present, one should be excited about the present. I am not. Honestly, I can barely bring myself to watch today’s wrestling. I do so mainly out of habit.

I have a subscription to the WWE Network, and I use that to watch a lot of wrestling from the 1980s and 1990s. I also watch a lot of Memphis wrestling from the 1980s on Amazon Prime. On YouTube, I’m watching different shows, but none of them are from the past fifteen years.

“So why,” you may ask, “are you writing about current wrestling?”

“Well,” I would reply, “I thought I had an idea that no one else was doing. I thought it was a voice that would need heard.” However, I was wrong. Don’t get me wrong: there still needs to be at least one voice connecting contemporary sports entertainment and past professional wrestling. However, it should be from someone who can speak passionately about both products. Right now, that is not me.

So, am I leaving 411 again? No. Instead, I am planning on bringing back another one of my former column concepts: “Just S’pose.” It is a “What If” column looking at events from at least ten years earlier, because I really believe you can’t tell the true effects of history without time to reflect and actually look at the secondary and tertiary effects of the original event. A few weeks ago, someone released a survey of historians showing that Donald Trump is the worst president in history, while Barack Obama ranked as eighth best. I told people at the time there’s barely been enough time to judge where George W. Bush belongs in that poll, but no one listens to me.

So, anyway, in the next couple weeks, I will be looking at former events and what would have happened if there was a slight tweak in the original. Jed Shaffer wrote a similar column, “Rewriting the Book,” for both 411 and Wrestlecrap, and if he has any thoughts on the subjects, I’ll be glad to feature them.

Also, this will be a little easier than it has been in the past, thanks to the advent of podcasts. Just listening to “Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard,” “The Jim Cornette Experience,” and “What Happened When with Tony Schiavone,” I have several ideas for columns just based on some of their asides. For example, when I return in a couple weeks, based on a comment from Bruce Prichard, my first column will look at “Just S’pose Mark Calloway Was Not The Undertaker?”

Anyhoo, have a good couple weeks, hope you turned your clocks back, and I’ll see you soon.
#SavetheCrew

Ron