The iconic WarGames structure will be the focus of WWE’s Survivor Series in November. Created by Dusty Rhodes, WarGames got its start in NWA and WCW, and was eventually transferred over to the NXT brand as part of its TakeOver events. With Triple H fully in charge of WWE, the newly-announced Chief Content Officer has revealed to The Ringer that this year’s Survivor Series is being renamed Survivor Series WarGames. For the first time ever on a main roster show, there will be two WarGames matches. As Triple H explained, the men and women’s rosters will both be involved.
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“We’ll have a men’s WarGames match and a women’s WarGames match. The tradition of the Survivor Series has ebbed and flowed and changed slightly over time, but this will be similar to that,” Paul “Triple H” Levesque said. “This will not be Raw versus SmackDown. It will be much more story-line driven. I still look at it as a traditional component to Survivor Series in there because it’s large teams of people competing. We just upped the ante a little bit with WarGames and made it evolve.”
Survivor Series typically features two teams of four-five competitors squaring off in an elimination-style match, until only one team remains. Some years have seen teams comprised of Raw vs. SmackDown superstars, but this year it seems things will be more storyline-focused. One can imagine the men’s WarGames match will feature Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns and the Bloodline.
“I love the original ones, the very first ones, with the Horsemen and Dusty and the Road Warriors and everybody else. Those were always my favorites. It was a different time in the business, a simpler time in the business,” Triple H said about the old school WarGames matches.
He added that his decision to go the WarGames route for Survivor Series stems from his wrestling fandom, and viewing the product as a fan.
“One of the things that Vince used to always say is if you put yourself in the seats, you could never go wrong. Now, all fans have different points of view,” he said. “All you gotta do is go online now and you’ll see every single person has a different point of view and they’re happy to express it. But I think if you go out there and you think, What would you wanna see? If you’re a fan and you just love what we do, what would you want to see?”
While WarGames is known for being a bloody affair, Triple H cautions that history isn’t likely to repeat itself with this new era.
“The world has changed. The world has evolved. I don’t think it’s necessary,” Triple H said. There is still blood in WWE, but there are medical personnel to check on wrestlers if there is an inadvertent cut. “If we have talent that gets [cut open], usually you’ll see them roll out and they’ll get looked at to make sure that there’s nothing dangerous,” Levesque added. “I’m just of the opinion right now, given the state of the world and the pandemic, and at the end of the day, what we do is dangerous enough without intentionally making it more dangerous. Yes, we did [feature bleeding] for a long period of time, but we’ve changed that practice. And it’s irresponsible to go back.”
Survivor Series WarGames takes place Saturday, November 26th at TD Garden in Boston.
