It’s a unique time to be a wrestling fan.

AEW has shook up a once stable landscape. Pariahs to some for daring to challenge their beloved WWE, a breath of fresh air to others. AEW has been the disruptor many feel the sports entertainment landscape needed.

With that it’s easy to forget that they’re really still in their embryonic stage. It will take a minimum of three years for the company to truly find its legs. During this time they will make mistakes and hopefully learn and grow. Part of that is establishing their own identity in a world where one company is synonymous with an entire industry. 

AEW has already begun to do that. Dynamite episodes like Blood n’ Guts, the Jericho Cruise ship as well as the Fyter Fest episode help the brand. They also have created matches such as Stadium Stampede. They brought the Exploding Barbed Wire Ring to America,  and created the Lights Out Match. That’s in addition to the previously mentioned Blood n’ Guts and recent coffin match.

The problem is that none of these gimmick matches are truly their own.

Blood n’ Guts is essentially a redo of the original War Games match. The Lights Out match is just a Pin Falls Count Anywhere that doesn’t count on the record. I’m not opposed to using matches from elsewhere, as a match like the Exploding Ring generated interest. It’s honestly very difficult to come up with a new gimmick match when so many have already been created. Perhaps the closest is the AEW variant on the Royal Rumble with the Casino Battle Royal. Kudos to them for putting their own twist on the match, but as of yet it fails to be a draw.

Still every major modern wrestling company has created their own unique matches. And often pay-per-views are branded with them, to help establish what makes them unique for their fan base. Sometimes these attempts lead to failure, and other times to wonderful successes.

Regardless, AEW needs to establish their own place in the market with the help of such signature gimmick matches or events.

Having signature matches in AEW that settle feuds and are unique selling points for their PPV’s per is key. Also having an event with the signature match that only happens once a year can build excitement if the build-up is properly done. So don’t just have a branded event and match just for the sake of having the branded event and match, as WWE has been prone to.

With that let’s take a look at some of the history of signature gimmick matches in different promotions and their success or failure to judge just how important this can be. While all matches seem to eventually end up in other promotions in some form, their value is to the brand they are most associated with.

Teams of 5 strive to survive.

In 1987 WWE, then WWF, introduced the Survivor Series as a Thanksgiving holiday tradition. While this isn’t where the first elimination tag matches occurred, the idea quickly got over to the wrestling crowd. It could be argued that the event peaked in only it’s 3rd year. That’s when they had survivors meet in the main event in a bout known as the Grand Finale Match of Survival. An excellent idea, unfortunately it was  only intended to be used once to get over the Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior program. The Survivor series event stayed popular though, until WWE failed to properly book and promote the show.

The Royal Rumble, WWE’s other early branded PPV match actually had humble beginnings.

After Pat Patterson conceived the idea it was decided a test show would be run. This was to gauge if the fans had any interest, and if the match would be any good. The answer though, was actually no. The initial Royal rumble match was viewed by less than 2000 people in St Louis, and the match itself wasn’t that good. But clearly the potential was there. 

WWE decided the perfect way to test that potential was to put it on the USA Network to counteract the NWA Bunkhouse Stampede PPV. Curiously though that show was main evented by The Islanders defeating The Young Stallions and not by the Rumble. This perhaps shows just how hesitant Vince McMahon was about the idea.

Despite that start the Royal Rumble has become a staple of the WWE. Not only is it their most popular match, for many regular fans it’s listed as their favourite event of the year. In fact, you could argue all storylines actually are centered around the Royal Rumble more than any other event. Plus the anticipation of surprise entries in the match still gets the fans buzzing.

Two of WWE’s other signature matches are the Elimination Chamber and Satan’s favourite playground, the Hell in the Cell.

Conceived of by Paul Levesque to combine elements from other popular matches into a new structure, the Elimination Chamber made its debut at Survivor Series in 2002. The early uses of the match proved to be strong pay-per-view draws. Eventually becoming its own show, it’s now a lead-in event to WrestleMania, and is used to set up one of the main matches. While not the draw it once was, it’s still an anticipated spot on the yearly PPV calendar.

The Hell in the Cell is even more legendary, due to several iconic matches, particularly the first two. The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels at Badd Blood, and the 1998 Undertaker vs Mankind bout at KOTR, both help the match create and maintain an allure. This is  despite now being regulated to its own yearly PPV instead of being used to settle the score between two rivals.

The Hell In A Cell idea came from Jim Cornette

He suggested combining a Memphis-style cage match with a cage with a roof. This was inspired by the one seen in the Last Battle of Atlanta match held by Georgia Championship Wrestling in 1983. That match was a bloody affair between Tommy Rich and Buzz Sawyer. And it was followed almost immediately by another wild brawl in the cage between Ole Anderson and Prince Paul Ellering. Unseen for decades this interesting piece of history is now available to watch on Peacock or WWE Network internationally.

It is worth noting that while Jim Cornette came up with the concept for Hell in a Cell, Vince Russo takes credit for the name. Being a Vince Russo statement though, I personally take that with a grain of salt.

These four matches are now synonymous with the WWE and it’s hard to imagine what the landscape for the company would look like without them. The Royal rumble in particular is among the first things people think of when asked about World Wrestling Entertainment.

There’s some other matches largely known as WWE exclusives. Most of these are strongly associated with particular superstars. The Casket Match and Buried Alive match for the Undertaker being prime examples. Kane is also known for the Inferno Match, and signature matches for wrestlers go back decades. Chief Jay Strongbow and the Indian Strap Match as well as Mankind and the Boiler Room Brawl are some other examples.

Of course not every match type debuted by the WWE ends up cementing its place in history.

The Scramble Match from 2008 was one such misstep. At the Unforgiven show that year ECW, SmackDown, and Raw each had one of these Scramble matches. The 20-minute bout had five men involved, and whoever scored the most recent pinfall during the bout became interim champion. When the 20 minutes was up whoever was the last interim champion would be declared the winner. This means that for a short, brief period of time, The Brian Kendrick was actually interim champion of the WWE.

I’ll just let that one sink in for a moment.

While the in-ring action from Unforgiven was considered solid, the interest in the actual PPV was poor. It drew both a low buy rate and poor attendance. Nearly 25% of the 8,700 people who were at the Quicken Loans Arena that night had received free tickets from local radio stations. Still, that doesn’t mean that the attempt at creating a new signature match was wrong, as you never know what will take off. The Royal Rumble’s early history shows that.

WCW also. had many prominent gimmick matches.

The conversation about which was the best though, starts and stops at War Games, the match beyond. 

Before becoming a PPV, The Great American Bash was a series of events held by the NWA. This was essentially a series of large, trumped-up house shows designed to draw big box office, and they succeeded. It’s there that War Games made its debut in July of 1987. It would continue to be used by NWA and later WCW at the Great American bash tour. It also made occasional appearances at other shows like WrestleWar, until 1998 when it became the regular headline match at Fall brawl.

WarGames was considered the ultimate way to blow off a feud. For all of WWE’s dominance they could never match the heat and mystique WCW could create with War Games.

WCW continued to attempt to create other signature matches that would be as big a draw for them as War Games. The Bunkhouse Stampede was just that, but the idea of a weapons filled Battle Royal lost its luster quickly. 

Similarly two other Battle Royal variants from WCW would also get a push in an attempt to match the WWE’s Rumble. Both though never came close to that level. 

BattleBowl was originally a 2 ring Battle Royal. The object was to throw the man from the first ring into the second ring. At that point the wrestlers in the second ring would fight to throw each other over the top rope for an elimination. Once there was only one man in each ring the two of them would fight it out to reach a winner.

Eventually WCW would simplify the convoluted event, but only slightly. Battlebowl was partnered with the lethal lottery going forward. There teams were formed in a random draw and competed in a one round tournament. The winners of those matches would go on to face each other in a standard Battle Royal at the end of the night. That failed to capture people’s imaginations, perhaps partially because of the lame “READY, SET, BATTLEBOWL” tagline,

WCW eventually decided since they couldn’t beat the Rumble in concept, they would simply out do it in size. Enter the World War 3 match. A gargantuan three ring setup that featured 60 participants. It was perhaps good on paper, but a true cluster in the ring. Unable to focus on any of the individual action, it was an absolute mess.

Perhaps it’s because of the great success of War Games that WCW tried many other types of cage matches, looking to create that next big buzz.

Often these were more spectacle than substance. Variants include the Chamber of Horrors match, the ThunderCage, and Scott Steiner’s signature match the Asylum. There was also the infamous Tower of Doom match and a Triple Cage Match. 

The Triple Cage Match was exactly what it sounded like. Three consecutive smaller cages were stacked on top of each other, with weapons at the top. On top of the final cage you could grab the championship belt in a similar fashion to a ladder match. The Triple Cage Match also featured an x-rules variant where you also had to escape the bottom cage with the belt.

Despite these and other attempts though WCW never found another signature match that they could place on anywhere close to the same level as War Games. 

That’s it for part 1, but come back for part 2 soon where we’ll look at ROH and TNA/Impact Wrestling.