As Michael Cole has reminded us during WWE broadcasts, the rules to WarGames have changed slightly over the years, but the gist of it remains the same. It’s a brutal affair between two teams, taking place in two rings surrounded by a super-sized steel cage. Weapons are legal and anything goes.
That doesn’t mean there are no rules whatsoever. Here’s the rundown on the WWE WarGames match rules for this edition of Survivor Series:
- Two participants start out the match, one for each team. The other members of each team are inside shark cages, waiting for their turn to enter.
- At “equal intervals,” a new superstar enters the match. This is where WWE can tweak things if desired, because the time between entrants can and has changed over the years. The important thing to remember here is that the team with the advantage will often have a numerical advantage, because it’s always one of their members who will enter before the other team (so they’ll have 2-on-1, 3-on-2, 4-on-3, etc. for several minutes). The Judgment Day won the advantage for the Men’s WarGames match on the Nov. 20 episode of Raw, while the advantage for the Women’s WarGames match is being decided by a fan vote.
- The actual match doesn’t end until every member of both teams has entered the cage. So there’s no point to going for a pin before everyone has entered, and submission holds are only good for wearing people down during that time.
- The only way to win is by pinfall or submission, and it only takes one fall: WarGames isn’t an elimination-style match.
One final note is that the Men’s and Women’s WarGames matches don’t have the same number of combatants per team, as the former is 5v5 and the latter 4v4. But that doesn’t make a difference except that the women’s match will likely be shorter since both teams will end up in the cage sooner.
You can see these rules in action soon enough, as WWE Survivor Series: WarGames is set for the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont on Saturday, Nov. 25.
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