WWE’s new head of creative, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, is making his mark on a WWE institution: this November’s Survivor Series will be rebranded as Survivor Series: WarGames, and feature two of the titular two-ring cage matches. The news was broken by The Ringer this morning.
“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,” Levesque told The Ringer. “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.”
WarGames matches are contested between teams of eight to ten people, in two rings placed next to each other, with a large cage surrounding both. Traditionally, the cage was covered with a roof, but WWE’s version has not included a roof. WarGames was first conceptualized by wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes, who put together the first WarGames match in the NWA in 1987. From there, the match became a staple in NWA and later WCW. Triple H revived the format in NXT in 2017, and there has been a TakeOver: WarGames event every year since.
Now, the match is making it to the main roster, and supplanting a Survivor Series event that, while a “Big Four” (or Five, depending on who you ask) tentpole event, has floundered in recent years, oscillating between flimsy “brand supremacy” matchups between Raw Superstars and SmackDown Superstars and traditional elimination tag matches with little to no stakes. Two WarGames matches should give Survivor Series the jolt it needs to once again be truly worthy of one of WWE’s biggest events of the year.
WWE Survivor Series: WarGames airs live on November 26, 2022, from the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
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