10 Forgotten WWE Match Types That Need To Return

A match that delights in its self explanatory nature as well as its pointlessness, the boiler room brawl saw two superstars (in WWE, Mankind and someone else) retreat to the bowels of that week’s arena to settle scores in the confines of what usually looked like a genuine utility area. There’d be pipes to flail, bits of wood to be powered through, and shelving units to dive off, generally in a hazardously narrow space, more corridor than actual room.

Appropriately for the match type, the rules were inconsistent and downright daft. Sometimes you just had to escape the titular area, sometimes you had to make your way to the ring; in one instance, an urn was involved.

A change of scenery is always good, though, and the grottiness of the boiler rooms at WWE’s disposal gave the match an appealing sense of reality, even when you had Mankind doing battle with a dead man or the Mean Street Posse all dressed as Santa.

Today’s wrestling landscape may necessitate additional safety checks lest the talent contract tetanus, but if there was a way of maintaining the gnarly aesthetic while keeping performers from being impaled on a rusty spike, we’d be all for it.