10 Best Fatal 4-Ways In WWE History

It's probably the oldest trick up a general manager's sleeve.

You come out to a ring filled with three title hopefuls arguing over who will next get a shot at the belt, and announce that the champion will be defending it at the forthcoming pay-per-view against not one, not two, but all three of them - in a fatal... four... way.

That was exactly what Kurt Angle did this Monday when he decided that Braun Strowman, Samoa Joe, and Roman Reigns would all get a go at Brock Lesnar's Universal Championship at SummerSlam, in a main event that - in all fairness - is pretty damn impressive.

Often, four-way bouts have the ring of lazy booking, as though WWE - instead of trying to build up a singles feud that captures fans' imagination - simply resorts to throwing a smattering of its biggest stars into one match. That's bound to drum up some interest.

And usually it works, to be fair. There's just something appealing about watching four monster names each take a corner of the ring and prepare for an all-out free-for-all.

To say that this wasn't everyone's preferred WrestleMania main event would be quite an understatement, but it really wasn't the terrible match many have later claimed.

Granted, nobody really believed that Shane, much less Linda, had a shot of emerging as the night's winning McMahon, but each of the four wrestlers involved at least brought something unique to the table - even if Big Show took a very early bath.

When it came down to the last two, the McMahon-led antics made it a fun, if slightly goofy, occasion. It was far from a wrestling clinic - you had the triangle ladder match earlier in the night for that - but it was indisputably one of the great touchstones of the fabled McMahon-Helmsley era, and without it Triple H may not have become the star he is today