10 Most Effective Wrestling Blade Jobs Ever
6. Dusty Rhodes Launches One Of The All-Time Great Gimmick Matches
WarGames was such an awesome gimmick match that it has become the rule-proving exception to a wider wrestling trend.
Generally, the industry has improved by reaching an unprecedented artistic level in the mid-2010s and beyond. Even if you hate high-flying matches with obvious choreography, no matter how exhilarating, virtually everything else has also reached a blistering new standard. Just watch latter day Hiroshi Tanahashi sell and elicit big match drama. It has never been better than that from a purist's perspective.
WarGames, however, hasn't been bettered since its late 1980s heyday.
The NXT version was sensational at its best, but the posed stand-off and unnecessary plunder elements detracted from its own inherent violence. It was overkill. AEW nailed the tone with Blood & Guts, and Sammy Guevara used the playground to advance it from an athletic standpoint, but the sports entertainment overtones and shoddy camera work of the finish lost the magic.
The original match remains the best. Outmatched babyfaces getting bloodied into near-submission with a hailstorm of wild fists, bleeding buckets as they overcome the odds, staunchly refusing to surrender: the content feels minimal now, but that's the primal appeal: the rawness was so much more powerful than a contrived table spot.
Emotion is more effective than a sequence, and Dusty firing up through an unrecognisable jelly face remains more evocative than anything the modern promotions have offered up thus far.