WCW 'World War 3' - A review

‘Chaos’, ‘Utter Chaos’, is what this match is designed to uphold. If Royal Rumble wasn’t fun enough, imagine a similar competition spread across three such rings involving 60 superstars.

To add to the list of surprises, all superstars will feature in the ring at the same time. This match has occurred only four times in the history of professional wrestling.

‘World War 3′ was an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW). The pay-per-view’s title also was the name of its signature match, a three-ring, sixty-man battle royal which was their answer to the World Wrestling Federation’s (WWF) Royal Rumble.

The rules for a World War 3 match were similar to the rules for a Royal Rumble match but there were two major differences.

Unlike the Royal Rumble, World War 3 was conducted as a traditional battle royal – meaning that all sixty wrestlers involved started the match at the same time. Since the match employed three separate wrestling rings, this meant that the sixty men would have to be divided into three groups and twenty men began the match in each ring.

The rules for the World War 3 match were:

• All sixty men were randomly assigned a specific ring before the match began.
• The match began with all sixty men in three rings, when the bell rings.
• Originally, in order to be eliminated from the match, a wrestler had to be thrown over the top rope and have both feet touch the floor. This rule was amended in 1998 to allow for eliminations if a person leaves the ring in any way, in addition to counting pinfalls and submissions and disqualifications.
• When thirty men remained, they moved to the central ring and the match continued. This rule was amended in 1997 so that the competitors had to move to the central ring once forty men had been eliminated.
• The last man standing in the ring was declared the winner.

Here are some matches: