The participants for the War Games match taking place at NXT Takeover: War Games on November 17 at Staples Center in Los Angeles have been set. The announcement was made by NXT Commissioner William Regal during the October 17 NXT tapings at Full Sail University in Orlando, FL. This will be the second year in a row that NXT has held a War Games match since bringing the concept back last year.
The participants for this year’s War Games match are the Undisputed ERA (Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly and Roderick Strong) taking on War Raiders (Hanson and Rowe), Ricochet and Pete Dunne. The match was set up with a brawl between the two sides taking place at yesterday’s NXT tapings.
No other matches for NXT Takeover: War Games were announced at the tapings.
The War Games match concept, which was long a staple of the NWA and later WCW was brought back by NXT last year when the team of Adam Cole, Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly defeated Authors of Pain with Roderick Strong and SAnitY at NXT Takeover: War Games on November 18, 2017 in Houston, TX. That match was only the second time since the concept’s inception that a War Games match was contested by three teams.
The War Games concept was originally created by Dusty Rhodes as a specialty match for the Four Horsemen and was first held at The Omni in Atlanta during the NWA’s Great American Bash ’87 tour on July 4, 1987. In total there have been 32 War Games matches between NWA/WCW and NXT. A variation of the Four Horsemen has competed in the match 16 times.
NXT Takeover: War Games in Los Angeles will mark the first time the match has been held on the west coast. The match does have a Southern California connection however, as all eight participants made appearances in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, with four being former PWG World Heavyweight Champions (Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reily, Roderick Strong, and Ricochet). Cole and Ricochet are both former Southern California Wrestlers of the Year as well.
