Back in 2019, a tri-branded WarGames match was pitched by Triple H for WWE’s Survivor Series Premium Live Event, with it featuring Raw vs. SmackDown vs. NXT for supremacy of the brands.
With AEW Dynamite about to launch in 2019, WWE took a strike before the show was even on the air on TNT, putting their NXT program on USA Network on the same scheduled night as Dynamite just a few weeks before AEW was about to begin their flagship program. This, in response, created the ‘Wednesday Night Wars.’
A Battle Of The Brands WarGames Match Was Pitched By Triple H
WWE’s Survivor Series Premium Live Event is known to be a show where brands clash and gain bragging rights. NXT joined up with the red brand of Raw and the blue brand of SmackDown for the first time in company history, which led to a few three-way elimination matches during the program.
Talking on his “Oh You Didn’t Know” podcast, Brian “Road Dogg” James — who is currently WWE’s Senior Vice President of Live Events — highlighted that Paul “Triple H” Levesque wanted to bring WarGames to Survivor Series, however, the pitch would be turned down by Vince McMahon, who was the CEO and Chairman of WWE at the time.
“Yes, and look he’s always wanted to do that, he’s had that in mind, and that’s why we started doing it down there. But yeah, he wanted to do it there. It just wasn’t time yet. And so I don’t disagree with that, we hadn’t had one yet. I don’t think we had had one yet maybe we had at that point.” [NXT had held two WarGames matches in 2017 and 2018, with two more taking place on an NXT TakeOver on the night before Survivor Series].
“But I feel like Triple H liked that match a lot more than Vince did. And I think Vince thinks, and rightfully so by the way, this cannot be argued with, it does step on Hell in a Cell a little bit. Like you can’t have those two close together because it’s a huge cage match and a huge cage match and how do you promote and keep special one or the other? So it is a debate to be had.”
“But yeah, Triple H always thought that WarGames was a great, you know, one of Dusty’s creations that was awesome. And he wanted to carry it forward. So yeah, he always had that idea.”
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