December 5, 2022 Observer Newsletter: AEW Full Gear & WWE Survivor Series WarGames recaps, Royal Rumble breaks records

In 1987, Jim Crockett Promotions and booker Dusty Rhodes were looking for an attraction for the July 4 show at the Omni in Atlanta.

In the 70s, depending on where you lived, cage matches, Battle Royals, a long-built-up unique world title program, or Texas death matches were that attraction you could put on a major show and draw people who may only come to a show once, or a few times a year.

In time, they were starting to lose their juice. Rhodes took a series of concepts. There was the gang warfare, a coin toss from football, the cage match but with a top to it to prevent people from climbing out, and the finality of top guys submitting which at the time was very rare (so rare that fans would still chant “You quit” at Tully Blanchard for his submitting in a match three years earlier) the two-rings from the two-ring Battle Royals that Paul Boesch and Verne Gagne used to add juice to the typical Battle Royal, and staggered entrances that was the impetus for Pat Patterson’s creation of the Royal Rumble a few months later.

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