Gimmick Some Lovin': WarGames

Dusty sees a movie and finds Gold

The amount of pro wrestling that would not exist if it were not for this film franchise is staggering.

The character of "The American Dream" was never short on allies, but all too frequently alone when the Horsemen came to call. If Rhodes did manage to assemble a posse, the evil quartet always managed to escape intact, boiling fans' hatred across the South.

As Dusty tells it, he knew the match needed to be taken to a higher level. It needed a violent clash, but it couldn't be something the fans had seen before. The world needed to see Dream and his team of destroyers finally pay the Horsemen their comeuppance, but the most common speciality matches used as blowoffs in the era were paths too often trod in that program to up the ante.

Enter the second element crucial to the origins of the match: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which Dusty attributes as the inspiration for a larger, roofed structure with literally no escape wherein the heels and faces would commit atrocities against one another until a member of one team admitted he could take no more.

Being a babyface in a territory booked by Dusty Rhodes is a masochist's dream.

Dusty Rhodes, however, was no ordinary booker. He knew that just the concept of the match wouldn't draw the crowds in, and he understood that it needed a twist. Ergo, he decided that entry into the match would be staggered and, this being the NWA/Jim Crockett Promotions in the 1980s, the heels would begin with and generally always maintain the numerical advantage.

With the help of William "Klondike Bill" Soloweyko, a retired wrestler who was in charge of the physical setup of the physical setup of the company's arenas and rings, Dusty envisioned a larger-than-life setup of two rings enclosed in the largest roofed steel cage known to the wrestling business at the time.