WCW's Lethal Lottery Is A Great Concept That Needs A Revival

One of the most fascinating aspects of WCW's history was its ability to be vastly different than the competition. Often times those differences resulted in great ideas, and even more often cruddy execution. However, if some of those ideas had some decent booking behind it (such as War Games and the nWo), then perhaps younger fans might know a lot more about something as awesome at The Lethal Lottery.

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On four separate occasions, WCW produced a Lethal Lottery PPV; Starrcade 1991 and 1992, its own show in 1993, and several years later at Slamboree in 1996. In WCW, the event was always paired up with the double-ring battle royal, Battlebowl. It’s been a concept that was revamped for several promotions over the years, but in WWE or AEW’s hands, The Lethal Lottery can be tremendous.

The Lethal Lottery Could Be Used To Supplement The Royal Rumble

If you’re wondering what The Lethal Lottery was, it was originally WCW’s answer to Ric Flair leaving for WWE. The first event took place at Starrcade 1991, the first of its kind to not feature The Nature Boy. All the heels were in one locker room and the babyfaces in another. Eric Bischoff and Missy Hyatt would reveal the randomly selected tag teams to face one another. Depending on the event, the rules of the battle royal could change, but it’s The Lethal Lottery that was always the most interesting part of the night.

The Lethal Lottery was a series of randomly selected tag team partners in matches and the winners would then advance to Battlebowl. That sometimes made for very strange bedfellows and bitter enemies to have to coexist to win their tag matches and advance to the big battle royal. Occasionally, WCW would utilize this idea by having guys like Cactus Jack and Vader team up, or beloved teams like The Steiners paired up with others against each other.

Related: 9 Wrestlers With The Most Eliminations In A Single Royal Rumble Match (& Who They Eliminated)With the WWE looking to fill 857 hours of content weekly, they have fifteen different Lethal Lottery matches en route to the Royal Rumble; more if they choose to use a tournament format. It would possibly help bring more eyeballs to Raw, Smackdown, and NXT knowing that there can be all sorts of chicanery and tomfoolery to get to the starting blocks of the Road To WrestleMania.

AEW Could Use The Lottery To Rejuvenate The Casino Battle Royal

There has been some chatter recently about how AEW might need to, or is currently revamping how their Casino Battle Royal works. Perhaps it starts by bringing back The Lethal Lottery. With all of the stables and young upstarts that populate All Elite Wrestling, The Lethal Lottery is the perfect way to showcase a vast display of talents in situations that you might not see them in all of the time. What if Jungle Boy had to partner up with Matt Jackson against Nick and Adam Cole, or even Luchasaurus? Or a super team between Christian and Matt Hardy begrudgingly get their names drawn, forcing them to into an uneasy partnership to pursue glory. The winning teams head to a battle royal where the winner gets a title shot on Dynamite, without having to wait for the next PPV, setting up either a surprise title win or the beginning of a program that can stem for the match.

Related: 10 Obvious Signs That WWE Secretly Views AEW As Competition

WWE Would Probably Benefit More From The Lottery Concept

Which company, if any, can benefit the most from resurrecting The Lethal Lottery? While both top companies could make the motif exciting and unpredictable; that unpredictability is exactly what WWE needs right now. AEW has proven to be able to pull off the surprises without using Lethal Lottery, thanks to Cody’s lineage and Tony Khan’s fandom, AEW loves to pay homage to past. As for WWE, they can utilize the concept to bolster up Royal Rumble excitement. But again, as they continue to try and create content, having a one or multi-night event, gifting the winner with big stakes, such as a world title shot would be a win-win for everyone involved.

It’s also been nearly thirty years since DDP won the last major iteration of this event, which means it might be time to resurrect the The Lethal Lottery. After all, everyone in the business likes to claim the business is cyclical.