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The Absolute Best Weapon Strategy To Ensure A WarGames Victory At Survivor Series

WWE Superstars, take note: With this handy guide, you’ll be one step closer to winning WarGames this weekend!

By Chris Phelan
Rhea Ripley being declared the winner of 2019 War Games

If you’re a WWE Superstar and you’ve recently found yourself agreeing to be in one of the WarGames matches this weekend at Survivor Series, you must be excited. Or nervous. Or scared half to death. Or maybe a combination of all three.

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After all, WarGames is one of the most brutal matches in professional wrestling history. You’re guaranteed one of two outcomes: A triumphant victory unlike anything you’ve ever experienced or a devastating loss that renders your physical form into a pile of goo.

Luckily, USA Insider is here to help. We’ve done our research. We’ve combed through hours of footage and we’ve put the time in and we’re ready to put out a helping hand. If there’s one thing that defines WarGames (besides the general mayhem) it’s how choosing the right weapon and employing the correct strategy can literally be the difference between winning and losing.

RELATED: Watch Some Of The Most Iconic Survivor Series Moments In WWE History (Pre-WarGames)

Here's the absolute best strategy to use during WarGames — read this list, digest it, and thank us later.

Pull A Rhea Ripley And Smash People Out Of The Sky With A Trash Can

Does the trash can have any downsides as a weapon? Its weight makes it incredibly easy to swing around with reckless abandon, it possesses plenty of sharp edges to inflict the maximum amount of damage, and it’s accompanied by a satisfying THWACK sound whenever you use it — it really is the ultimate WarGames weapon.

Just look at what Rhea Ripley did with it during the first-ever women’s WarGames match in 2019. We’re pretty sure Kay Lee Ray is still picking pieces of trash can out of her teeth today. To be fair, any weapon that Rhea uses should be considered a lethal weapon, making her a Superstar you absolutely won’t want to bet against come Survivor Series this Saturday.

Utilize The Metal Gap Between The Rings

Want to ensure your opponent will eventually be forced into early retirement? Simply give him or her a Canadian Destroyer onto the metal gap that separates the two WarGames rings!

That’s exactly what Adam Cole did to Kevin Owens in 2019. Although KO valiantly fought against it, Cole flipped over him and delivered a devastating piledriver to the exposed sheet metal, leaving the sold-out crowd in Chicago with their jaws on the floor. We’re shocked that Kevin Owens was able to continue on in the match, to be honest. And today in 2022, we’re left a little curious as to whether Owens is suffering from some lingering effects of that specific move years later — but we’ll find out soon enough this weekend!

Use The Cage Itself As A Launching Pad

Fun fact: The WarGames double-cage setup is one of the highest structures ever used in WWE history. That means that each move performed off the top of the cage brings with it even more devastating damage to your opponent! So quit doing your signature moves in the same old fashion and start thinking about doing it from off the top of the cage.

You’ll follow in the footsteps of Tommaso Ciampa when he won WarGames in 2019 for his team by delivering an Air Raid Crash off the top of the cage and through a table to an utterly helpless Adam Cole. That same year, IYO SKY made history by performing a picture-perfect moonsault off the top of the cage. The list goes on and on; it’s almost as if jumping off the cage itself is a rite of passage in WarGames.

The only question is will you be the next Superstar to pull off this incredible feat this weekend during your WarGames match?

Order (And Use) Custom Steel Chairs

Custom-made steel chairs have to hit harder than normal WWE steel chairs, right? That was the line of thinking for the Undisputed Era during their WarGames match back in 2018. As soon as they got a chance, the ring was filled with black steelies with their iconic “UE” logo painted on it. At the time, it seemed perfectly suitable. The group held all of the gold in NXT at the time, so custom-built steel chairs were the logical next step. And they made sure to use those steel chairs extensively throughout the match, swinging them hard and often onto current Superstars such as Ricochet, Butch, and the Viking Raiders.

Sadly, their steel chair plan didn’t lead to victory — a massive 450 splash by Ricochet onto Adam Cole sealed the deal in the end, but we did appreciate the attention to detail by Undisputed Era by using custom chairs. Of course, this brings up a litany of questions: Where did they get these chairs from? Were they ordered off a website? Were they homemade? The WWE Universe demands answers!

By now, there’s a possibility that you’re thinking to yourself, “No kidding I should use trash cans and chairs — I’m not a dummy, that’s obvious!”

Although some of the advice so far may seem obvious, it’s amazing what slips through your head when you’re actually competing in the match. From the countdowns to the chaos to the roar of the crowd, it’s easy for a Superstar’s mind to forget about utilizing a well-placed steel chair when the match is actually happening.

But fine, maybe this advice is too obvious. Maybe you’ve been piledriving people onto exposed metal for years. Maybe you need the good stuff. Fine, but prepare yourself. It gets weird quick. You’ve been warned.

Unscrew The Turnbuckle Bolt And Pummel Someone With It Mercilessly

Aren’t you glad you opened this door? This is definitely a little more extreme than putting somebody through a table, huh? Sometimes you just need to bludgeon your opponent with a heavy object in order to secure a WarGames victory. That’s exactly what went down in WCW during the 1992 edition of WarGames. Larry Zybysko managed to disassemble the turnbuckle, grab ahold of the bolt itself (that was still attached to the ring rope!), and throttle ... his own teammate by accident, directly leading to his team losing the match.

So the strategy here is simple: Use the turnbuckle bolt as a weapon against your opponent. Not your teammate. Don’t be a Zybysko.

Grab Something, Anything, And Stab Somebody In The Eye

Well, if you want to absolutely 100 percent ensure a victory, it’s simple, and you have the 1987 edition of WarGames to thank for it. The ending of the match  — the first-ever WarGames match in professional wrestling history — saw Paul Ellering grab one of the metal spikes frequently found on the entrance gear of the Road Warriors and proceed to literally stab it into JJ Dillon’s eye. Like, repeatedly. Even the Road Warriors themselves got into the action.

Needless to say, this stopped the match pretty quick; as you know, JJ Dillon didn’t want his eye stabbed out, so the success rate of stabbing somebody in the eye is historically at 100 percent. The strategy literally never loses.

But there’s some obvious bad news: We’re pretty sure this type of thing would earn an immediate WWE suspension and perhaps jail time if you tried it this weekend at Survivor Series. But you know what they say — anything can happen in WWE!

(But seriously, please don’t try to stab somebody’s eye out. Stick to swinging trash cans Rhea-style. Maybe you can get lucky and cause some eye damage that way!)

Catch Survivor Series: WarGames this Saturday, Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. ET on Peacock.

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