Gimmick matches can be some of the most entertaining wrestling matches possible, with the likes of Hell in a Cell, Money in the Bank, and War Games providing some fantastic situations to blow-off a heated rivalry.
However, throughout the history of wrestling, every single promoter has attempted to top the other with a brand new idea, each attempting to be unique and entertaining at the same time, and it hasn't always led to great moments.
With both WWE and WCW doing everything they could to get an edge during the Monday Night Wars, crazy ideas were commonplace, however many of the ideas got incredibly strange. Within this article, we will be taking a look back at 10 of the most bizarre gimmick matches that WCW decided to create.
10 King Of The Road Match
Whilst wrestling fans love to see a brawl taking place in different environments, with parking lot brawls or falls count anywhere matches being very popular, nobody was asking to see people wrestling on the back of a moving 18-wheeler, on a connected trailer.
However, at Uncensored 1995, that is exactly what WCW gave as Dustin Rhodes battled Blacktop Bully with the winner having to try and ring a bell at the end of the trailer, whilst the vehicle was moving on the road.
The entire thing was as stupid as it sounds with neither man being able to do anything entertaining due to the unpredictability and movement of the truck, and with the entire thing being poorly pre-taped it was just a mess that nobody was looking to see
9 Chamber Of Horrors Match
At Halloween Havoc 1991, WCW placed El Gigante, Sting and the Steiner Brothers against Abdullah the Butcher, Cactus Jack, Vader and the Diamond Studd in the Chamber Of Horrors match, which was exactly that, a horror.
The idea was to celebrate Halloween as much as possible, with WCW deciding to surround the ring with fake graves and shrunken heads, but it was the electric chair in the middle of the ring that took things to a crazy level.
The aim of the match was to place an opposing wrestler into the chair, pushing the level to "electrocute" them and then win the match, which just led to some ridiculous moments in a bizarre match.
8 World War 3
WWE really struck gold in creating the Royal Rumble gimmick match as it is incredibly entertaining, to the point where every wrestling company in the world has tried to copy and duplicate its success at some stage.
WCW's version was the poorly named, World War 3 match, which attempted to take the Royal Rumble concept and totally plus it, making it bigger and better in the hopes of it becoming more entertaining.
WCW had 60 men compete across three different rings with the usual battle royal rules applying here, but whilst it might have sounded like a great idea, in reality, it was just pure chaos with nobody being able to concentrate on anything that was going on in each ring at the same time.
7 Junkyard Invitational
In the 1990s, hardcore wrestling really was at its peak with ECW taking a large portion of the audience due to its violent nature, so WCW attempted to get on board with a more hardcore style itself.
This is how the Junkyard Invitational was created with the match taking place in, you guessed it, a junkyard. The wrestlers would brawl with whatever they could get their hands on and to win the match they had to be the first to escape through a steel-link fence.
The issue with this match was that WCW didn't really take the safety of the wrestlers as a priority and instead all hell broke loose, with many wrestlers getting legitimately injured.
6 San Francisco 49ers Match
Another very strange gimmick match that WCW created was the San Francisco 49ers match, which took place on October 2000 on an episode of Nitro, with Jeff Jarrett and Booker T being the unfortunate wrestlers involved in this one.
The match saw four wooden boxes on two poles in two different corners of the ring, with each box containing either gag weapons; a Scott Hall framed picture, a blow-up doll, and a glove, or the main prize they were going for, the World Heavyweight Title.
Bizarrely, WCW thought it would be a good idea to put the WCW World Heavyweight Championship on the line in this one, making the entire thing feel like one big joke.
5 Boxer vs Wrestler
Whilst WWE had the horrendous Brawl For All tournament, at least that had a consistent ruleset, but WCW decided to have atwist on the situation by having a boxer face a wrestler.
Because of the confusion behind this, they had a boxer competing as a boxer, and a wrestler as a wrestler both having to follow the rules of their own individual sports, which made the entire thing ridiculous.
Johnny Badd had to win the match by knockout, whilst Arn Anderson was only able to pick up a victory by pinfall or submission, mixing two very different sports together.
4 Doomsday Cage Match
Just take a look at the structure of this cage and you should be able to tell that the entire match was bizarre, with WCW taking the classic steel cage concept and growing it to ridiculous new heights.
The Doomsday cage match sees the cage have several levels, with the talent competing on the top floor, working their way through a trap door into the second level where they would then go through a door and out the cage, down some stairs to the bottom level.
If you were pinned or submitted at any stage before that, then you would lose the match, but escaping to the next point would allow continuation in what was an insane match.
3 Best Of Five Tables Match
This concept might seem fairly straight forward, with a best-of-5 table match meaning exactly that, a wrestler needs to put their opponent through five tables to win the match and bring things to an end.
However, Shane Douglas had made things very confusing when he built up this match with his promo, making fans think that it would be a best-of-9 tables match, which certainly wasn't the case.
In this mess of a match, Douglas ended up falling behind two tables before throwing his opponent, through a stack of three tables to win the match, even though nobody seemed clear that is what had happened.
2 Monster Truck Match
That's right, a Monster Truck match, a match, involving two Monster Trucks, Hulk Hogan, and The Giant, and this was an entire mess of a situation which took place at Halloween Havoc in 1995.
The two trucks were welded together by their front bumpers and pushed each other around in a circle on top of the Cobo Hall in Detroit, with the two trying to avoid bombs that were placed within the circle.
It really is as ridiculous as it sounds, with Hogan eventually being pushed over one of the explosions which had no effect at all, with Hogan no-selling the entire situation in what really was a 'match' to forget.
1 Viagra On A Pole Match
Yes, this gimmick match did really happen unfortunately and it is as ridiculous as it sounds with the principal of it being exactly what you think, with a winner being declared by the first person to pull the viagra off the pole.
Vince Russo came up with some shockingly bad ideas in his time, and he was known for being a big fan of "___ on a pole" matches, but this was the absolute worst of the bunch, with viagra being on the line.
Taking place on an episode of Nitro, the match saw Shane Douglas take on Billy Kidman for the prize, which makes it even worse as they are both incredibly talented wrestlers, but thankfully this is one gimmick match we should never see again.