WWE’s own revisionist history has worked to teach fans that the rival World Championship Wrestling was the worst promotion ever, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Despite its many flaws, WCW had a lot of great wrestlers, storylines, and match types that not only made the promotion memorable but were later used on WWE programming.

RELATED: 5 Times WCW Was Ahead Of Its Time (& 5 Times It Was Stuck In The Past)

WWE hasn’t used every WCW idea, but it has used a bunch, and there are still great ideas just lying in wait to be implemented. So let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some WCW concepts that WWE adopted as well as some that WWE should use because they were awesome ideas.

10 Taken: WarGames

NXT WarGames

WCW established numerous gimmick cage matches from the Chamber of Horrors to the forgotten ThunderCage, but the biggest one was WarGames, where teams of wrestlers engage in a mega-violent battle in two adjacent rings enclosed in a huge cage. WWE never employed this match type on the main roster, but NXT began adopting it in 2017, making an annual TakeOver event every November. The NXT WarGames bouts have been pretty great so far, too, with some tremendous spots and tweaks on the formula like three teams competing instead of two.

9 Should Use: Filling a Three-Hour Show

WCW Monday Nitro: Randy Savage

Monday Night Raw has been a three-hour affair every week since July of 2012 and the result has drawn a load of criticism from fans as an unnecessary move that has made the show difficult to watch. Monday Nitro was also three hours long, too, but managed to not be interminable because of its diverse, packed undercard with midcard guys like Disco Inferno, random jobbers, and loads of cruiserweights doing flips. WWE has hired nearly every talented wrestler possible and boasts the largest pro wrestling roster in the world, but for the most part you see the same handful of people on a given show every week.

8 Taken: Cruiserweight Division

Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko

For many fans, one of the most beloved and successful elements of WCW was its Cruiserweight division, which showed off all kinds of international talent -- particularly a wealth of luchadores from Mexico -- in often high-flying action. It’s the division that introduced fans to Rey Mysterio Jr., Chris Jericho, and Ultimo Dragon.

RELATED: 10 Tremendous Cruiserweights You Forgot Were Part Of WCW

WWE had established Junior Heavyweight and Light Heavyweight divisions in the past, but once it purchased WCW in 2001 eventually adopted the “Cruiserweight” as the label for its lighter divisions. The WWE Cruiserweight revivals aren’t without their criticisms, but they’re definitely something that exists because WCW’s version made such an impression on fans.

7 WWE has Should Use: World War 3

WCW World War 3

WWE already has a signature battle royal in the form of the Royal Rumble, but the promotion is also no stranger to running more standard battles royal in a given year. Sometime in the summer they could do World War 3, WCW’s own battle royal, where seemingly the entire roster takes part in a huge “over the top rope” match that’s ultimately super chaotic. The only thing standing in the way of implementing this one is that three rings would need to be set up in one arena.

6 Taken: Live TV

WCW Monday Nitro

Aside from PPVs, WWE didn’t produce a whole lot of live content in the early to mid 1990s. Even Monday Night Raw was filmed two at a time. But WCW changed everything when it aired Monday Nitro live every week, kicking off the Monday Night Wars. Suddenly, WWE’s tendency to pretape its Monday show backfired, as WCW would just announce the results of a given Raw during Nitro, giving viewers little reason to change the channel. Of course, that would end up backfiring, as WCW announcing Mankind’s title win caused many fans to change the channel and never change back.

5 Should Use: TV Title

Booker T, WCW Television Champion

WWE has a lot of championship belts -- some might say too many -- but they’ve never really had a Television Title, and maybe they should. It’s a strictly mid/undercard title, but one that would basically guarantee a title match on Raw or SmackDown. The time limit of either 10 or 15 minutes would keep challengers protected, and would be a great way to build up undercard dudes as being more important. It certainly feels like it has more value than, say, the 24/7 Championship.

4 Taken: The Prime Time B-Show

WCW Thunder

Whenever WWE isn’t separated into brands, SmackDown has been Monday Night Raw’s B-Show, a program where less important stuff happens or where things happen and then they’re just repeated all over again on Raw.

RELATED: Goldberg's 5 Best WCW Matches (& His 5 Best In WWE)

But WWE isn’t even an innovator in that realm, as SmackDown began in 1999, the year after WCW established Thunder, largely considered by many fans to be the consistently worst program in the promotion’s history. After all, it was the show where David Arquette won the WCW World Title.

3 Should Use: BattleBowl

WCW Battlebowl logo

WCW under Dusty Rhodes was full of wacky match set-ups with complicated rules and stipulations. One of the most fun was BattleBowl, a series of tag matches where guys basically drew names out of a hat to determine who their partners were, and the winners of all the tag matches would take part in a battle royal later in the night, with the winner getting a title shot, money, or some other accolade/opportunity. WWE loves the “can they co-exist?” tag team, so it makes sense to put together a whole event about it.

2 Taken: Old Guys

Goldberg

While WCW did introduce many fans to Goldberg, La Parka, and Chris Jericho, its main concern was Hollywood Hulk Hogan and all the aging stars from Hogan’s era, giving little care to much of the homegrown talent. It’s something you can see nowadays in WWE’s product as they bring D-Generation X back for one-night hits of nostalgia or put multiple world titles on Goldberg now that he’s a dusty part-timer. WWE used to make fun of WCW for being a glorified wrestling retirement home. Ironically, WWE ended up putting the same emphasis on decrepit talent.

1 Should Use: The Doomsday Cage Match

doomsday cage

One of WCW’s most reviled matches ever happened at Uncensored 1996. In Doomsday Cage match, Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage took on every major heel in the company (and then some), all united as The Alliance to End Hulkamania. It was a nonsensical match with unclear rules, and somehow the two babyfaces managed to fend off a veritable army of bad guys. As bad as it was in execution, the idea of a bunch of wrestlers battling in a multi-story cage match is too good to leave alone, so WWE should bring it back. There’s no nostalgia for it, so there’s really nothing to live up to. And, no matter what, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than covering the Hell in a Cell cage in red paint.

NEXT: 5 Ways ECW Was The Best Company Of The '90s (& 5 Ways It Was WCW)