It was more than 35 years ago, during the spring of 1987, when vignettes appeared on all Jim Crockett Promotions television shows, promising a new concept, “War Games,” that would debut on that year’s July 4 holiday show at the Omni in Atlanta.
This was before Crockett promotions got into the pay-per-view game later in the year. “War Games: The Match Beyond” was a creation of Dusty Rhodes, Crockett’s booker, with the name based on a popular 1983 movie called WarGames.
In those days, the biggest drawing gimmick match in pro wrestling was the cage match. And as most successful gimmicks, it would be done so often that it started losing its drawing power and specialness. So Rhodes added a number of different concepts to it and created a new annual major drawing match.
