15 hours ago, El-P said:
Tony Schiavone has said that he hated the submission or surrender rule, because it always came off anti-climatic and visually lame, and this is something I was so glad to hear because it was always by N°1 criticism with the concept.
The women's match had a pin in between the rings and Shirai had her feet on the ropes during the pin which should have stopped the count just as it did in the falls count anywhere match on last week's Raw. In fact the wargames match, which is supposed to be the blowoff match, was just used to setup a new challenger for Shirai (the men's match was also the first time Pat's new group faced Undisputed Era, so it was the first match rather than the blowoff).
The submit or surrender rule at least makes sense - two groups of wrestlers hate each other and the only way to win is to render unconscious a member of the opposing team or to make him or her submit. This also makes the match the blowoff of the feud as the winning team conclusively beat the losing team. A pin is a less impressive finish - especially if several wrestler pile up on top of the pinned wrestler (pretty much all the wrestlers would be pinned if two wrestlers would lay on top of them so it's hardly an impressive finish). Also, the older matches were not hardcore weapons matches. If a weapon entered the match, it's because the manager or valet found a way to smuggle it into the cage (e.g. Paul E's phone at Wrestlewar 92 was smuggled into the ring by Madusa).