Wrestling & Gambling: A Great Tag Team
Chips, cards and chairshots have been intertwined for decades.
AEW has truly embraced gambling and all that goes with it. After all, the company was conceived out of a wager between Cody Rhodes and Dave Meltzer. The odds were so stacked that even well-known sports betting sites would have a hard time accepting it.
Its first pay-per-view event – Double Or Nothing – took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada. The stage featured a giant set of poker chips (which Jon Moxley tossed Kenny Omega off of) and Hangman Adam Page earned a title shot by winning the Casino Battle Royal. Of course, AEW went back to that theme this year, organizing a Casino Ladder match in which Brian Cage debuted and created his own luck, earning a title shot against Moxley in July.
Pro wrestling and gambling have been intertwined way before AEW, though. Who can forget Vinnie Vegas, Kevin Nash’s mobster character in WCW? Inspired by Steve Martin’s “My Blue Heaven,” Vegas talked a lot of smack and tried to back it up in the ring. Stacking the deck in his favor, he teamed up with kindred spirit Diamond Dallas Page as part of The Vegas Connection before cashing in his chips for a WWE contract.
While Vegas was on national television, Jeff Gamble took the gimmick a step further on the independent scene, transforming into The Gambler. A beloved jobber to the stars, The Gambler would reveal a pack of playing cards to the crowd during his entrance. He hung around WCW’s B-level shows for most of the 1990s.
WCW went back to the casino well time and time again. In 1992, Halloween Havoc was built around the concept of “Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal.” Jake Roberts battled Sting in a match determined by a wheel of misfortune, resulting in a Coal Miner’s Glove match. Sting pinned Roberts after hitting him with the glove, causing a snake Roberts was holding to bite his face. Determining match stipulations by a wheel of chance was copied by WWE a decade later for Raw Roulette, one of the most thrilling episodes of WWE TV.
That wouldn’t be Roberts’ last interaction with gambling. In 1999, he stole the show at Heroes of Wrestling at Casino Magic in Mississippi, cutting a classic promo about blackjack, poker and other card games. Dedicating a show to legends and stars of yesteryear was a wise bet for promoters because the pay-per-view actually drew a decent buyrate despite competition from WWE, WCW and ECW at the time.
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