World War III is, or was, the largest battle royale ever created, and ultimately the most unsuccessfull. It was first held as a PPV (also titled World War III) by World Championship Wrestling in November 1995, and it consisted on 60 wrestlers fighting in three different rings at the same time. There were 20 wrestlers fighting in each ring, and the object was to eliminate half that amount of wrestlers, then move to another ring full of 20 wrestlers and eliminate half that amount before entering the main ring where it becomes a regular 30-man battle royale. Confused yet? The people who attended the card that evening sure were, as there was so much going on at once that no one could keep up without hearing the announcers on the PPV, and even the ones watching at home couln't make anything out of it since the action was split-screened into three tiny screens so you could hardly see who was fighting who. And even with THREE announce teams trained one per ring, it still didn't make any sense because the announcers themselves couldn't follow anything! So all in all, World War III was a huge bust, despite the fact it ran inexplicably for another 2 years.
Here's a short history of the
royale: The first one was for the vacated
WCW championship and was hyped with "a giant in every ring!", that being
The Giant (now
The Big Show), The
Yeti (a wrestling mummy), and
Hulk Hogan.
Macho Man Randy Savage won that one, winning the title. The next year was for a shot at the title, with
Scott Hall winning that one (this was during the
nWo period, so he never really got that title shot).
The Giant won the year after that, again recieving a shot at the title (and again never recieving it, it was still
nWo period).