This match type is called relevos Australianos (Australian relay) in Mexico and is most often seen in lucha libre promotions such as Lucha Libre AAA World Wide (AAA) and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) although some non-Mexican promotions have used them as gimmick matches as well.
In his autobiography; Mick Foley describes the match as "A fun, fan-inclusive cross between keep away, monkey in the middle, and kill the guy with the ball."
Lucha libre wrestling promotions use the term torneo cibernetico (cybernetic tournament) for multi-person elimination matches.
This type of match has also featured on the May 31, 2011 episode of NXT, with a team consisting of a WWE pro and an NXT rookie, and on the May 8, 2017 episode of Raw, where the winning team earned a number one contender's spot for Matt and Jeff Hardy's WWE Raw Tag Team Championship.
Two teams consisting of four compete, and one wrestler can be eliminated either getting dropped by their opponent through a table, or accidentally falling by themselves.
This type of match features either mixed-sex or mixed-size (midgets with a normal-sized wrestler).
For example, if a woman tags her male partner, both women leave the ring and both men enter.
It is meant to illustrate the tension between the desire to win and the hatred for one's rival.
[2] In the United States, however, this type of tag team format is used sometimes used in WWE, where it is called a "strange bedfellows" match.
The now-defunct World Championship Wrestling referred to this type of tag team format as the "lethal lottery", with the members of the winning tag teams advancing to the Battlebowl battle royal.
Legendary masked heel Kendo Nagasaki was frequently an enemy of fellow heels, notably Mark Rocco who would, in their feud, ally with blue-eyes against him (although Nagasaki also occasionally formed such alliances such as the "strange and unholy alliance" with clean-cut blue-eye Steve Veidor in a 1977 house show against heels Bruno Elrington and Bronco Wells as well as a 1976 match reuniting with his mentor Count Bartelli to defeat Wild Angus and John Kowalski.)
Another lucha libre variation of the tag team match, this one begins as a regular tag match but the two members from the losing team are forced to face each other in a lucha de apuestas (bet match), where the loser is forced to either unmask or have their hair shaved off.
It first appeared in TNA Wrestling in 2023; each time, it has been used to establish a contender to a singles championship.
Primarily associated with Ring of Honor, a Scramble tag team match has one difference from the normal rules: when a wrestler goes out of the ring either of their own volition or by being forced out, a partner can come in as a replacement without being tagged in.
A match held inside a cage with wooden platforms in each of the corners for "high risk" moves.
If a wrestler is thrown over the ring ropes, both they and their partner are eliminated from the match.
The first match of this kind was held on October 2, 1937, in Houston between Milo Steinborn and Whiskers Savage against Tiger Daula and Fazul Mohammed.