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Going into Clash of Champions, there are multiple title matches that have more than one challenger. The tag champions Usos are defending in a fatal 4-way while Baron Corbin has to defend his United States title in a triple threat.
That brings out the inevitable math from WWE. “Baron Corbin has only one third chance to retain his title. The Usos only have 1/4 chance.” (To be fair, they didn’t press this as much this time around as compared to other recent multi-person matches.)
The reasoning makes sense. With multiple evenly skilled teams, the Usos would only have a 25% chance. At least less than half. But that never felt right to me. It always seemed like champions come out of triple threats and fatal 4-ways retaining the title more often than not.
I was curious enough to turn to Cageside’s numbers guy, Cain A. Knight, to crunch some data.
Using his pay-per-view (PPV) data spanning back to 2013, he looked at every triple threat match and fatal 4-way match. In that time there were 15 triple threat and 9 fatal 4-way championship matches, excluding elimination-style rules.
- Of the 15 triple threat matches, the champion retained 10 times, giving them a 67% success rate.
- Of the 9 fatal 4-way matches, the champion retained 6 times, give them a 67% success rate in those matches.
Here’s the full table with information on all 24 matches:
Triple Threat and Fatal 4-Way Championship matches from 2013 - 2017
| Match Participants | Event Name | Year | Event Number | Championship | Title Change? | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match Participants | Event Name | Year | Event Number | Championship | Title Change? | Type |
| Barrett vs Miz vs Axel | Payback | 2013 | 5 | IC | Yes | Triple Threat |
| AJ vs Natalya vs Brie vs Naomi | Night Of Champions | 2013 | 8 | Divas | No | Fatal 4-Way |
| Cody/Goldust vs Shield vs Usos | Hell In A Cell | 2013 | 10 | Tag | No | Triple Threat |
| Orton vs Batista vs Bryan | WrestleMania 30 | 2014 | 3 | WWE WHC | Yes | Triple Threat |
| Cena vs Kane vs Orton vs Reigns | Battleground | 2014 | 7 | WWE WHC | No | Fatal 4-Way |
| Paige vs AJ vs Nikki | Night of Champions | 2014 | 9 | Divas | Yes | Triple Threat |
| Dust Bros vs Usos vs Miz/Mizdow vs Matadores | Survivor Series | 2014 | 11 | Tag | Yes | Fatal 4-Way |
| Lesnar vs Cena vs Rollins | Royal Rumble | 2015 | 1 | WWE WHC | No | Triple Threat |
| Lesnar vs Reigns vs Rollins | WrestleMania 31 | 2015 | 3 | WWE WHC | Yes | Triple Threat |
| Rollins vs Ambrose vs Reigns vs Orton | Payback | 2015 | 5 | WWE WHC | No | Fatal 4-Way |
| Nikki vs Naomi vs Paige | Elimination Chamber | 2015 | 6 | Divas | No | Triple Threat |
| PTP vs New Day vs Lucha vs Matadores | SummerSlam | 2015 | 9 | Tag | Yes | Fatal 4-Way |
| Ryback vs Miz vs Big Show | SummerSlam | 2015 | 9 | IC | No | Triple Threat |
| NewDay vs Lucha vs Usos | TLC | 2015 | 13 | Tag | No | Triple Threat |
| Charlotte vs Sasha vs Becky | WrestleMania 32 | 2016 | 3 | Womens | No | Triple Threat |
| Miz vs Zayn vs Owens vs Cesaro | Extreme Rules | 2016 | 5 | IC | No | Fatal 4-Way |
| NewDay vs Enzo/Cass vs Club vs Vaude | Money in the Bank | 2016 | 6 | Tag | No | Fatal 4-Way |
| Ambrose vs Rollins vs Reigns | Battleground | 2016 | 7 | WWE WHC | No | Triple Threat |
| Charlotte vs Sasha vs Bayley | Clash of Champions | 2016 | 10 | Womens (Raw) | No | Triple Threat |
| Styles vs Ambrose vs Cena | No Mercy | 2016 | 11 | WWE WHC | No | Triple Threat |
| Swann vs Perkins vs Kendrick | Roadblock: End of the Line | 2016 | 15 | Cruiser | No | Triple Threat |
| Club vs Hardys vs Enzo & Cass vs Bar | WrestleMania 33 | 2017 | 4 | Tag (Raw) | Yes | Fatal 4-Way |
| Lesnar vs Reigns vs Joe vs Strowman | SummerSlam | 2017 | 11 | Universal | No | Fatal 4-Way |
| Styles vs Dillinger vs Corbin | Hell in a Cell | 2017 | 13 | US | Yes | Triple Threat |
It should be noted that there were two triple threat matches that Cain and I debated.
One was the triple threat main event at WrestleMania 31 where Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase at the end of the Brock Lesnar/Roman reigns match to make it a triple threat. The argument could be made that WWE’s “1/3 chance” rule wouldn’t apply here because you had two guys who had been battling for 20 minutes and therefore Seth had way more than a 33% chance. For the purposes of this analysis, we counted this as a title change in a triple threat match.
The other was the Women’s triple threat match at WrestleMania 32. Charlotte was the champion going in and coming out of the match and in that sense, I felt it fit the feel of what we were doing here. However that was the match where they introduced the new Women’s title. So technically it could be said that Charlotte won a new title in a triple threat and didn’t retain hers. For the purposes of this analysis, we counted it as a successful title defense.
If you removed the Seth Rollins Mania win, that would change the tally from 10/15 to 10/14 and raise the percentage of title retention to 71%. If you removed just the Charlotte win, it would lower it to 9/14 or 65%. If you removed both, it’d be 9/13 or 69%. All still over that 50% mark.
Clearly WWE’s math on these multi-person/team matches are very wonky. It’s not as outrageous as Steiner math, but the narrative that the champion is at a disadvantage headed into triple threats or fatal 4-ways has not been supported by the last 5 years of history.
Congrats to the Usos and Baron Corbin in advance!