Iron Man Match - Rules

Rules

Iron Man matches generally operate under the same rules as any other professional wrestling bout, but instead of the match having to be over before a time limit is up, the Iron Man match goes the full length of the allotted time, with each wrestler attempting to score as many falls in that time as possible. The wrestler who has the most decisions at the end of the match is then the winner. A Decision is a pinfall, submission, count out or disqualification.

Some Iron Man matches have an interval between falls. An example of this is the 2009 one between John Cena and Randy Orton which had a 30 second rest period after each fall, in part due to that Iron Man match being "anything goes" (only pinfalls and submissions counted as falls, but not count outs or disqualifications). The 2003 match between Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar had a 15-second rest period after each fall, regardless of how it occurred.

Should the match result in a tie, sudden death overtime may be requested by either wrestler as a plot device, and it is accepted or rejected by either an opponent or an authority figure. One note of rejection of the sudden death overtime was when Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle tied 2–2 in a 30-minute iron-man match. Shawn Michaels begged Kurt Angle to go sudden death, but Angle walked off, to the heavy boos of the audience who wanted to see how it would end.

Sudden deaths are especially common in the event of a title match. This is because, in the event of a draw, the champion will always retain the title, meaning that sudden death is the only way to truly determine a winner. Two notable examples of this happening are when the then commissioner Gorilla Monsoon ordered sudden death after the match of Shawn Micheals against Bret Hart at Wrestlemania XII, and when Christopher Daniels requested sudden death against AJ Styles at TNA Against All Odds 2005.

Iron Man matches are almost always two-sided (that is, no more than two sides, such as 1v1 or tag team, as opposed to triple-threat or fatal-four-way). However, it is possible for there to be a Triple Threat Iron Man, with the wrestler scoring the plurality of decisions being the winner.