IYO SKY and WarGames: Seven Matches, a Signature Cage Dive and Her First Year Out
No woman has been inside the WarGames cage more often than IYO SKY. There have been seven women's WarGames matches since the first one in 2019, and she has been in every single one: three in NXT as Io Shirai, and four at Survivor Series. Her record in them is three wins and four losses.
That is what makes this year's card stand out. The women's WarGames match at Survivor Series: WarGames on November 28 in Houston is Charlotte Flair, Stephanie Vaquer, Alexa Bliss, Tatum Paxley and Bayley against Fatal Influence (Jacy Jayne, Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid), Jade Cargill and Michin. Both teams already have five members, and SKY is not on either of them. As the card stands, it will be the first women's WarGames without her.
IYO SKY's WarGames record
| Year | Event | IYO SKY's team | Result | Winning fall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | NXT TakeOver: WarGames | Team Baszler (Shayna Baszler, Bianca Belair, Kay Lee Ray) | Lost | Rhea Ripley's Riptide on Shayna Baszler |
| 2020 | NXT TakeOver: WarGames | Team Shotzi (Shotzi, Ember Moon, Rhea Ripley) | Lost | Raquel González pinned SKY |
| 2021 | NXT WarGames | Raquel González, Kay Lee Ray, Cora Jade | Won | Cora Jade pinned Jacy Jayne |
| 2022 | Survivor Series: WarGames | Damage CTRL (Bayley, Dakota Kai), Nikki Cross, Rhea Ripley | Lost | Becky Lynch pinned Dakota Kai |
| 2023 | Survivor Series: WarGames | Damage CTRL (Bayley, Asuka, Kairi Sane) | Lost | Becky Lynch pinned Bayley |
| 2024 | Survivor Series: WarGames | Rhea Ripley, Bianca Belair, Naomi, Bayley | Won | Rhea Ripley pinned Liv Morgan |
| 2025 | Survivor Series: WarGames | Rhea Ripley, Alexa Bliss, Charlotte Flair, AJ Lee | Won | AJ Lee made Becky Lynch tap out |
Seven appearances is the most of any woman. Her three wins tie her with Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair for the most by a woman, and Ripley needed five matches to get there while Belair needed four.
Every IYO SKY WarGames match
2019: the first women's WarGames
SKY, then Io Shirai, started the very first women's WarGames match against Candice LeRae, as part of Shayna Baszler's team. She had already won the advantage for her team by beating Mia Yim in a ladder match earlier that month. Her moonsault off the cage onto LeRae and Belair was the first big moment of women's WarGames, but Team Ripley won when Ripley hit Baszler with a Riptide through two chairs.
2020: the only time she took the fall
This one was built around keeping her out. Raquel González and Indi Hartwell stopped her getting into the cage, and Toni Storm locked the door with her belt. SKY got in anyway by diving off the top of the structure while inside a trash can. It ended badly for her: González put her through a ladder bridge between the two rings with a Chingona Bomb and pinned her. In seven matches, it is the only time SKY has been pinned.
2021: a win in her NXT farewell year
SKY teamed with González, Kay Lee Ray and Cora Jade against Toxic Attraction and Dakota Kai. She brought chairs and a trash can into the cage, and when Jade dislocated her shoulder doing a senton off the top through a table, SKY put it back into place. Jade then pinned Jacy Jayne for the win. It was SKY's last NXT WarGames before she moved to the main roster in 2022.
2022 and 2023: two losses with Damage CTRL
Her first two main roster WarGames came as part of Damage CTRL with Bayley, and both were losses to Becky Lynch's leg drops and slams. In 2022 she took a Lynch leg drop while stuck in a trash can and moonsaulted off the top of the cage onto everyone, but Lynch's double leg drop from the top of the cage put Dakota Kai and SKY through a table. In 2023, as WWE Women's Champion, she dove off the cage in a trash can again before Lynch pinned Bayley.
2024 and 2025: two straight wins
SKY switched sides and started winning. In 2024, she hit a trash-can moonsault off one side of the cage at the same time as Tiffany Stratton's swanton off the other, and Ripley won it with a Riptide through a table. In 2025, she broke up a pin on AJ Lee with a moonsault, then took the trash can from Lee on top of the cage and came off it with a senton onto almost the whole opposing team. Lee won it with the Black Widow on Lynch.
The trash can and the cage
The pattern is hard to miss. In at least six of her seven WarGames matches, SKY has come off the top of the cage, and in four of them she did it from inside or with a trash can. It has become her WarGames signature in the way that the Riptide through a table has become Ripley's, and it is the spot fans now expect from her every November.
Our take
SKY is the closest thing women's WarGames has to a franchise player. She has been in every match, on both sides of the good-versus-bad line, in NXT and on the main roster, as a challenger and as a champion. More than any single result, that consistency says something about how WWE has used her: for seven straight years, she has been one of the first names on the women's WarGames card.
Her record also shows how WWE uses her. She has only been pinned once, and in most of her matches the finish went to someone else while she provided the biggest spot. That is a compliment and a limitation at the same time. SKY makes everyone around her look better, but in seven matches she has never been the one to win it.
That is why her absence this year feels like a missed opportunity to us. The women's match in Houston has an interesting mix, with Vaquer back from injury, Flair just returned and Paxley in her first WarGames, but it has nobody with SKY's experience of the match. If the card stays as it is, the women's WarGames loses its most reliable performer for the first time.
SKY is not without a big night of her own. On Monday's Raw, November 16, she challenges Raquel Rodriguez for the Women's Intercontinental Championship, a match set up when she and Becky Lynch beat Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez on the November 9 Raw. Read our Raw results for November 9.
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