Quite possibly one of the most insane promos ever created was by Scott Steiner in 2008. His goal was to hype people up for a three way match for the TNA World Heavyweight Title against Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle. How is he going to hype the match up? Math. Steiner somehow came up with the odds of his chances of winning being 141 2/3% against Samoa Joe’s 8 1/3%. This is also assuming that Kurt Angle just decides not to even try.

Interesting thing to note if you don’t actually know, but Kurt Angle was actually injured overseas nights before Sacrifice happened, and was taken out of the main event and replaced by Kazarian, who won in the first ever TerrorDome match.

You know, they say all men are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Samoa Joe, and you can see that statement is not true! See, normally if you go one-on-one with another wrestler, you got a 50-50 chance of winnin’.

So far so good… kind of. You can probably nullify Steiner’s statement of saying all men are created equal by saying that we don’t know exactly what Scott looked like before he became a “genetic freak”. Also, the whole notion of every match being 50-50 is absolutely absurd since this is wrestling where the better man wins the match, and not flipping a coin. But I’ll let all of this slide for now. Yes, when you’re in a 1-on-1 match, you can either win or lose. 50/50.

But I’m a genetic freak, and I’m not normal, so you got a 25% at best at beatin’ me! And then you add Kurt Angle to the mix? Your chances of winnin’ drasticy go down. See the three-way, at Sacrifice, you got a 33 1/3 chance of wiinnin’. But I, I got a 66 2/3 chance of winning, cause Kurt Angle KNOWS he can’t beat me, and he’s not even gonna try!

Here, Steiner claims that since he’s a genetic freak, he has more advantage in every single match that he’s been in. He claims that in every match that he’s in, his opponent only has a 25% chance. Is this true?

Well, surprisingly it’s not too far from the truth! Throughout Scott Steiner’s career, his opponents have lost 32.59% of the time. And throughout Scott Steiner’s run in WCW, his opponents have lost 27.56% of the time. In TNA, however, Steinter’s record was somewhat close to 50/50 (his claim that was made earlier). For now, I’m going to run with the numbers from his entire career and will agree that Joe has 32.59% chance of beating Scott Steiner 1-on-1.

Now onto the whole aspect of the three way. By going with the logic earlier, everyone has a 1/3 chance of winning. However, Steiner completely throws Kurt Angle off to the side. Without bringing up the idea that Steiner is a wizard for knowing that Angle wasn’t going to be a factor in the match at all (Angle was injured before the PPV), we have to reset Joe’s chances to the 32.59% chance that Joe had earlier. So does Steiner have the 66 2/3% chances of winning?

According to his record, he only won 61.72% of the time and walked away with a draw 5.69% of the time.

But let’s not forget about Kazarian! Does he factor into the match at all? Let’s not forget that he just got finished with competing in the first ever TerrorDome match ever in TNA. So he is not 100% ready physically to be in this main event, let alone he didn’t even know he was going to have a shot to be in the main event until the show started, so he isn’t 100% mentally ready to be in the main event. If I was a smart bookie, I would put Kazarian’s chances at 10% at best against a physically and mentally stronger Scott Steiner.

So, Samoa Joe, you take your 33 1/3 chance, minus my 25 percent chance, and you got an 8 1/3 chance of winnin’ at Sacrifice! But then you take my 75 perchance chance at winnin’, if we was to go one-on-one, and to add 66 2/3 ch… percents, I got a 141 2/3 chance of winnin at Sacrifice! See, McJoe; the numbers don’t like, and they spell disaster for you at Sacrifice!

So here, Steiner is giving Joe his guaranteed 33 1/3% and SUBTRACTING 25% chance. Only, that’s not how math works. Here is a better understanding of where to get Joe’s odds.

1/2 = 50% is your chances of winning against most opponents. However….

1/2 = 32.59% is your chances of winning against a genetic freak like Scott Steiner.

So in order to get Joe’s chances against Steiner in a three-way, you must find a way to get from 1/2 to 1/3.

1/2x = 1/3

2(1/2x = 1/3)

x = 2/3.

To find Joe’s chances, we need to multiply his 32.59% by 2/3, giving him a 21.73% of winning at Sacrifice. Doing the same thing for Kazarian and his 10% gives him a 6.67% of winning at Sacrifice.

Also, Steiner should know that you can’t get a percentage over 100 unless you’re talking about gains (you can’t have more than one pinfall in a match… unless it’s an iron man match…), so Scott’s chances are now at:

100 – 21.73 – 6.67 = 71.6% chances of winning the three way match at Sacrifice.

So was Steiner completely lying during this promo? I’m going to say that he was telling a half-truth the entire time. He somehow knew that due to his genetic freakness, his opponents were losing somewhere around 25% of the time to him. He knew that Kurt Angle wouldn’t have been a factor in the match ahead of time, and he knew that Joe’s chances were extremely low.

Joe should consider himself extremely luck though, because even though his odds were 21.73%, he somehow managed to walk out of Sacrifice as the TNA World Heavyweight Champion.

All Scott Steiner Numbers were attained from here.