IWC Scum — Why I’ve Grown to Loathe Cage Matches Like a Crotchety Old Man

Welcome back to the column that puts the incessant whining and complaining in IWC. I’m a nonsensical nincompoop named SkitZ who dumps on the product he adores for shits and giggles. Today’s topic must seem pretty random, but humor me for a minute if you will.

A couple weeks ago, Heyman came out on RAW to inform Roman of what type of match he’d be facing Bronson Reed in at Crown Jewel. Paul paused for a moment before the big reveal, and the only thing my mind kept repeating during those precious seconds was “please not a cage match, please not a cage match, please oh merciful wrestling Jesus anything but a cage match”. Heyman could’ve said an Air Jordans on a Pole Match, and your boy SkitZ would have jumped for joy like he just scored a pair of Moon shoes in an eBay auction.  

Then I started thinking about how Jacob Fatu went from one of the company’s fastest-rising stars to being completely phased out for two months following his dud of a SummerSlam match against Solo. Coincidence? Eh, Sikoa tends to have that effect on everybody he feuds with so it’s hard to tell. 

Then I recently found myself day-dreading about what we can expect at WarGames, as the only obvious match at the moment looks to be some iteration of The MFTs versus The Wyatt Sicks… and possibly Sami Zayn…? It’s gonna take more than two mediocre midcard stables facing off under dim lighting to get me invested. Making Nikki Cross an official member of Team Howdy against the Samoan Sopranos would help, but it feels far-fetched, even with her being the same size as Tama Tonga. 

Suffice to say, this unrelenting wave of discontentment and trepidation has only reinforced an emotion that’s been brewing in my subconscious for several years now – how much I absolutely detest modern steel cage matches. 

Remember when the announcement of one happening on RAW or SmackDown used to be an exciting prospect full of possibilities? It constantly led to show stealers like the E&C versus Hardy Boyz banger from Unforgiven 2000. Or Edge and Angle’s epic in ‘02. Or Eddie and Rey’s classic in ‘05. Hell, even Taker and Batista’s barnburner in ‘07. That’s very rarely the case nowadays though, isn’t it? 

WWE’s steel cage bouts don’t enhance feuds. They’re merely a boring placeholder to buy the company an extra month of dragging a program out for longer than necessary. A cheap tactic for the heel to steal a fluke victory over the babyface. A gimmick advertised as brutal and punishing when it’s really just as uneventful as taking a shit without your phone in hand. The cage itself should offer the competitors more room for creativity and violent innovation, but the steel walls serve as nothing more than a limitation. More like a limited imagination on the parts of the combatants. 

It shouldn’t be that difficult to craft something out of the box. There’s tons of examples throughout the various eras to draw inspiration from. Look no further than the Jericho/X-Pac cage bout from a quarter century ago. A relatively inconsequential match on the card, but it was fast-paced, well-coordinated, produced a clever finish, and they crammed in way more action than Jacob and Solo did despite being given less time. I rewatch old episodes and pay per views on the regular, and you wanna know how many of them are steel cage matches from the last 15-20 years? Two or three tops. 

They’ve just become so mind-numbingly formulaic. You ram my head into the cage, then I slam your body into the cage, you feign climbing up one side, I pull you down, someone jumps off the top, probably snaps their ankle in half, etc. One wrestler staring at the other while he slowly steps down the steel stairs is supposed to be suspenseful yet the crowd barely reacts; resulting in a finish as anticlimactic as routine sex with the old ball and chain.

Now don’t get it twisted, I’m not here to hate on other variations of the modern cage match. Hell in a Cell might’ve fallen off over the years, but the gimmick still serves a purpose, as evidenced by the MOTY contender Drew and Punk delivered at Bad Blood 2024. The Elimination Chamber is safe from ridicule as well. Not only has it become a major plot point along the Road to WrestleMania, but there’s plenty of intrigue between the participants and their clashing dynamics throughout the match.

WarGames however deserves a lot of the same criticisms that my least favorite gimmick does. The one fall to a finish structure takes all the fun and unpredictability out of it. WWE should’ve combined the WarGames and Survivor Series formats by making the double cage match elimination style. I’d rather we just returned to the traditional 5-on-5 sole survivor shtick altogether, but that’s a long winded argument for another column.

And why did we ever move away from the original concept where the only way to win was by escaping the cage? Kinda makes the whole gimmick feel pointless when you can also attain victory via pinfall or submission. The rules for winning have constantly changed throughout the years to benefit the booking at the time, making a very basic concept more convoluted than it needs to be. What’s even the thought process behind the steel cage exactly? Surely not to keep people out, because it practically encourages shenanigans. Clearly not for the opponents to climb out of either as we’ve previously established. The four chain link walls really lose their sense of trappedness when there’s a door he/she can use freely throughout the contest, so how about returning to padlocking the cage door and making these lazy fuckers actually work for it? 

I’m tired of these newer cage matches failing to raise the stakes, the risks or the urgency. They constantly went above and beyond in the 90’s and early 2000’s. How long’s it been since the last time you witnessed a truly great cage match in WWE? When Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit’s suicidal asses tried killing each other at the tail end of the Attitude Era? Maybe the Edge/Matt ho’s before bros battle from 20 years ago? Even Kane & Taker treating DDP & Kanyon like human yoga mats proved more entertaining than the last half dozen installments we’ve snoozed through.

Kross and McIntyre went at it in a cage three years ago, and I honestly can’t even recall who won, let alone what happened in the match. Punk and Rollins waged war inside a steel cage back in March of this year, and it’s their weakest encounter to date. Remember when Cena and Bray clashed inside a cage at Extreme Rules 2014? Does anything besides that creepy kid singing He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands ring a bell? Mmm didn’t think so. There’s only a select few capable of restoring the gimmick to its former glory, and those individuals are Rhea, Iyo, Asuka and Kairi. Make it happen, WWE. Stop torturing us with these plodding punch, kick and chuckfests. 

It’s devolved into the lowest, slowest form of cage match on the market. A gimmick that used to whip crowds into a frenzy decades ago can’t even generate a decent pop in 2025 when the GM makes it official. We’ve reached a point where the modern steel cage bout has essentially turned into a night off for today’s wrestlers. For us as fans too, because you can skip that shit entirely and not miss a beat.