On November the 30th, the WWE broadcasted the 2024 edition one of their four flagship PPVs, Survivor Series: WarGames. As I watched the titular “War Games” matches, it occurred to me how much the concept of the “cage match” has been devalued in the past 10 or so years. What once seemed like an important, terrifying match format has degenerated into just another stipulation, something that merely acts as a cool setting rather than a vehicle for storytelling.
Firstly, I have to give some context for non-wrestling fans. A cage match is a special match type that involves a steel cage surrounding the ring, to prevent any interference from non-match participants. Additionally, participants can win by escaping the cage rather than pinning or submitting their opponent. It’s an excellent stipulation, and has given us some of the greatest matches in history, such as Bret vs. Owen Hart (WWF SummerSlam 1994) and Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson (TNA Lockdown 2010).
Cage matches have been around since the late 1930s, but in later years there have been many variants: the no disqualification Hell in a Cell match featuring a roofed cage, the six-man Elimination Chamber match, and the focus of current-day Survivor Series, the WarGames match. WarGames, the brainchild of wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes, features two teams battling inside a massive cage structure encompassing two rings. Despite the stipulation’s classic history, its modern presentation, like that at Survivor Series 2024, often fails to live up to its legacy.
Whatever the bells and whistles are, the mission statement for using a cage match is in its danger. It’s meant to be a last resort only used for extremely important reasons, such as a “loser leaves town” match or the blowoff to a big feud. It is presented as something that the participants are afraid of, that will leave them with lasting injuries and potentially hospitalised for an extended period. It’s not glamorous.
In my opinion, the shining example of how to do a cage match properly is the I Quit steel cage match between Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard at NWA Starrcade 1985. Both men used the cage in violent but strategical ways, raking their opponents’ face on the steel or throwing them headfirst into it. Magnum and Blanchard conveyed their hatred with every punch, and the stipulation of forcing your opponent to audibly surrender added a visceral layer to the already brutal confrontation. The ending, with Magnum driving a shard of a broken wooden chair into Blanchard’s forehead to force him to surrender was both shocking and perfectly fit the story they told. It’s a masterpiece, and an example of how using a steel cage can elevate a match. Or should I say, used to elevate a match.
Survivor Series 2024 was not a great PPV, and a large portion of it was due to the women’s WarGames match feeling completely unearned. The build was incredibly rushed and the teams reflect this. The babyface team included Bayley and IYO SKY, who were in an intensely personal feud in the leadup to WrestleMania this year, and the heel team contained Liv Morgan and Nia Jax, fresh off a not even month-old title feud. These thrown-together teams not only make it harder for the fans to invest in the feud, it also cheapens the concept of a WarGames match, which specifically gets used to end feuds.
The match itself was no better, with nonsensical gimmick props like a toilet seat and a trashcan painted in IYO’s colours, as well as the babyface team donning party hats to celebrate teammate Naomi’s birthday. How could any viewer think of WarGames as a realistic, brutal match when even the people involved aren’t taking it seriously? It also didn’t help that the quality of the in-ring wrestling was sub-par, especially from the untalented Jax. The treatment of the structure as an opportunity to showboat instead of a threat also cheapened the much better Old vs. New Bloodline WarGames main event, which ironically resulted in participant Bronson Reed legitimately breaking his ankle and being sidelined indefinitely.
It’s not the first time the WWE has weakened the aura of a cage match stipulation, as evidenced by the existence of the (thankfully) discontinued annual Hell in a Cell PPV. Just like WarGames, Hell in a Cell matches are specifically booked to end feuds, and a huge effort was made in their initial creation to emphasise how dangerous the matches truly were. The image of Undertaker throwing Mankind off the roof of the cage, crashing down 22 feet through an announce table is etched into the brain of every wrestling fan for its devastating brutality. Matches like that NEEDED to only be used when absolutely necessary.
So, what did WWE do? Made it an annual event with two Hell in a Cell matches per PPV, and decided to book for the stipulation, rather than letting it arise naturally as a result of a current feud. This, combined with HIAC’s no disqualification rule, led to many horrible matches with completely illogical outcomes. The match between “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt and Seth Rollins in the 2019 edition is particularly reviled, ending in a baffling “no contest” after Rollins used a sledgehammer, despite Triple H using one in the same match type at Unforgiven 2006. If you don’t want to commit to a specific winner, why even book a no-DQ Hell in a Cell match, let alone one in the main event?
However, WWE aren’t the only company guilty of this overindulgence. Fans of rival company TNA were also disappointed when PPV Lockdown was introduced in 2005, featuring every single match on the card taking place in a steel cage. The idea reportedly came about as a joke made by Dusty Rhodes, who was fed up with constant requests for gimmick matches and sarcastically stated “Hell, let’s put every match in a cage”. TNA president Dixie Carter, not understanding that Rhodes was joking, jumped at the idea. Many TNA wrestlers went on record saying they hated the concept, calling it “overdone” and saying the cage match had “lost a lot of its lustre”.
I think a root of a lot of these issues is the treatment of the cage match as a vehicle for spectacle, rather than a spectacle itself. The cage is already dangerous enough, why do more weapons need to be used that take the focus away from it? Why does someone need to jump from the roof of the cage in seemingly every match, even when it makes more logical sense for them to win by other means? Nowhere else is this better exemplified than the WWE’s treatment of the Elimination Chamber in recent years.
Elimination Chamber was created in 2002, and was debuted in a genuinely important and impactful way unlike a lot of what the WWE was presenting at the time. The video vignettes emphasised the manufacturing process – “2 miles of chain, 10 tons of steel” – and the grand scale of the structure completely dwarfed the ring, looking like something out of a prison complex. Wrestlers took bumps on exposed steel gratings and through plexiglass. It wasn’t flashy or cool, and it made every move look and feel more impactful because it felt like seeing something you weren’t supposed to.
In 2017, the design of the structure was vastly overhauled. Large LED strips now line the outside, the grating was replaced by padding, and worst of all the large and ugly new WWE logo was implanted on the top. It looks like something out of a daytime game show. While there were legitimate reasons to change certain things in the interest of performer safety, such as removing the unforgiving steel grating that had caused injuries and concussions, the modifications took away from the darkness and danger of the original and replaced it with an overly expressive, almost childish feeling.
Not everyone has forgotten how to book an important cage match, though. CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre, the greatest wrestling feud of 2024, used the Hell in a Cell stipulation perfectly. McIntyre had been screwing with Punk ever since he injured him in January, and in retaliation Punk screwed McIntyre out of the world title on multiple occasions. They had their first match at SummerSlam, which McIntyre won, then a strap match at Bash in Berlin which Punk won. Everything hinged on their final match, which was masterfully announced by Raw General Manager Adam Pearce as “HELL! IN A CELL!”.
Their match was violent and bloody, but all of it had a purpose and was believable. Most importantly, the fighters treated the cell with the reverence it deserves. And what made the match’s impact last longer was that both men were not the same after – CM Punk came out the next night limping, lamenting the fact that he was so hurt he could barely make it to the taping but that he did it for the fans, and McIntyre didn’t even show up at all, only returning two months later. This is something missing in a lot of contemporary pro wrestling – taking time off after a particularly brutal match not only helps portray that stipulation as truly dangerous, but also allows for a spectacular return a few months down the line.
To restore the cage match’s prestige, wrestling promotions have to prioritize storytelling over spectacle, substance over style. Cage matches should be reserved for the most intense rivalries, with stakes high enough to warrant such a dangerous environment. Wrestlers must treat the stipulation with reverence, and creative teams need to stop overbooking with unnecessary props or stunts. Only by following these guidelines can the cage match regain its status as wrestling’s ultimate proving ground.
