The Steel Cage Match is a concept inextricably linked to the world of professional wrestling. The concept has been around for nearly a century, evolving and innovating in different promotions around the world. Many of your favorite wrestlers from bygone eras have at least one career highlight surrounded by four walls of chain link fencing that stretch upward towards the heavens. It’s as synonymous with pro wrestling as swinging a steel chair.
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But if you’re a WWE fan in 2023, the announcement of a Steel Cage Match on an upcoming episode of Monday Night Raw or a pay-per-view doesn’t carry the same weight that it did decades prior. There are a number of reasons for that — Hell in a Cell, WarGames and Elimination Chamber are effectively the stipulation’s “evolved forms,” it gets pulled out fairly often (25 times in the past five years, per CageMatch) and it typically gets presented as the midpoint of a feud rather than the climactic finale. You should honestly be praying for a Steel Cage Match if you’re a WWE World Champion since a world title has only ever changed hands in that match three times.
However, the same can’t be said for AEW — and not just because the promotion is significantly younger. It has more to do with a bizarre cognitive dissonance WWE has placed upon the stipulation, one that Tony Khan and co. have managed to avoid.
Tell me if this sound familiar — a WWE babyface and heel are feuding. The face wants to get their hands on the heel but can’t because either a) the heel keeps running away or b) the heel has too many friends that either group up to attack the face or assist the heel in somehow winning. The face decides it’s time for a match where there will be no escape and no one will be able to save the heel, thus throwing down the challenge for a Steel Cage Match. The two wrestlers will bring up the talking points about there being “nowhere to run” and “no one to save you,” which will then be repeatedly echoed by the commentary team.
But you already know what’s coming next. Despite this stipulation being all about there being “no escape,” a good 80% of the match will feature at least one wrestler trying to scale up the cage wall or slowly crawl their way out of the door located in one corner of the ring. Outside interference is also all but guaranteed, and WWE has a particular fondness for that spot where an intruder will slam the cage door shut on one of the wrestlers’ faces.
What drives the madness home is the complete lack of awareness. Even though we’ve just walked through the template of nearly every WWE Steel Cage Match from the past 15 years, the wrestlers will give the same shocked expression every time there’s outside interference, a slammed door or a heel scurrying away from the ring. All the while, the commentary team has to pretend like this is the first time they’ve seen this happen. Fast forward a few months and the cycle begins anew.
AEW managed to sidestep this inane process. Not just because there’s no escape stipulation — though Lord knows that helps — it’s that each time the cage is brought out it follows through on what the stipulation promises. Sometimes it’s to prevent interference (The Young Bucks vs. The Lucha Brothers, Dr. Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rosa). Sometimes it’s needed to stack the odds against a babyface (Cody Rhodes vs. Wardlow, Wardlow vs. Shawn Spears). And sometimes, it’s just what the doctor ordered to increase the violence in a blood feud (Jungle Boy vs. Luchasaurus and what we’ll probably get tonight between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley).
WWE Steel Cage matches aren’t beyond saving. But it’s no great mystery why fans are hyped for AEW’s next cage match and why those same fans will probably shrug the next time WWE lowers the four sides of steel.
