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The Problem with the Steel Cage Match in WWE

By Brandon Carney

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Has the steel cage match run its course?

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Enjoying pro-wrestling is all about suspending your disbelief. If you can’t do that, you won’t enjoy it. It’s as simple as that. When WWE makes it harder for fans to do that, the match seems awkward and not as fun to watch. The steel cage match is the epitome of that.

Believable near-falls are the best part of any good match. So in a cage match, near-escapes serve the same purpose. The problem is, a majority of near-escapes aren’t believable.

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I love when a guy is climbing the cage and his opponent drags him off the wall. THOSE are believable. But when the door is wide open and the guy takes an eternity to walk through the ropes or drag himself out, only to be inevitably pulled back in by the opponent…those are lame. Very lame.

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    • And as far as the door goes, cage matches are also illogical at times. Why wouldn’t you just rush out of the door as soon as your opponent is on the ground? Obviously the answer is “So the match actually goes on for a reasonable amount of time”, but no matter the match, WWE is supposed to make us believe that competitors will do anything to win, in spite of the entertainment value. That’s how you maintain realism. The entertainment value is supposed to come as a result of trying to win the match, i.e. a guy uses his finisher to do severe damage to the opponent, not just to entertain the crowd. The door element of the steel cage match has always made very little sense.

    But it’s not all about the door. Again, WWE is all about suspending your disbelief. But this match type just makes that very, very hard to do. For example, let’s take Saturday’s Madison Square Garden special. Seth Rollins was pretty much all the way out of the cage at one point, when Cena scaled the wall, grabbed Rollins by the hair, and pulled him back in. Really? We’re expected to believe that Rollins didn’t see Cena coming, and that he wouldn’t have just dropped to the floor at the first sign of danger?

    It just all seems very inauthentic. Escaping the cage at an unrealistically slow pace makes it seem like guys don’t really want to win, and it takes away the element of realism for anyone who knows that WWE is scripted entertainment. We want to believe it’s real, WWE. We make a concerted effort to suspend our disbelief. Help us out a bit.

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