WWE needs to dump the “escape the cage” stipulation
This past Monday’s episode of WWE Raw, any lingering doubts over whether the promotion would fully get behind Big E as a main event babyface were put to bed when the New Day member pinned Bobby Lashley inside a steel cage to retain his WWE Championship.
There’s no need to argue the result; WWE booking Big E to pin Lashley clean with a second-rope Big Ending erased any in-storyline controversy surrounding his title win via Money in the Bank cash-in. The process to get there, however, is a different matter.
By now, we all know that WWE cage matches are filled with the sort of tripe that undercuts the purpose of the enclosed structure. We saw these tropes on display during the Big E vs. Lashley match, specifically multiple instances where Lashley and Big E attempted to win the match via escaping the cage.
It’s time for WWE to get rid of the “escape the cage” stipulation for cage matches.
Seeing Big E and Lashley attempt to use the escape option — either over the top or through the door — as much as they did poke too many holes into the notion that Big E wanted to prove he could beat Lashley in a straight-up match and that Lashley wanted to destroy Big E and reclaim his title.
Sadly, this isn’t an anomalous occurrence; the stipulation — as WWE books it today — has watered down many a cage match before this one.
It wasn’t always this way, though. The original objective behind “escape to win” centered around maintaining Bruno Sammartino’s mystique as an upstanding champion, but even then, the match was still predicated on beating your opponent to a pulp before leaving.
The classic Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart cage match for the then-WWF Championship at SummerSlam 1994 is another example of using the escape stip well, but that was due to Owen’s heel character and the expert psychology he and Bret possessed more than the rule itself. Plus, it isn’t good that the best recent example of “escape to win” working is a match from over 27 years ago.
These days, we tend to see more of those “photo finishes” (or worse) that are designed to “protect” the loser in defeat or set up a rematch — this is why these matches also feature counterintuitive outside interference, but that’s another story.
Like most gimmick matches, a cage match should be used to bring longstanding feuds to a satisfying conclusion. We’ve seen WWE occasionally get this right with Bronson Reed’s North American Championship win a few months back and the finish to Big E/Lashley, but those moments are too few and far in between.
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Abolishing the “escape the cage to win” rule wouldn’t fully solve this problem — after all, WWE could still overbook these matches with a ton of interference — but it would make these matches feel like a climactic battle instead of a race to the floor, and it would go a long way toward restoring some of the luster they have lost over the years.