This week, I watched the AEW Blood & Guts II main event—their version of War Games—several times. I loved how action-packed this match was throughout. Oh! The thrills and spills! Honestly, it was like playing a WWE game where you could fight on top of the Hell in a Cell and not risk the cage ceiling breaking apart.
Steel Cage Matches Are My Jam, Folks
As you might have gathered by now: I’m something of a steel cage match connoisseur. I love a steel cage match and I tend to notice how well a cage appears to be put together.
For instance: WWE’s big blue—and later Attitude Era black—Hogan and Friends cage? Very well put together: A+. The current steel mesh cage in WWE? It’s not as dangerous or threatening but wonderfully put together: A.
Hell in a Cell? Well, they dolled it up a bit and added on to it—modernized it as they should’ve. It was my favorite cage match for years and it was always an A+. It’s was the black Air Force 1s of cages.
Then you get to WCW which always had a mixed bag of well-constructed but stock cages and just the most unsafe thing you’ve ever seen.
Check out the above and behold something that wobbled, looked even thinner than the Hogan and Friends cages, and even bent a bit when Randy Savage dove off the top of one.
I like the appearance of being a dangerous match not…being a potential cause of death.
AEW’s Blood & Guts Match Had Possibly the Best Constructed Cage Ever
Then we get AEW’s Blood & Guts cage. This thing was the sturdiest-looking cage I’ve ever seen. The sides looked like your standard steel mesh cage, obviously. It was wider for the second ring but it looked like a War Games cage—if it had a child with Hell in a Cell.
Imagine that, folks. A flaw of the War Games cage was always the height. It wasn’t tall enough for either the taller guys or the flyers to do their thing. This was a cage was your tall but average heavyweight height wrestlers or your light heavyweights that didn’t fly as much.
Also, some offense was blocked out in the War Games cage. Suplexes were a danger, powerbombs were a danger, flying splashes were an obvious danger. The ceiling was just too damn low!
However, the War Games was always meant as a brawler’s badlands bonanza. It was never meant for everyone and their mama’s cousin with their complex moves to dance in because there was never enough room to groove.
NXT changed that by just taking the top and adding some height. It also added platforms for flyers and had secure scaffolding along the top, a trademark of WWE’s basic cage design since the late Attitude Era-early Ruthless Aggression Era.
AEW added to that by running with the “More height, please” formula but putting the ceiling back on the cage. This gave it a Hell in the Cell appearance with the two rings inside. It looks damn menacing! However, the praise for its design comes more from the ceiling itself.
This thing was A+ sturdy. The ceiling didn’t sink at all when people walked on the mesh, wrestlers were doing the moves on top of it—the match ended with a Claudio locking in a Sharpshooter ON TOP OF THE CAGE. Excuse me, sir…this is a wrestling arena, not WWE Here Comes the Pain.
Also, there were panels at the edge of the cage which had this unsettling shine/mirroring to them. It just seemed like you could not be up there sweating because someone might slips and sail off the edge.
However, the rest of that ceiling? Marvelous. A+ cage all-around. Also, the branding of “Blood & Guts” for this AEW match is actually really good. It takes guts to enter such a dangerous environment because blood will be shed.
I maintain that cage matches of a significant length should feature blood. You have wrestlers surrounded by steel, getting thrown into steel, having their faces raked across the steel–someone should walk out of that match pumpkin-headed!
I mean, yeah, there are sponsors to answer to, obviously. However, you have the match, folks can bleed once or twice out of the year in them. Just make sure every cage match isn’t featuring blood just the main events at the minimum.
Sure, it’s an odd thing to notice but what do you think of the Blood & Guts cage in AEW? Also, do you believe steel cage matches should have blood? Let us know down below!
CHECK IT OUT: To get The Overtimer’s Hottest Stories, Breaking News and Special Features in your email, CLICK HERE!
