Rants

Cage match

By Scott Keith on 2 August 2019

At what point did being able to win a cage match by going through the door become a thing? It is one of my greatest wrestling pet peeves and basically invalidates the whole point of the match.
I feel like this one comes up a lot. The most popular use was for Bruno Sammartino's title defenses in the early 70s so he could beat the hell out of his opponent and walk out, but it started in the Detroit territory because the Sheik wanted a way to "lose" without having to get pinned. And in fact Bruno defended the title against Sheik in quite a few cage matches and won by escaping!

I believe the gimmick was also lifted from the Freddie Blassie/John Tolos matches in California, although the Bruno ones are more famous and led directly to the escape rules becoming part of standard WWE cage canon.