Ranking Every PPV World Championship Steel Cage Match From Worst To Best
Making the most of a cagey situation.
There have been 40 Steel Cage matches on WWE pay-per-view since Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy butted their giant melons together at WrestleMania 2 over 30 years ago.
Of those matches, 23 have been contested for a title of some description, ranging all the way from the Intercontinental Championship to the WCW Tag Team straps.
In amongst all of that, at the tip of the WWE mountain, there have been 15 occasions where a World Championship was on the line inside the cage.
Considering there have been literally thousands of matches in WWE history across more than 400 PPVs, with a World Title on the line in pretty well all of them, the fact that only 15 matches fit the bill doesn’t seem like much.
Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler are about to make that 16 at Stomping Grounds, adding their names to a relatively sparse list in company history.
With so much on the line and a stipulation only brought in (mostly) for the big feuds of the year, wrestlers are expected to step it up when the door closes behind them, taking it up a notch for a chance at history.
Among the aforementioned 15, there have been all-time classics just as there has been shockers.
15. Triple H Vs. Shawn Michaels - Armageddon 2002
Title: World Heavyweight Championship
Match Time: 38:35
I wrestled with (ha!) including this one for a while but decided that it technically was inside a steel cage, with a world championship on the line. So it goes in! But it goes in last for cheating a little bit.
Not even one month removed from his emotional World Heavyweight Championship win inside the very first Elimination Chamber, Shawn Michaels defended that very belt in a 3 Stages of Hell match.
It would be his one and only defence, and the last time we’d ever see HBK with a world title around his waist after losing the first (street fight) and third (ladder match) falls of this match.
The second fall is what we’re here for though: inside a steel cage.
In the midst of his infamous reign of terror at the top of Raw, Triple H had Ric Flair with him at every turn, and this time was no different as the Nature Boy crashed the cage, bled like only he can and bumped all over the place for Michaels.
Being in the middle of an already long match, the steel cage was a short and sharp sprint of a fall, utilising all the weaponry that remained in the ring from the street fight prior.
It was a fun ten-or-so minutes, ending with Michaels splashing Trips through a table off the top of the cage and picking up the pinfall.