10 WWE Gimmick Matches That Totally Sucked

In nearly any other promotion, a Barbed Wire Steel Cage match sounds like an AWESOME idea. Take two guys at the height of their rivalry, through them in a steel structure topped with barbed wire and let them beat each other into bloody pulp. In WWE, though, that idea is watered down and altered just enough to be anything but awesome. Case in point: the No Way Out 2005 bout between WWE champion John Bradshaw Layfield and The Big Show.

Not only was their feud not worthy of such a violent gimmick bout, but the match itself was a caricature of what it should have been. Commentators Tazz and Michael Cole relayed the danger of the match but what fans actually witnessed were two plodding heavyweights wrestling a subpar cage match on pay-per-view.

That the underwhelming 2005 presentation was not the worst Barbed Wire Steel Cage match ever is only further evidence of the weaknesses of the bout type. In 1999, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair wrestled a match inside a similar structure that was so bad it should have killed the concept dead. Instead, WWE tried to improve upon it and, instead, came across as a child trying to recreate the violence of ECW, FMW and yes, even XPW.