The ROH vs. CZW Cage of Death is Perfect
The ROH vs. CZW Cage of Death is Perfect
The greatest WarGames match of all time.
Some pops echo through history.
A few have probably already come to mind for you after reading that. I’m talking about the kind of spine chilling, bone shaking burst of euphoria that blows out audio feeds. The glass shattering as Austin came down to help Mankind win the WWF Title, the roar of the Sendai crowd when Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Kenta Kobashi when they win the All Asia Tag Titles, or even the Alamodome exploding for Sami Zayn finally turning on Roman Reigns.
The unearthly explosion the fans in the Philly National Guard Armory when Homicide joins the Cage of Death match to fight for ROH sits comfortably among those previous examples.
As with most great payoffs in pro wrestling, it wouldn’t be half as wonderful without all the groundwork laid down before it. The war between CZW and ROH has been raging across both companies throughout the first six months of 2006. Tensions have risen from a rather straightforward ROH World Title challenge by Chris Hero in January all the way to crazed, blood-soaked brawls like the six-man tag match at ROH’s 100th show. Through the various invasions and shit talking, there have been twists and turns with the likes of Claudio Castagnoli turning his back on ROH to side with his Kings of Wrestling partner Chris Hero.
Through it all, even with Samoa Joe leading the charge for ROH, one man who’s been a difference maker through the war has been Homicide. At one point considered the most dangerous and contemptible man in ROH for throwing a fireball into Samoa Joe’s face in 2004, Homicide now finds himself an invaluable member of the ROH roster in a conflict without rules. Homicide has spent the last few years in the company wrestling outside the bounds of the Code of Honor. This is a man that has attacked people with forks, rolled about in barbed wire, even attempted to poison a man in public by pouring Drano down his throat.
In short, ROH needed Homicide to fight fire with fire.
Of course, the ROH fans knew this and had fully accepted Homicide as the hero that could turn the tide in this war. When the Cage of Death was announced, the fifth man of each team would remain a mystery until the day of the fight. The ROH faithful not only expected Homicide to take the final slot for the company, they practically needed him to do so.
No wonder then that the company denies Homicide that honor. In a segment early in Death Before Dishonor IV, Jim Cornette—who held a commissioner role in ROH at the time—would lay out that Homicide had agreed to join the ROH contingent, but only if ROH gave into three demands of his choosing. Bryan Danielson, the reigning ROH World Champion at the time, would step in to take the spot instead. Of course, to sweeten the deal, Danielson would join the match for free, no special requests attached.
That brings us to the match itself.
The first half of the match plays out, more or less as an extended babyface shine, with ROH having won the right to the numbers advantage under the WarGames rules. The early entrants all play to this dynamic extremely well. Claudio, the turncoat, spends a long time running and cowering from Samoa Joe, and when Joe finally gets his hands on him the beating is a delight. Joe’s effortless cool and charisma makes him this perfect vehicle of righteous violence, laying in a beating in just the funniest and best ways. Take for instance, an early highlight in the match that sees Joe punting a garbage can into Claudio’s head.
The ring quickly populates with BJ Whitmer coming in for the ROH team, then Chris Hero for the CZW team. Hero immediately stands out in this environment, as even in a no disqualification match, his tactics come off so petty and cheap that they can’t help but raise the ire of the ROH faithful. How does one play a chickenshit heel in a hardcore setting like this? Easy, poke people in the eyes and grab a cravat while celebrating like it’s the most complex move on earth. Just pitch perfect heel stooging from Chris Hero in this, and his best bit in the match is still yet to come.
The big turning point for CZW though is Danielson’s entry. At first, this house of fire taking out the Kings of Wrestling left and right, Danielson’s selfishness reveals itself when he literally cuts Samoa Joe off at the knees during an attempted Muscle Buster. When Dragon has made it clear that his participation was simply a means of weakening upcoming title contender Joe, he vacates the cage while Joe is carried out of the ring.
Just like that, two members of ROH’s team are gone and that leaves the advantage firmly on the side of the heels.
The CZW advantage gets occasionally broken up upon the entry of the ROH contingent. Both Adam Pearce and Ace Steel bring a lot of fire to the proceedings here, despite not being top of mind selections to represent ROH in this high stakes battle. They more than acquit themselves in this match by bleeding and bumping a ton and, in Ace Steel’s case, swinging a cow bell with reckless abandon.
The match threatens to devolve into something just a little silly when Chris Hero grabs a mic to cut a mid-match promo introducing the final member of Team CZW. It’s not a bad promo, and it gets a lot of heat from the fans in attendance, but it does feel slightly out of place in the moment.
Until Ace Steel chucks a trash can full force at his head mid-promo, which pretty much justifies the whole thing in my eyes. Almost as good as the cut off is Chris Hero’s tantrum when he recovers to continue the promo. Again, just pitch perfect stuff from Hero.
Eddie Kingston’s the final member of Team CZW—a choice that highlights how this interpromotional rivalry is bigger than the personal conflicts that populate each individual promotion, at least temporarily. As the last entrant before the big climactic final reveal, Eddie’s contributions to this match can be easy to overlook but there’s a lot he adds. Most notably, his absolute refusal to get along with Chris Hero adds a nice new layer to the proceedings. It starts off small with refusing a handshake offered by Hero, but it quickly escalates to the point that Hero strikes his own teammate.
All of that’s come before is fantastic, wild, and crazed action, but the big thing at the end of the day is the pop.
When the arena goes dark and the lights start pulsing red, Philly comes unglued. You’d have thought Christ had risen again the way this crowd welcomed Homicide as the savior that ROH needed in this dark hour.
There’s so much greatness that happens once Homicide enters the match. Those early moments of his entry is filled with so many small bits that fill me with delight. Small moments like throwing out forks to all his teammates to carve up the heels with, or pouring out a bag of thumbtacks into a charging Necro Butcher’s path to mess up his feet. There’s also the greatest dueling chant of all time when the incensed CZW fans’ chant of “Six on five!” gets rebutted with a “You can’t count!”
Worth highlighting too are Homicide’s interactions with Eddie Kingston. In the years since, Eddie’s been very public about how highly he regards Homicide as both a friend and a mentor, and that's on full display here. Eddie spends much of The Match Beyond portion of this bumping and selling for Homicide, he’s clearly Dee’s preferred dance partner among the chaos.
The match truly breaks down from here, with everything following just being a rush of horrific bumps and hardcore gimmickry. Before the finish, one does start to see fatigue begin setting but it feels so earned because all the men in the ring have been working at a hellacious pace beating the hell out of each other. It never feels like anyone’s purposely lying down to get out of the way of the central focus of the action, because there’s action in every corner. Every time the camera cuts, there’s something gruesome happening, and something just as bad happening in the periphery as well.
Perhaps one of the scariest and best moments in a match filled with chicanery is Chris Hero climbing to the top of the cage wall to hit a moonsault onto a pile of bodies on the floor. That alone would have been an astonishing spot in any match, but there’s an added layer of danger here from the ROH faithful at ringside rattling the cage in an attempt to make Hero lose his balance. Now, I’m certainly not advocating for wrestling fans getting physically involved in the action, especially in ways that might endanger the performers. But there’s really no separating this match’s reputation and quality from the absolute nuclear levels of heat in that building. There is a life and death atmosphere to this encounter, and that’s really only slightly hyperbolic.
Pro wrestling is fake only until it’s the realest thing in the world.
It’s insane to think that this all-timer match is immediately followed by an all-timer angle as well, but that’s a story for another time.
There’s not many matches that capture so much of what I love about this particular time in wrestling better. There’s the deeply invested crowds watching a who’s who of talents carving out their own legends in real time. It is astonishing to behold, a real lightning in a bottle moment where booking, atmosphere, and action meet in perfect harmony.
What else can I say about it, really? All the legends are true. It’s one of the greatest independent wrestling matches of all time, it’s the greatest WarGames match of all time for my money, and there’s really only a handful of matches I’d feel comfortable calling better than this. It’s a loud, maximalist, beautiful thing. A match with the volume turned all the way up that you can just drown in.
Listen closely, the echoes still sound to this day.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Unfortunately for Eddie Kingston, yes.
Rating: *****