Gimmick Some Lovin': The Doomsday Cage Match

The match

This is hard to see on a screen, let alone in an arena.

Michael Buffer introduces the match, the cage, and the entire heel team, probably getting paid more than I owe in student loans to do so. All eight men enter to the same ominous music and take their places in various spots in the structure.

Buffer also seems to take more time saying "Hulk Hogan" than he does at least half of he heel team combined.

Hogan and Savage start in the top cage with Flair and the man once thought to be too dignified for something this absurd, Arn Anderson (who wrestles in his best K-Mart sweatsuit) while Heenan and Rhodes try to make this contest sound important and worthwhile.

Would somebody get this man a recliner?!?

Do you like bad working punches, rest holds, and dinosaurs no-selling what was supposed to be a devastating hold from NWA legends? If so, the top cage is for you! Hogan and Savage take advantage of a handful of powder to the heels' eyes to exit that cage via a trapdoor (YOU DIDN'T MENTION TRAPDOORS, TONY!), which apparently means they won the cage, so they enter the next tier with Sullivan, Lex Luger, Meng, and The Barbarian.

Somehow, Tier 2 has a door with a wall running down the middle, and Hogan (conveniently) manages to trap The Faces of Fear in one half (locking the door with a chain Sullivan had used to choke the Great Orange One) so he and Savage could focus on battling Luger and Sullivan.

Hogan meekly teases murder, ever so slightly trying to nudge Sullivan off the scaffolding surrounding the cage, which would result in The Taskmaster being as dead as this Tupelo crowd. They can't see anything at all, and they make about as much noise as a Prius engine.

Nonsensically, Hogan, Savage, Sullivan, and Luger end up on the floor, making their way to the one place we were promised would not come into play: the ring (also, I think at one point, escape was mentioned as a means to victory, but no bell sounds).

Halfway through the match, and those figure-four leglocks in the top cage are the only actual wrestling moves.

Somehow, the crowd comes alive when they're actually able to see the match (strange how that works), and they go mildly bonkers when Hogan Hulks Up in the ring against Luger. At portions of the match, the producers engage a split-screen presentation to focus on both Hogan and Savage; there's an extended portion, though, when both men are on the exact same side of the ringside area (doing the exact same amount of nothing) but the split-screen remains, because WCW reasons.

The (unfortunately named) Ultimate Solution and Zeus Gangsta enter to drag the faces back into the cage, placing them into the ring contained in the lower tier while definitely-not-piped-in Hogan chants ensue. The solution, by the way, doesn't just sound like he walked out of a neo-Nazi rally; his shaved head and beer belly make him look like he'd be right at home marching with tiki torches.

Hogan saves Savage from a bearhug applied by the untrained co-star of a ten-year-old box office flop, and Gangsta responds by holding Hogan to the mat with a limp choke (while Ultimate Solution gives us our third actual wrestling move by gorilla pressing Savage).

Flair and Anderson (allegedly eliminated by means of trapdoor-finding) re-enter the match, because who else on this team of nobodies and a handful of stars could do the job in this one? Anderson, at least, has finally dressed for the occasion, shedding his sweatsuit in favour of traditional trunks.

If this were a podcast, I'd refuse to say "The Ultimate Solution" aloud, for fear of a Third Reich-related Freudian slip.

Handfuls of powder to the heels' faces are followed by feeble shots from Dollar Tree frying pans provided by Beefcake, giving Hogan and Savage a temporary advantage. Luger shows back up with the most dastardly weapon of all: a single glove! Luger accidentally nails Flair, giving Hogan and Savage the opportunity to escape (again, but this time apparently for the win).

Savage, however, realizes this is WCW in 1996, and there's only one way to end a PPV, so he goes back to pin Flair. He and Hogan collapse in exhaustion and elation while the heels stand around like Scooby Doo villains rueing their bad luck to send this awful show back to the announce team.