The Steel Cage Match is the most brutal professional wrestling matches in the world of sporting entertainment, the match to end all feuds and rivarlys. It's used as a barrier and as a weapon. It keeps the competitors inside and the interference outside. But how did this barberic match come to be? How did a technically graceful sport end up creating such a match, I wonder how it started. Who was in the first cage match? Who's idea was it? Who booked it? Who constructed it? What promotion had it? I just wonder how wrestling, whom for many years claim to be a legit sport ever ended up having a cage match. The facts are sketchy, there are barely a hand full articles on the web on this gimmick match's history, and the information in them are sketchy.
     Some think that promoter Paul Boesch was responsible for the cage match. The roots of the cage match lie in Galveston, where promoters strung fishing net around the ring in an attempt to keep Bull Curry and Dirty Don Evans. It didn’t work, but the idea led to the creation of the fence match, which predated the cage match, a staple of wrestling today. Boesch's credit for the creation of the cage match comes from author Joe Jares 1974 book 'Whatever Happened to Gorgeous George?' Jares writes. ".... Texas wrestling is just wild and nutty enough that it is possible he's not kidding me", kidding about thinking up the cage match.
    Some say that the cage match's origins are in the west. In the late 50s at the Olympic Aud, they had what they called a "chicken wire match". It was a cage surrounded by chicken wire to keep the "chicken" heel in. Than in the early 60s Freddie Blassie constructed it and Mike LeBellin promoted it in the parking lot of the Olympic Auditorium, the original cage match for the likes of The Sheik and John Tolos. At that time it was said that it was the first of its kind, it was the "Blassie Cage". But most likely it was just the escape to win rule that Blassie created, not the original concept of the cage match.
     On June 2, 2003 was the sad passing of this wrestling legend, Classy Freddie Blassie. Don't let the "Classy" nick name fool you, Freddie was anything but classy in the ring, his other nick names were The Hollywood Fashion Plate, The King of Men and The Vampire. And if these sources are correct, he might be the person responsible for the creation of the steel cage match. Before there was harcore wrestling, there was Freddie Blassy. He was so extreme that in the early 1960s, this notorious heel was invited to wrestle in Japan. Blassie both horrified and mesmerized sedate Japanese society. It was reported that a number of Japanese television viewers suffered fatal heart attacks after seeing Blassie bloody an opponent in the ring. This was the kind of wrestling environment that needed the exsistence for a cage match, an environment with the likes of Freddie Blassie.
     Now, According to and credited to Clawmaster, an Old School Mark from the very reliable Kayfabe Memories message board, details that based on the research on wrestling historians Lib Ayoub, J Michael Kenyon and Scott Teal, a match between Jack Bloomfield and Count Petro Rossi on July 2, 1937 in Atlanta , Georgia was surrounded by chicken wire, in order to keep the competitors inside and the interference outside, which is the reason for the creation of the stipulation in the first place.
     Different sources and wrestling historians say different things, and just like the history of the sport itself, one has to guess that the real origins of the cage match will continue to be sketchy.
    This lengthy discussion is the work of several months of research and design, but is by no means meant to be the end-all version of this complex and multifaceted story. I invite anyone who can clarify, correct, or deepen the story I have compiled here to contact me. Hopefully, together we can create a useful knowledge base on this singular subject.