I’ve added the question mark because this is, at times, a profoundly dumb business and there can no more be a definitively dumb match than there can be a definitively great match. Take TNA’s recent reverse battle royal – as thorough a piece of dumbness as you’ll ever see. Let’s recap the rules –

Wow – that’s dumb. Layer upon layer of complication for what should be a simple battle of good vs evil. Worse than that, it was so utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things (if TNA can be said to have a grand scheme of things) that I can’t remember who won. I do remember they put the artist formerly known as Rikishi over strongly (he’s now left the company because he wasn’t under contract – more dumbness) and the artist formerly known as Billy Gunn was wearing what can only be described as long lycra tights made to look like stockings and suspenders.

But while that’s dumb, the dumbest match of all time was far worse. TNA gimmick matches tend to have too many rules. Their "King of the Hill" match involves penalty boxes, token pinfalls, the fetching of a title belt from someone’s table, climbing a ladder and hanging said belt above the ring. What can be worse than a match with too many rules? Why that would be a match where no one knows the rules. Not the viewers, not the live audience, not the announcers and not the wrestlers.

I give you 1996, WCW Uncensored, the Doomsday Cage.

Hulk Hogan was nothing if not a bit desperate back in the mid-90s. His WCW run had started well but the fans were turning against him, tired of his red and yellow Super Man act. He would hit upon the perfect solution just a few weeks after this match but for now he was clinging to the hope that Hulk Hogan as the unbeatable super hero was what the people wanted. The trouble was that he’d already beaten everyone in WCW several times. No one man had enough credibility left to face the mighty red and yellow. If not one man then perhaps two? Still not enough. Then someone in a meeting somewhere in Atlanta had the idea. If not one man then perhaps eight.

Eight?

Yes – eight.

WCW’s heel roster had been so badly damaged by one-on-one drubbings that they brushed the remnants into a dust pan and poured eight men into the Doomsday Cage against the Hulkster and his buddy, Macho Man Randy Savage (because eight on one was silly – eight on two is fine). Which eight men it would be wasn’t immediately clear – it was billed as an alliance against Hulkamania and the rumoured members included such diverse names as Brian Pillman and Giant Haystacks. In the end they settled on Ric Flair (because it wouldn’t be a Hulk Hogan drubbing if it didn’t involve Ric Flair), Arn Anderson, Kevin Sullivan, Lex Luger, Meng, The Barbarian, Z-Gangsta and The Ultimate Solution.

Z-Gangsta, for those who care, was Zeus in Hulk Hogan’s sputumly awful film "No Holds Barred" and The Ultimate Solution played Bane in one of the Batman films. Yes, WCW was so short of convincing heels that they brought two huge actors in to pad the match out a bit.

The rules of the match were presumably on the same piece of paper as the rules to Mornington Crescent.

The announcers said Hogan and Savage would start in the top cage and have to run the gauntlet. He specifically says they have to win in each cage to get into the next cage. If they do this, the men they’ve beaten are eliminated. Then Bobby Heanan speaks the truth – "Who cares about rules?" he barks. For once he’s right.

Michael Buffer confuses everything a little more when he doesn’t bother explaining anything – he’s much too busy getting everyone’s name wrong and crow barring in his catchphrases.

The cage is undoubtedly an impressive structure from a distance but the chicken wire floor means everyone is treading gingerly for fear of it collapsing under their weight. The cage is also at the back of the arena because it’s too big to go over the ring. This means the lighting is terrible and half the fans in the building can’t see what’s going on.

Flair, Anderson, Hogan and Savage amble about for a while – still scared stiff of putting too much weight on the floor – while everyone else looks up at what’s going on. The announcers tell us this is bigger than the Super Bowl and that this is the highest match in the history of wrestling. Perhaps in the sense that you’d need to be high to come up with it.

The baddies put figure four leg logs on the good guys which means we now have four guys lying down, sixty feet in the air, and nothing is going on. Eventually the holds are broken, Hogan and Savage use powder on the Horsemen and climb down through a trap door to the next level. So all that stuff about beating their opponents was wrong. They spend literally thirty seconds in the next cage – with Meng and Barbarian – before going through a door into the third cage. They are making this up as we go along.

As if it wasn’t confusing enough, most of the match is seen in split screen so we’re watching a poorly lit match with no rules in tiny little mini-windows.

Hogan and Savage lock the door with a chain so no one can get from the second cage to the third which shouldn’t be necessary because Flair, Anderson, Meng and Barbarian have already been eliminated. Supposedly.

The announcers are going crazy – this is the greatest match of all time, WCW is the biggest company in the world, lives are on the line – and Hogan decides to go out of the cage with Sullivan and hug on the scaffold.

"They’ve got out of the cage somehow" screams Bobby Heanan. Yes – they walked through a door in front of your eyes.

Four of them brawl to the ring to wake up the crowd. We get a slow motion parody of a regular Hulk Hogan match in the ring as Sullivan bumps for a clearly exhausted Hogan. The men who were locked in the middle cage have apparently escaped though they aren’t involved with anything that’s going on. I don’t know what they announcers are looking at but they aren’t calling what we’re seeing.

Two of the men – the actors – haven’t actually appeared yet. Which makes sense – the only thing they can do is stand and look scary so obviously you keep them hidden until the bit where they actually have to wrestle.

A moment of genuine movement as Savage runs up behind Kevin Sullivan and hits him with a huge plank of wood. The plank is much too long to actually hit anyone with but at least he ran.

This must hold the record for the cage match with the least amount of time spent in the cage. The Hogan/Savage vs Sullivan/Luger ringside brawl goes on for ages before the two big actors turn out. They are huge men certainly but they can’t do anything except drag Hogan and Savage back to the cage. The bottom section of the cage has a ring in it so we get a regular match but with low lighting and no action.

Kevin Sullivan – on the outside of the cage for some reason – starts poking people through the cage with a stick. Meanwhile, the former Zeus does a much more convincing job slapping himself in the face than he does when he tries to hit anyone else.

Gangsta chokes Hogan. Someone seems to have written "Gangsta" on his head in felt tip. Hogan sort of recovers but no one really knows what they’re doing.

Flair and Anderson wander back into the cage so it’s now four on one. Sullivan and Luger have just disappeared. The announcers claim it’s five on one until one of them counts and decides it is actually four.

The crowd – bless them – chant "Hogan Hogan" instead of "Bullshit bullshit".

Wait! The Booty Man has just turned up and given the Mega Powers frying pans. I’m really not joking. There is a wrestler called The Booty Man and he’s handing out pans to the good guys.

Then something really strange happened. Lex Luger puts on a "loaded glove" and goes to hit Savage. But Savage escapes and he hits Ric Flair instead. The strange thing is that Luger stops his punch when he sees Savage move and then hits Flair anyway. Was this an angle or just a cock up? In wrestling you’d say angle, in WCW you’d say cock up.

Hogan tells Savage "Let’s get out of here" and they go to the door and leave. Then Hogan remembers something important and he sends Savage back in to pin Flair.

Yes – THEY FORGOT TO WIN THE MATCH.

Savage rushes back in and pins Flair (because of those eight it is obviously Flair who has to do the job). The Mega Powers then run away as if to escape the smell of the match they’ve just been in.

To be fair, the announcers do mention the Luger punch and speculate as to whether he deliberately hit Flair. It doesn’t make sense since Luger was fighting Hogan and Savage before and after the punch but it lets them shill the next night’s Nitro.

Overall, it was a match where no one knew what they were doing and they did it badly. What little actual wrestling there was took place in slow motion (it is perhaps the only match in modern history not to have a single replay of anything that happened, not even the finish of the match). If the finish was Savage pinning Flair then why not say before hand that the first fall won it? If the plan for the match was simply Hogan and Savage escaping, why not say it?

The concept was flawed but the execution was hideous. That cage was so big that it must’ve taken a lot of time and money to make it. It’s a shame no one thought about what would happen in the match until after the bell had rung.