DeutschEnglish
Not logged in or registered. | Log In | Register | Password lost?

CAGEMATCH's 18th birthday and 50000 inmates celebration

WebsiteUpdates

Article information
Published on:
28.07.2019, 12:00 
Author(s):
Hello everyone!

A couple of weeks ago CAGEMATCH officially became an adult as the site turned 18 years old on the 1st of June. Embarassingly, I completely missed that milestone and only got reminded because we just reached another milestone: 50000 inmates.

Looking back on the past 18 years, it is amazing to me not only how much has changed in the world of wrestling, the internet works and our communication in general. When CAGEMATCH was first planned, WrestleMania X-7 had not yet happened and Scott Norton was the NJPW Heavyweight Champion. When CAGEMATCH debuted, the WCW invasion had not happened yet and AJ Styles had yet to debut in a WWF ring (bonus points for those who look up the joke).

Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, we can have a fun little look at what CAGEMATCH looked like 18 years ago: News posting about Randy Savage allegedly planning his own wrestling promotion. Looking back, I remember that we started with a team of over 20 people, most of whom were forum moderators and news posters, two positions we have phased out over the years due to the reduced emphasis on and importance of the forum and news. But back then, forum discussions and news were everything.

The CAGEMATCH database was opened to the public in late 2005. The layout had already changed quite a bit at that point. By then, I was the sole owner of the site after my initial partners had left the team to pursue other interests a few years earlier. The database was groundbreaking at that point, as no other wrestling website in the world had something remotely similar. Up until that point, every HTML page was more-or-less statically coded by human beings individually, even if the layout was already based on CSS. I distinctly remember creating thousands of static pages myself for WWF, WCW, ECW and NWA TNA television shows, New Japan and All Japan tour events and many NWA and SMW events of the past. Names like Tracy Smothers and Tim Horner are edged in my brain because of writing their names so often.

In early 2007, we added the world's first wrestling ratings system to our database. Out layout was heavily leaning on Wikipedia at the time. The ratings system was an immediate success and I remember that our esteemed colleagues and part-time rivals of Genickbruch (Wrestling Data) were furious at the time. Naturally, they recovered nicely with their own ratings system and have enjoyed great and deserved success since then. Speaking of rivalries, I am not particularly familiar with the American and UK wrestling forum scene at the time, but in Germany in the early 2000s there were a lot of wrestling websites, all desperate to get the attention of fans and to get them on their discussion forums. The Cageboard was bigger then and although we never truly competed with the big forums like the Cyboard from Moonsault or Boardhell from Genickbruch, we were successful in our own way nonetheless. This is how the forum looked like back then. As web 2.0 started to gain traction with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other ways for people to express themselves without the need for a discussion forum, the Cageboard was deemphasized and in recent years, we have decided to concentrate more on our database and the ratings system, which thanks to the hundreds of team members over the years and over 10000 inmates in the ratings system have been our greatest achievement.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your contribution to making this site a success story as a privately funded, non-affiliated and non-advertising website in a modern world where all of these things have long become the exception, not the rule.

Thank you to everyone!
Number of comments: 0
Your Options:
    Other: