Random DVD Reviews: The Ladder Match

Okay, random's not the word; I had a very specific reason to watch one of these. That said, I can't think of a word to describe watching three matches on one disc of three disc set and then reviewing them, so random is the adjective I'm going with at this point. It will also probably recur, since this is the way I watch WWE DVDs. Trying to do a whole one in one sitting (or even a handful of them, spread out over a few days) can be tedious due to repitition, especially in the case of one based solely on a gimmick match with as many conventions/cliches as the ladder match.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Rob Van Dam, Intercontinental Title- From RAW in 2002, this is a match I somehow missed despite the fact that I have been watching RAW religiously since 1998. That must have been one of the few times when my social life intruded on my obsession with pro wrestling. Anyway, this one was pretty well recieved at the time, and made it on to Eddie's DVD despite the fact that he lost the match (oddly enough, it's not on RVD's). So, I had pretty high expectations for it.

It lived up to them, although it has a couple of glaring flaws, one of which only presents a problem in hindsight (in other words, they didn't anticipate the unanticipatable). The first is Rob's less than stellar selling, which has always been his biggest flaw. Eddie worked over his legs quite a bit throughout the match, with everything from kicks to ladders and chairs, and yet Rob was still throwing kicks and jumping around at the end of the match like nothing had happened. I mean, he could always sell how damaging his own frog splash was, so it's a little hard to handle the fact that he can't even limp around. Also, Chris Benoit makes a cameo that would have been intrusive even before he became a pariah. It's a RAW match, though, so it makes sense in the context of giving them an easy commerical break when both guys were down in the ring.

That said, between Eddie's awe inspiring mullet and Rob's willingness to throw him at the ladder in pretty every move he did in the last ten minutes of the match, you do have a pretty damn good to great match here. Eddie was able to keep it from being a total spotfest while contributing some breathtaking moves, including his flipping senton of the top of the ladder. The match was conspicuosly absent of frog splash attempts although, given the fact that from that high up it almost always looks like a regular splash anyway, I can't blame them. At any rate, it's one of the better one on one ladder matches I've ever seen, and is easily in the **** club. ****1/2 if you factor Eddie's mullet in there, and ****3/4 when you factor in the fact that we haven't seen anything as good on RAW since (although RVD vs. Christian a year later was pretty damn close).

Edge vs. Christian- To be honest, I didn't finish watching this one. You'd think that these two would put on an amazing match, given how their experience in these kinds of matches, but the pacing totally killed this one (at least from what I saw). I'll have to go back and watch this one again, to see if they really were just building up to something or if it really was as tedious as the first ten minutes indicated. Given the fact that, if I remember correctly, the WWE (although they were still the WWF at this point) were trying to make the matches less of spotfests and slow down the pace so that they built to finishes, I can't really blame either guy if the match wound up sucking (or at least not living up to any of my expectations at all); they were just trying to wrestle in the house style, which was starting to seem really oppresive at this point (perhaps because it was the only house style in North America at that point). I mean, there were some cool spots in there, but everything just felt so lethargic. TLC 5- Another RAW match, and the complete opposite of the preceding one, as this was pretty much nothing but one crazy spot after another. It was a pure sugar rush kind of match; extremely exciting to watch, but I barely remember a thing from it. This was pretty much Jeff Hardy's last big time match in the WWE during his first run with them, and he got all of his requisite high spots in, including a pretty cool use of the rail runner clothesline (which I haven't seen him use in awhile, come to think of it). Everbody played their part to perfection, from Chris Jericho and Christian being the vicious (and only, in this match) heels to Spike Dudley more or less serving as a projectile with his amazing ragdoll bumping. The fact that this match's only real purpose (other than trying to pop a rating, presumably) was to get Kane over as an unstoppable double champion (he was also the Intercontinental Champion at this point, and he wrestled the whole match without his partner, the Hurricane) for his big title unification match against HHH (which he, of course, lost) puts a bit of a damper on the fun. The fact that the Katie Vick angle statred immediately after this match (although I think it would be a few weeks before Hunter had sex with a mannequin, to the delight of Vince McMahon and other plastic necorphelia enthusiasts everywhere) is also kind of a downer. That said, it's still an incredibly entertaining match and one of the best matches in RAW history on sheer spectacle value alone, so I'll go ****1/2 stars here, even if I can barely remember a damn thing that happened in it right now.