Christian recalls what inspired his career-defining ladder match against legendary tag team
Christian recently recalled what inspired his career-defining ladder match against one of his biggest rivals.
Christian first gained success in WWE after he formed a tag team with Edge. The duo won multiple tag team titles in the company. They embarked on a legendary feud with The Hardy Boyz and The Dudley Boyz which gave way to the greatest tag team rivalry in WWE history. One of Edge and Christian's feuds with The Hardy Boyz culminated in a best-of-five series with the final match being a ladder match.
Speaking on the Swerve City podcast, Christian recalled how they were inspired by the Razor Ramon and Shawn Michaels' ladder match. He mentioned that they wanted to do something similar in tag team wrestling.
"From talking with [The Hardy Boyz], we had all realized we were all fans of the Shawn Michaels-Razor Ramon ladder matches, and what an impression those had on us as far as getting into the business and as fans and things like that. So we started toying with the concept of 'maybe can we do this in a tag team setting?' This was like the first thing we ever really pitched as an idea."
He continued:
"We came up with the concept of the best of seven because we were basically wrestling every week against these guys on TV anyway. So it was like, 'Let's do this best of seven series. We'll do a different stipulation for every match. It'll end up going to the seventh match and we'll do a ladder match for that final match, which would be at the No Mercy pay-per-view.'" [H/T Wrestling Inc.]
Christian also described how the ladder match was a career-defining moment for all of them
Although they pitched the idea for a best-of-seven series, WWE scaled it back to a five-match series where the winner would receive the services of Terri Runnels. The company even raised the stakes for the final match and hung a bag containing $100,000 above the ring.
The Hardy Boyz ended up winning the match after Jeff Hardy climbed the ladder and retrieved the bag of cash.
During the same interview, Christian described how this match changed the course of all of their careers.
"We just knew that was our moment. We're like, 'We've got this match. Our first idea that we've pitched got pushed through and we have a chance to do something special here with this match.' We just didn't realize how special it was going to be. We had lightning in a bottle that night, and it just changed the course of all of our careers." [H/T Wrestling Inc.]
That ladder match helped establish the careers of all the men involved, as all of them went on to become world champions in the WWE.
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