What If The WrestleMania 10 Ladder Match Had Flopped?
There are few matches from the last twenty five years more profoundly influential on WWE and the wrestling world at large than the Ladder Match between Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon for the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 10.
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The match has not necessarily aged well—fans who watch it today tend to feel underwhelmed in comparison to more recent Ladder Matches with more dramatic high spots, greater carnage, and more creative maneuvering.
Nonetheless, the WrestleMania 10 Ladder Match charted a new course for wrestling. Ladder Matches had occurred in Stampede Wrestling, and for a house show match between Michaels and Bret Hart, taped for Coliseum Video. But, Michaels vs. Ramon was the first Ladder Match aired on a mainstream WWE broadcast, let alone at the biggest show of the year, emanating from the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden.
The spots the two did execute, and the drama they built—particularly by 1994 standards—started the popularization of Ladder Matches and a more hardcore, plunder-oriented style in WWE in general. That’s not to mention its impacts on HBK and The Bad Guy’s individual careers.
This article speculates what might have been had this match not been so well received, but rather flopped.
#5 No TLC
The success of the WrestleMania 10 Ladder Match was a springboard to other Ladder Matches like the Michaels vs. Ramon rematch at SummerSlam 1995, and The Rock vs. Triple H proving their mettle when they battled over the Intercontinental Championship years later.
If the match type had not been well proven, however, we never would have seen variations and experimentation built from the gimmick. It’s highly unlikely that, six years later, The Hardy Boyz, Edge and Christian, and The Dudley Boyz would have had a three-way, six-man Ladder Match at WrestleMania 2000.
Without that match—and particularly the Hardys making breath-taking use of ladders, we wouldn’t have seen TLC matches between these same three teams at the following SummerSlam and ‘Mania.
The greatness of the original TLC matches, in term made TLC a recurring gimmick match, and a staple of the WWE landscape to the point that world title matches would be competed under its rules. Finally, in the ultimate compliment for a match type, the gimmick earned its own annual PPV—not exactly a highlight on the WWE calendar, but nonetheless an annual feature for nearly a decade running.