This was a ladder match for Big Kev’s WWE Intercontinental Title.
I’ve always had a weakness for a decent enough version of this match. Part of that is because it’s clearly WWE’s attempt at a make-good for all the wrestlers that they know are good or great enough to be on the biggest show of the year (and on the main card, not some battle royal or pre-show thing) but that they’re too lazy and/or inept to really come up for anything else for. There’s something especially depressing about the implied “hey sorry, maybe next time” that comes with a match like this that always makes me real sympathetic towards something like this on a WrestleMania.
Also I like cool spots and these matches are a parade of some very cool spots.
I could write a little bit here about the mix of styles and characters that makes matches like these work at a high-ish level when all goes right, and that’s not something that’s absent here. You have your coward type, your fighter who is pretending to be tough but is also kind of a coward in Big Kev, a few great likeable white meat babyfaces, a total weirdo, things like that.
Honestly though, the trick here is that for the first time in one of these, two of the wildest ladder match wrestlers of the last decade are unleashed in a match like this in the WWE, and Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn do a whole bunch of really remarkable and totally outrageous stuff, while also largely being the focus of the match as a story. Some of it is new, but mostly, they’re just bigger and more fantastic and impressive versions of the stuff from something like the Ladder War like eight and a half years earlier.
All match long, our favorite duo are constantly sniping at each other. Delightfully, even in moments when one is out of the frame, they just can never really help themselves. Owens constantly goes after Sami, like he’s trying to pre-empt the sort of thing he instinctually knows is going to happen. In doing so, he turns a paranoid feeling into an absolute guarantee, as wrestling’s greatest vicious cycle continues, with neither man knowing quite how to close it or possessing the desire to close it.
Kevin Owens nearly makes it to the end, only for Zayn to reappear, and take him entirely out of the match with another one of their classic ladder spots.
This match isn’t JUST about Kev and Sami, there’s some other fun stuff. The polka dot ladder, a great Ziggler run in the middle, one big and sensational dive out of Sin Cara II. Everyone gets the chance to do something, and outside of the awful Stardust gimmick, there’s not really a truly weak link here.
The Miz is just about to sneak away with it, but gets exactly cocky enough without anyone to watch his back for Zack Ryder to take him out and get the title.
It’s a nice little result. A feel good victory, and like a lot of the match itself, a kind of make-good to the company a solid four years late after how horribly they fucked him once upon a time. Given how well things turned out for the guy after his WWE tenure eventually ended, it doesn’t feel QUITE as good as it’s no longer like this one bright little moment, but it’s still nice. More importantly, it’s a nice moment that comes largely from out of nowhere, this one little glimmer on an otherwise deeply depressing event that shows that somewhere deep down there, there’s some knowledge of how this thing is supposed to work, or at least how it can work.
Unfortunately this Kev/Sami ladder match with a feel good result doesn’t result in Super Dragon’s return, but given how much this match got right, you can only ever expect so much from this company.
The match of the night, for whatever that matters on a show like this.
HANDWERK 