WrestleMania 2000 Triangle Ladder Match's Legacy 15 Years Later
Six hungry wrestlers made their ways to the ring at WrestleMania 2000, intent on putting their names on the WWE map, knowing that the ladders awaiting them would be their means to do just that.
Edge and Christian, Jeff and Matt Hardy and The Dudley Boyz were just young daredevils looking to snatch up the post-WrestleMania headlines and further their careers. They rode broken ladders from the midcard to the marquee.
Leap after leap, risk after risk, they forced everyone to take notice.
Those three tag teams couldn't have known, though, how much they would alter the arc of WWE's history. By way of the bruises they suffered and the electricity they channeled that night, they launched a new type of match. That famous triangle ladder match in April of 2000 was the precursor to the Tables, Ladders & Chairs concept and the pay-per-view of the same name.
The audience's expectations changed, too. During thatĀ circus of steel and splintered wood, the three duos raised the bar for the kind of violence wrestlers inflicted on themselves in the name of entertainment. Ā
The first triangle ladder match served as the launchpad. And a triad of tag teams were the rockets waiting for liftoff.
An Ideal ConvergenceĀ
Edge and Christian had been tearing it up in the tag division.Ā With their vampire mentor Gangrel in their corner, the young, long-haired duo regularly put on fast-paced, high-energy matches. After splitting with Gangrel, Edge won the Intercontinental Championship before charging toward the tag titles with Christian.
They were fresh faces with bodies far from the WWE prototype. They looked more like guitarists in a metal band than wrestlers, but there was an increasing buzz around them.
Feuding with The Hardy Boyz only increased that.
The brothers employed an aerial style and goth-inspired fashion sense. They too were mold-breakers.
One of the ways in which they ensnared the audience was simply their willingness to do just about anything to their bodies. They flipped off the guardrail, dove from the top rope and ricocheted around the ring like two pinballs.
Pitting Matt and Jeff against Edge and Christian allowed both teams to elevate each other. Each team seemed to be pushing the other to go faster, jump higher and just up the level of excitement possible in a wrestling ring.
That combination was charged enough, but adding the hard-hitting "brothers" of ECW fame allowed everyone involved to create an explosion no one would soon forget.
Before all three teams collided at the 16th WrestleMania, there had been just seven ladder matches in WWE history, according toĀ Online World of Wrestling.Ā Before 1999, none of them had involved tag teams.
WWE was set to experiment with the format, though.Ā At No Mercy 1999, The Hardy Boyz and Edge and Christian battled in the first four-man ladder match. At the 2000Ā Royal Rumble, Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley took on The Hardy Boyz in a tag team tables match.
Just two months later, Vince McMahon announced on SmackDown that he had plans to push things further for these warring squads. The tag tiles would hang above the ring, and The Dudley Boyz would have to defend them against The Hardys and Edge and Christian in the first triangle ladder match.
And with that, WWE's emperor had set the stage for a pioneering showdown.
The Match
For each of these men, this was the first time stepping onto the WrestleMania stage. And there is no better place to make one's name.
The teams all schemed how to best do that, drawing up creative ways to hurt each other, using the ladders as nitrous boosters in their race to the top.Ā Edge and Christian sat down with Steve Austin on the Stone Cold Podcast on the WWE Network and talked about their mindset before the match.
"We had a blank canvas. And we didn't have any kind of restraints. And I don't think anybody fully knew what was going to happen," he said.Ā
Edge, Christian and their foes, though, did know that they wanted to set the bar, then up it:
They did. They multiplied the amount of car-crash moments that usually occupied ladder matches.Ā
Edge speared Jeff of the side of the ladder. The Hardy Boyz both dove onto Bubba Ray from the top of ladders. Jeff stood atop an immensely tall ladder and hit a Swanton Bomb that broke a table and bent Bubba Ray's body.
As Bob Kapur put it for Slam! Sports, "They took creative violence to new levels."
It was as if they were trying to cram every nutty move they could think of into a single bout.
Each time one of the Hardy brothers or their opponents pulled off some spectacular move that made one cringe to watch, announcersĀ Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler sounded genuinely stunned. Their astonishmentĀ paralleled that of the audience.Ā Fans had seen ladder matches before, but nothing like this.
By the time Edge and Christian walked across a makeshift platform to nab the tag titles, it was clear that something special had just happened. Ā
Both for the individuals involved and WWE as a whole, nothing would be the same moving forward.
Shooting Stars
The spotlight brightened on the six men willing to risk their health to make a statement that night.
As good as the Triple Threat match for the Intercontinental and European Championships was, that's not what people were talking about after WrestleMania. The same goes for the main event in which Triple H retained the world title.
On WWE's grandest stage, Edge and his crew showed the world how bright their stars were.
They would all move up the card from that point, garnering increased attention. By SummerSlam 2000, the tag team scene was the semi-main event as the same duos competed in the first official TLC match. The following year, they were among the hottest acts at WrestleMania, outdoing themselves in another TLC clash.
With that momentum in hand, several of those wrestles moved to a higher tier.
ChristianĀ recalledĀ on theĀ WrestleMania RewindĀ special about the bout,Ā "We all kind of took ourselves from being WWE wrestlers to WWE Superstars with those matches. We couldn't have done it without each other. We all kind of made each other."
For Christian, that meant twiceĀ becoming the world heavyweight champ and twice winning the ECW World Heavyweight Championship.
Jeff rose to main event status eventually. He was a three-time world champ by the end of his WWE run and headlined Night of Champions and SummerSlam in 2009. His list of high-profile foes included CM Punk,Ā Triple H, Chris Jericho and Rey Mysterio.
Edge outdid them all.Ā
The Rated-R Superstar became a true marquee star, battling opposite Undertaker to main event WrestleMania XXIV and becoming an 11-time world champ. He went from a skinny, athletic kid with potential to one of the most compelling heels in the history of the business.
Bubba Ray rose to the top of TNA as world champ and No. 1 heel.Ā Matt, meanwhile, had several runs with midcard titles and some prominent feuds with his brother, Montel Vontavious Porter and Edge.Ā
All of those wrestlers may have had opportunities in hand without the triangle ladder match and its subsequent sequels, but there was a clear jump in their popularity and success after those bouts. As engaged as the audience was afterward, it didn't matter how unconventional they were; WWE was going to take advantage and highlight them.
But in addition to all those rewards, the risks those men took at WrestleMania 2000 and beyond had their prices.
Christian hung up his boots early after a series of concussions.Ā
As Matt posted on WWE.com (h/t ProWrestling.net), Jeff has struggled with various injuries. Matt wrote of his brother, "Jeff has two herniated discs in his back, suffers from 'Restless Leg Syndrome'āwhich makes it hard for him to sleep at night, and also has some nagging neck injuries."
A serious spinal injury forced Edge to vacate his world title and never wrestle again.
It doesn't take a medical expert to put the blame for those injuries on all those nasty crashes and violent trips through ladders. The wrestlers crammed years' worth of damage to their bodies in just a few bouts. They sped up their exit from the ring.
An Institution
Wade Barrett spoke for many of us when he said on theĀ WrestleMania RewindĀ specialĀ about the triangle ladder match, "I didn't realize at the time that it was a groundbreaking match. I knew I enjoyed it. I didn't realize how much that wouldĀ impact the future of WWE and how big that kind of match would become."
That clash expanded what chaos was possible in a wrestling ring.
Superstars have spent the last decade-and-a-half trying to match and surpass that level of danger.Ā John Morrison moonsaulted with a ladder in hand. Kofi Kingston soared off a ladder onto Drew McIntyre's chest. Shelton Benjamin made his own highlight reel bounding off the steel.
WWE saw dollar signs in the excitement the three teams generated that night.
And it has since made a habit of creating thrills through the kind of peril Jeff Hardy, Edge and Company put themselves through at WrestleMania 2000.
According toĀ TheHistoryofWWE.com,Ā Sheamus and Roman Reigns' title bout on Dec. 13 will mark the 18th TLC match in WWE history. There has been at least one a year since 2008.
WWE has built an entire PPV around the concept, featuring a TLC bout (or two) every year. In addition, the company created theĀ Money in the Bank ladder match, which borrows the whirlwind nature of the TLC format but replaces teams with enemies. There is now a PPV centered on that gimmick match, too.
These bouts have become staples on the WWE calendar. The jaw-dropping stunts that The Hardy Boyz, The Dudley Boyz and Edge and Christian pulled off are now expected.
That puts pressure on today's stars to wow a crowd that has already seen a succession of wow-worthy moments. The envelope has been pushed just about as far as it can go. Wrestlers are forced to be extra-creative come TLC time.
It's hard to live up to the originators.
To this day, that ladder match in Anaheim, California, is well worth watching again. For folks like Daily DDT's Rob Wolkenbrod, it's a go-to bout at any time:
It's a match that was the catalyst for an explosion in ladder matches, and one that will always be remembered as a perfect storm of ambition and devil-may-care attitude.
Matt HardyĀ told Jim RossĀ at Fox Sports' The Buzzer, "The older I get, the less wins and losses meanāthe memories that we create for ourselves and fans are the biggest rewards that can come out of any pro wrestling match."
The triangle ladder match created a wealth of memories, of the carnage Matt and his peers produced and the energy they wielded that night.
