I thought this was shockingly good. If I've written about five ladder matches here in the last 10 years then I've mentioned five times that I'm pretty much over ladder matches as a concept, but I watched this because to hell with it and I certainly didn't regret it. I was a wee bit worried initially when Xavier set up a ladder across the ring apron and guardrail, because at that point naturally I'm thinking they're going the route more conducive to nonsense and less conducive to making it look like they're trying to actually win a match, but it didn't really veer too far into that and they grounded it with enough brutality to make it work. This happening a quarter-century ago is also sort of crazy because a lot of it wouldn't look out of place today. Those Hardys/Dudleys/Edge & Christian matches happened within the year prior to this, but what Ki and Xavier were doing here felt closer to something you'd see in 2025 rather than 2000. Innovative and all that. The big spots were wild, pretty much all of them landed on the money, and they only used two ladders the whole time and not one of them broke in half so all of those bumps must've SUCKED. Ki also kicked the living shit out of Xavier whenever he could. There's one part where Xavier is hanging upside down with his leg stuck between two ladder rungs and Ki is just teeing off on him with hellish roundhouse kicks. Xavier climbs the ladder and Ki almost yanks his trunks off trying to pull him down, but Xavier just keep trying to climb bare-arsed and Ki chops him as hard as humanly possible on the exposed buttocks. Pretty cool that they injected Shawn Michaels influences into things, I guess. Xavier's seated springboard moonsault to the floor was nuts and then the Ki Crusher off the ladder at the end was bonkers. I mean truly fucking bonkers.
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