100.
Number One Contender’s Match
Ladder Match
Rob Van Dam vs. Sabu
ECW, August 15th 2006
When I mentioned that I find a perverse enjoyment out of watching bad wrestling, perhaps that has never been more appropriate than our debut match on the countdown. I make no secrets about my love for Sabu as a wrestler. He’s got an endearing aura about him that I don’t think any other wrestler in history can compare with. He’s pure chaos, and provides unpredictability in ways that others can’t replicate and that makes his matches must watch for me. Meanwhile RVD is a wrestler I soured on for a few years by the mid 2000s. It’s apparent after watching him weekly that the lustre of RVD wears off over time. However absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess. After a few years of RVD being out of the limelight I’ve found it fun to go back and watch his matches and see why almost everyone fell in love with him the first time they saw him.
With two guys that are who they are, the potential for carnage in this match was off the charts and I am glad to say it didn’t disappoint. In fact they exceeded my expectations. Both men had had interesting summers in 2006 to say the least. Their career trajectory correlated that of ECW itself, unsurprisingly since RVD was due to be the centrepiece of the brand. RVD was in the middle of the push of his life and was set to be the face of the third brand of WWE. However, both he and Sabu were arrested for their recreational choices which derailed RVD’s push immediately. He lost the ECW and WWE Championship and was promptly suspended by the company, with Sabu also receiving a suspension. That was the beginning of the end for RVD’s major push in WWE, and honestly the whole direction of ECW as a whole never recovered until it was eventually repurposed in 2008 as the precursor to NXT.
This would be RVD’s first match since his suspension. To talk about each botch in this match would take some time but I’ll give it my best shot talking about the noticeable ones.
- RVD and Sabu both trying the same springboard kick simultaneously and both completely whiffing the kick.
- Sabu jumping off a steel chair to the top rope, only to accidentally crotch himself seconds later.
- RVD deciding to do his trademark headbump about a second too late on a weak looking leg drop from Sabu
- A fan loudly shouts “are you retarded!?”. Sabu decides to respond by propping a ladder on its side. He then tries to springboard from the ladder onto the ropes - fittingly only to slip and fall on his ass, and thus delivering the fan his answer.
- An entire monkey flip spot in the corner which features: Sabu visibly placing the ladder in place for RVD; and then the timing on the monkey flip being so bad that Sabu is just waiting for the ladder to hit him.
But the absolute best moment of this match happens just a minute in. It’s not even a botch, it’s an intentional spot. But it just might be in the top 10 funniest spots in wrestling history. Sabu is out of commission for a second, and RVD is perched on the top rope. RVD fucking LEAPS from the top rope trying to grab the contract in the middle of the ring just to absolutely faceplant himself right in the middle of the ring. It’s such a stupid spot and I commend Styles and Taz for not bursting into laughter when it happened.
Make no mistake, this match is a disaster. It’s difficult to believe that this is the same profession that the likes of Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair wrestled in. But this match is wonderfully bad. They have absolutely no regard for one another’s health. There’s no flow to the match whatsoever - it’s a hodgepodge of brutal looking spots held together like Sabu’s bicep. All the timings in this match are out by like 0.5 seconds, which doesn’t sound like a lot but is extremely noticeable. This isn’t quite Sabu vs Sandman November to Remember 1997, but it might be the closest thing WWE ever came to it.
The finish of the match sees the ECW Champion Big Show interfere and stop RVD from winning because he doesn’t want RVD to win. However he also doesn’t want Sabu to win, so he calls for the contract to be lowered so he can grab it (Big Show was the muscle for ECW commissioner, Paul Heyman - hence why he had the pull to do this). Sabu takes advantage of the lowered contract and jumps on Big Show’s back to grab it for himself. Creative, albeit contrived finish. So at Summerslam it’ll be Big Show vs Sabu for the ECW Championship. I wonder if that will pop up later on …
I think this match is a trainwreck but I beg any of you not to find entertainment in this mess. The spots are actually pretty great, they bump like madmen, and the botches are funny. I think it’s a fitting way to start the list and set the tone for the fun that is bad professional wrestling.
https://discord.com/channels/1007269901859307631/1059557356238811227
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