7. The Rock vs. Triple H - Ladder Match For WWE Intercontinental Championship (1998)
It is hard to forget the Summerslam 98 poster with Steve Austin and Undertaker fighting each other with pieces of the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building or the theme song chosen for that event: The Highway to Hell by AC/DC. Austin-Taker was huge, but it turned out not to be the most memorable. The match that stole the show was The Rock vs. Triple H for the IC title in a Ladder match. Trips and Rock had such a great rivalry throughout their careers, but one of the things that drew fans to their work as main-event players was that they started their series in the mid-card, worked their way up to the headlining status, and then took the next step up to feuding over the WWE Championship. The height of their upper mid-card story was when each was heading up popular factions. Rock was the IC Champion and had been for all but about a minute of the previous nine months when Triple H faced him at Summerslam in a battle of (even at that point) sure-fire future Hall of Famers (based on their predicted upward trajectory). It was not a Ladder match featuring the typical exhibition in high spots. In fact, of any Ladder match in history, this was probably the least spotty of them all. Neither was known for their high risk bump taking, so they relied on their animosity toward one another and the story that naturally flowed from it to make this, still, one of the greatest Ladder matches of all-time.
"The Doc" Chad Matthews has written wrestling columns for over a decade. A physician by trade, Matthews began writing about wrestling as a hobby, but it became a passion. After 30 years as a wrestling fan, "The Doc" gives an unmatched analytical perspective on pro wrestling in the modern era. He is a long-time columnist for Lordsofpain.net and hosts a weekly podcast on the LOP Radio Network called "The Doc Says." His first book - The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment - ranks the Top 90 wrestlers from 1983 to present day, was originally published in December 2013, and is now in its third edition.
Matthews lives in North Carolina with his wife, two kids, and two dogs.
