ROH Unscripted, Philadelphia, PA
This is a request! The request called for their ladder match but they didn’t have one, although there are ladders heavily used in this street fight. This is that year one ROH stuff, back when Paul London was putting in a serious challenge to be called the best wrestler in America. This match is available free on YouTube.
“As a blood feud, it’s not about athleticism, it’s not about who’s the best competitor, it’s about hurting your opponent. No Code of Honor necessary, no handshake.” Oh so you mean professional wrestling.
London hits a spin kick and a shooting star shotgun dropkick, the latter of which could be dumb but he does it so smooth and so hard that it rules. That was the magic of Paul London, really.
Shane shoves London into the post outside, but going back in, London crotches him and hits an enzuigiri to the back of the head for two. London tries to skin the cat on a hiptoss to the outside, but Michael Shane will not have a cat skinned on his watch and spears London mid-cat skinning, knocking him down to the floor.
London takes a whip into the fencing serving as a guardrail, and just hurls himself right through a chunk of it. Shane sets a table up outside, but London cuts him off and throws him back into the ring, then fetches a chair and shows the crowd, like, “SEE?! SEE?! A CHAIR!” which gets him flattened when Shane hits a somersault dive into him and the chair.
There were always horrible moments when you looked at Michael Shane and really saw the Shawn Michaels in his face and it made you want to vomit.
London comes up busted open and we head back into the ring. Shane throws the chair at London’s head for two. Shane joins London bleeding when he gets whipped into the chair wedged in the corner. Shane’s bleeding better than London.
“This is shades of the Rockers against Doug Somers and Buddy Rose!” the ROH commentary man says, chuckling at his deep well of knowledge. “How many people out there get THAT reference?!” Who did they think was watching this promotion if not adult dorks with their own money?
Shane introduces the ladder, a fan screams a slur, and London does London stuff, back kicking the ladder into London’s face with a springboard off the apron to the floor.
Back inside, London goes up for a flying whatever that Shane was supposed to catch somehow, and Shane doesn’t, so instead London crashes to the canvas at a wild angle and Shane has to awkwardly tip over. It’s just them fucking something up but I’ll pretend I’m the play-by-play guy and come up with an excuse for it with Logic so I don’t hurt my own feelings or anyone else’s. Wrestling fans love doing that.
More important, what they do right there is sell it a bit but not too much, and they also don’t go back to the blown spot, they just move on and hope you forget about it when they do more cool shit. London gets himself belly-to-belly’d into the ladder leaning in the corner.
London takes Shane down from the apron with a flying leg scissors, sending Shane crashing through that table set up earlier ringside.
London fetches a taller ladder from under the ring, and London winds up backdropped onto it, again leaning in the corner. Shane’s had enough, and he’s trying to leave. But then he stops mid-entrance aisle, and London runs up the ladder and dives down with a somersault senton. Everyone goes wild. Absolutely insane spot. Stuff like that has been done on bigger stages since (Shelton Benjamin did something similar at the Mania Money in the Bank in 2006), but this was crazy in ’02.
The next big thing is London leapfrogging over the ladder from the top rope, but flying down into a Shane power bomb for two. It’s a more spectacular spot than it sounds like.
Shane hits his Shawn Michaels elbow drop, which he hyped as “picture perfect.” It was a good elbow but it wasn’t Shawn level and certainly not Savage level. But both of them were retired at this point. (Well, Shawn had just come back.) London comes back with the shooting star for a two count and the crowd are on their feet cheering.
London sets up the big ladder, which is bent to hell, but he doesn’t care. Shane starts climbing it with him. Shane knocks London off, so Shane has to climb the ladder that is fucked up to the point only Paul might really use it here, but he drops down with another elbow for two.
Shane climbing the ladder again, London up, and Paul springboard moonsaults Lionsault-style off the middle rope, kicking Shane in the face. Oh Lord, Paul’s gonna climb the janky ladder. Paul hits a shooting star off the wobbly ass ladder for the win, basically crushing Shane’s ribs on the landing because there’s only so much balance he can get.
This is an incredible match for time and place. It might not super duper stand out in recent years indie wrestling, but in ’02 this was a wild level for an indie street fight, both in risks taken and overall skill. There was a period in the early 2000s where you could very credibly argue that the best wrestling in the world was absolutely on the U.S. indies, not in WWF/WWE, not in Japan, not in Mexico, but on the U.S. indies. Everywhere had some great stuff going on still, but the U.S. indies were exciting, too. They were evolving and changing with an American market that was down to one major promotion, two if you want to count TNA when they started going, which is a bit of a reach in many ways. (Not a slam on TNA, where a lot of really talented guys got exposure WWE would have never given them at the time, and had some great stuff over the years. Just saying it really was still a small-time operation, more on the ECW level than the WCW level for the most part.)
So you had guys like Bryan Danielson and AJ Styles and Low Ki and Spanky and Chris Daniels and Samoa Joe and then another wave with CM Punk and Chris Hero and Colt Cabana and on and on, and at this point, Paul London was as good as anyone. Shane is along for the ride here; he was a good wrestler and willing to take the risks, too, and London wouldn’t look as great as he did without Shane being such a capable and willing opponent, but Paul is the obvious star of this match. He was just outstanding for the periods of time he really cared about wrestling, which were unfortunately pretty short in the grand scheme of things.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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