[2003-05-17-IWA-PR] Ray Gonzalez vs Ricky Banderas (Ladder)

[Reel]

This is a fun, and it never lulls or over stays it's welcome, but I wouldn't call it anything more than a good match.

Dutch Mantel on commentary sets this up as a match that strongly favors Ricky Banderas, so we'll see how that figures in. Things start hot, with Gonzalez coming out firing. He hits a nice powerslam and heads out for to get the ladder. He goes to slide the folded ladder into the ring and eats the standard sliding kick into the ladder from Banderas. Ricky grabs the ladder and just chucks at Gonzalez's head. They brawl on the outside, Banderas takes an irish whip into a ladder, and takes a great bump that almost seems impossible on such a flimsy ladder out in open space. Some more brawling and ladder shots, and we end up back in the ring. Some more standard ladder match fare, bumps onto the ladder in the corner, some attempts to climb the ladder that are thwarted. Banderas chucks the ladder at a grounded Ray at one point. The absolute disrespect he throws the ladder at Mr. Ray-Tings with is awesome. As for Dutch's earlier point, Banderas seems to doing most of the ladder-based offense, but it doesn't seem as in Ray is totally out of sorts in this sort of match. Gonzalez has good territory babyface punches, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that this wasn't more of a brawl. These seem like two guys who should be bleeding all over this arena, and it just isn't happening here. There's a lot of action here with each guy is on a separate ladder, its convoluted, but it never seems like either guy isn't trying to win, unlike a good chunk of modern ladder matches. Gonzalez hits what I think is supposed to be a pretty standard vertical suplex off the two ladders, but in execution looks more like a shoot brainbuster, which sounds cooler than it looks. Things start to get overbooked as Savio Vega and Gonzalez's manager both try to grab the title, Ray eventually chases off Savio, but while that happens, Banderas starts to climb the ladder. Gonzalez sees this, quits chasing Savio, and runs back in and pushes the ladder out from under Ricky, but the ladder falls under Banderas, and he takes a nasty bump on the ladder. Gonzalez grabs the other ladder, climbs, and grabs the belt. Then roughly 79 people hit the ring and we're out of time.