10 Most Unexpectedly Great WWE Matches-8

8. The Undertaker Vs Jeff Hardy (Ladder Match – Raw – July 1st, 2002)

WWE.com

In 2002, The Undertaker was already well-established as a future Hall Of Famer, and Jeff Hardy was viewed as one of the most exciting performers in the business. However, Jeff was still a midcard worker that wasn’t anywhere near Taker’s level. Even though it was a Ladder Match, which was a Hardy specialty, everyone expected it to be another squash beating for Taker.

Taker did win the match, retaining his WWE Title in the process, but Hardy put up a bigger fight and came closer to victory than even his biggest fans could have thought he would. If you’re looking for one word to sum up the match, look no further than “drama”. It was great television watching Hardy climb the ladder on multiple occasions and come close to winning the match, but what made it even better was Jim Ross’ legendary call on commentary. JR was at his enthusiastic best here, making fans at home actually believe Hardy had a shot. By the time Ross yelled “Climb the ladder, kid! Make yourself famous!”, everyone was on the edge of their seats, anticipating history.

As popular as Jeff was at the time, this was the match that showed wrestling fans (and perhaps WWE management) that he could be a viable singles star with a main event spot. The Undertaker helped to get him to that point, working a very fine line between completely destroying Jeff (making himself look great) and letting Jeff get some believable offense in spurts (making Jeff look great). Taker deserves all the credit in the world for that.