Justin Credible Recalls ‘Corny’ Stairway To Hell Stipulation In ECW

Led Zeppelin had the Stairway to Heaven. ECW had the Stairway to Hell. 

The Stairway to Hell match was a ladder match where foes battled to capture barbed wire, which could be used as a weapon against their opponent. Justin Credible might be the king of the Stairway to Hell match, having won three of them during his time in the company. 

Yet he wasn’t exactly a fan of the gimmick. 

“It’s a hard stipulation because you just get to the barbed wire and use it. It’s kind of a corny stipulation because it didn’t give you much incentive other than you get to use the barbed wire. At the end of the day, it was just a toy. One thing ECW didn’t do very well — this is where rules made sense in wrestling because when you break rules, it matters. With ECW, there were no rules, so having barbed wire up there was anti-climatic. It was a poorly thought gimmick. I almost killed Dreamer in that match. If you look at that match, we’re fighting by the concession stand and everything was thrown by the wayside because of the XPW stuff, so we’re both frazzled. We’re fighting on top of a ladder near the merch tables. Dreamer is like, ‘throw me off.’ I went to throw him the opposite way where he would take a 20-foot drop. He’s like, ‘wrong way.’ I literally threw him the wrong way,” Credible recalled on Extreme Conversations with Brian Myers.

Credible defeated Dreamer in all three Stairway to Hell matches. The last bout, which is the one Credible is referencing, took place at ECW Heat Wave 2000. 

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