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In Your House: Rock Bottom starts off with The Rock cutting a promo to welcome viewers. This reminded me of the way ECW pay-per-views opened. We then head to the ring for Val Venis and The Godfather vs. Mark Henry and D'Lo Brown. Lots of sexual innuendo from the commentators, but there's some decent action too. I liked the finish - which saw Terri Runnels interfere by pulling Venis' trunks down, leading to a big splash from Henry for the win. Even when I was 14 I found the Venis and Godfather acts to be obnoxious, trashy, and pandering. The acts haven't aged any better since. At least it didn't go too long. (1.5/5)
Next up - The Headbangers vs. Golga and Kurrgan of The Oddities. Who thought this would be worthy of a PPV? I'm not even sure this would be worthy of an episode of Sunday Night Heat. Unlike the opener, this one does go too long - a whopping 7 minutes. I enjoy seeing Golga work just because I'm a John Tenta fan, but this is considerably less fun and less heated than The Oddities' showcase match at SummerSlam against Kaientai. (1/5)
Owen Hart got a huge reaction from the Vancouver crowd as he made his way down the aisle to take on Steve Blackman. I was surprised to see that, already in December 98', Owen was doing Blue Blazer stuff as I misremembered that storyline happening in the spring of 99'. Anyway, Owen Hart takes some outstanding bumps in this match, including one on the arena floor that looks absolutely gnarly. I wouldn't necessarily call this a carry job because Blackman is decent enough, but the best parts of this match are 100% the work of Owen. Sadly, he does not seem super enthused to even be involved in this match. I'm not sure it was the wisest decision to have these guys go 10 minutes and the finish is a real disappointment. Maybe the way this was booked is what made Owen seem so dissatisfied? (1.5/5)
The show continues with six-man tag action as The Brood (Edge, Christian, and Gangrel) take on The JOB Squad of Al Snow, Hardcore Holly, and 2 Cold Scorpio. There is a ton of effort shown by everyone involved, but its not enough to save this match from a crowd that couldn't care less and had no emotional investment. Some of 2 Cold's offense is particularly good, but there was simply no way he was going to get over in 1998 without a decent gimmick and stronger mic skills (neither of which he was blessed with). (2/5)
The next match was billed as a Striptease Match - Jeff Jarrett fighting to keep his Debra's clothes on and Goldust competing to stay clothed himself. The crowd is very into this match and a ton of that credit has to go to the stipulation as they bite on every single Goldust nearfall and boo every time Jarrett looks like he may steal the victory. In terms of in-ring action, these two were also among the best hands that the company had on their roster at the time so they cut a good pace and tell a logical story. I thought the false finish involving Debra whacking Goldust with a chair was poorly timed, but I'd put the onus on Debra. Jarrett ends up getting the W with a not-so-great Stroke (though I believe it was called something else at this point), but instead of Goldust having to strip, Commissioner Shawn Michaels shows up and DQs Jarrett (after Jarrett goes to the back). HBK gives a spiel and the fans get what they want (sorta) as Debra strips down to a bikini. Before she can take off anything else, the Blue Blazer and Jarrett both come to the ring and cover her up. This was lowest denominator stuff, but at least the wrestling was better than most of the matches that came before it. (2.5/5)
Whoever thought Ken Shamrock and Bossman vs. The New Age Outlaws needed to go for damn near 20 minutes should be tried for war crimes. Just an absolute slog of a match built around multiple front face-locks and Road Dogg playing the face-in-peril for extended heat segments from Shamrock and Bossman. The crowd isn't interested and Shawn Michaels, who is back at ringside, seems even less so (aside from the few times he chastises Billy Gunn on the outside like a worse version of Johnny Polo). I'm surprised that the audience didn't boo these guys out of the building, but the Outlaws were over enough as part of DX that, while the match deserved it, they skate by from the goodwill. Shamrock and Bossman were a bad pairing, which is unfortunate because Bossman, in his prime, was a very dependable worker. By this point, he seems perfectly fine just going through the motions rather than developing real chemistry with his teammate. Among the worst 20 minutes I've spent watching wrestling this year. Oh, and the finish is a bit screwy as Shawn's interference backfires. How clever. A half-point awarded for a huge one-armed hiptoss slam that Shamrock hits at one point. (0.5/5)
The WWE Championship is on the line in the next match - Mankind vs. The Rock. At Survivor Series, Mankind had been screwed out of the WWE Championship in somewhat of a double-turn angle that saw Foley, who believed he was Vince's "pick," end up on the receiving end of a "Montreal Screwjob sequel" finish that saw the Corporation's true choice - The Rock - turn heel. By this point, Foley was a babyface, but he was still playing it a bit as a tweener whose only real goal was to become WWE Champion (even if that meant sucking up to the boss). Before the bout begins, Foley attempts to "settle things" with Vince without having to actually fight for the Championship (not necessarily a very heroic babyface thing to do). The pre-match business is as confusing as it sounds and seems like just a way to stretch the show out, but things get much better once the bell rings. This is definitely not the best Mankind/Rock match ever, but its certainly the best match on this show, in large part due to the effort by Mankind, who takes one of his trademark insane bumps from the top rope all the way to the floor at one point. It is a sickening, sickening bump for a guy his size, which is why you can still watch a Mankind match from 20 years ago and get a visceral reaction from it more than, say, seeing countless smaller athletes performing similar moves today. The Rock holds his own, but was not quite fully there yet, still missing a few key signature moves that would soon make him a star nearly as big as Austin (and, eventually, arguably even bigger). I didn't like the finish too much as Foley ends up getting the W - even Vince declares him the winner - but Vince denies the title change because The Rock "passed out" from the Mandible Claw and was never pinned or submitted, which is just an awful "gotcha" finish. I get it - Vince, as the company owner, has the power to do whatever he wants...but there has to be some sort of internal consistency to having that power or else Vince could just declare winners and losers at any time whenever he wanted and there would be no reason his nemeses - like Austin or Foley or whoever - could ever win a match (because Vince would always have the power to just reverse the decision). Anyway...Foley brought the goods here but I wouldn't consider this "must see." (3/5)
Main event time - Steve Austin vs. The Undertaker in a Buried Alive Match. Austin has gone on record with saying that he and Taker never had a truly great match on PPV despite several very good angles and segments over the years. Their SummerSlam match was marred by a mid-match concussion suffered by Stone Cold and this one, while perfectly okay, is still just okay. Saddled with a stipulation that prevents them from really working a true back-and-forth match, most of the action occurs in the aisleway and in the crowd. I mean, there's almost no reason they do any of the match in the ring aside from the fact that not doing so would've likely led to huge boos from the paying audience. Austin and Taker do some good brawling and the crowd is very into it, but a match like this lives or dies by its finish because the premise. Here, we get the expected appearance of Kane - who had been feuding with Taker for over a year at this point - as he pops out of the burial grounds after some overdramatic pyro while Austin is off-screen forcing some unseen backstage worker to bring out a backhoe/excavator. It takes a Stone Cold Stunner and then a Tombstone Piledriver (how fitting) to put Taker in the ground and then its a couple of minutes of just watching him get buried before Hebner calls for the bell and declares Austin the winner. Its that unfortunate-but-necessary lag between Taker getting tombstoned and visually losing the match and the backhoe doing its job and Hebner declaring a winner that kills much of the celebratory mood for me (though Austin was so over with the live crowd that just seeing him swig beers earned massive pops). As a "spectacle match," this was fine, but nothing more than that. (2.5/5)
I wouldn't call In Your House: Rock Bottom the worst WWE pay-per-view ever - if nothing else, Mankind/Rock is a solid continuation of their food and serves as a good warm-up to their Royal Rumble match and, generally speaking, the right guys won and lost on this show - but its certainly not as good as something people paid money to see should be. With a pretty putrid 1.81-out-of-5 Kwang Score, only the biggest and least discerning Attitude Era fan could possibly enjoy this.
FINAL RATING - DUDleyville
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