WWE Royal Rumble 1998

WWE Royal Rumble 98'

San Jose, CA - January 1998

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into tonight's show, Shawn Michaels is the WWE Champion, the Intercontinental Champion is The Rock, the European Champion was Triple H, and the Light Heavyweight Champion was Taka Michinoku. The WWE Tag Team Champions were the New Age Outlaws.

The through-line of this show is all about the bounty (?) that the McMahons have put on the head of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. I forget if there actually was a legit bounty that McMahon had announced, but his rivalry with Austin was already a couple months old by now. This leads to all sorts of backstage segments where wrestlers try to corner Austin, but he evades them at every turn. It doesn't create any "all time great moments" or anything, but it does help move the show along and make the backstage segments meaningful. Meanwhile, Mike Tyson is also shown in attendance, watching from the McMahons' skybox. 

The in-ring action begins with Goldust taking on Vader in something like a grudge match, though, I honestly don't recall any of the story beats leading up to this match. This one is a bit hard to watch. At this point, Goldust was more about his zany, colorful BDSM outfits than he was about playing actual mind games. Neither guy is looking too great physically either. In WCW, these two most likely had some barnburners, but here, Vader is nothing like the dominant and dangerous force he was then and the fire of the old Dustin Rhodes is nowhere to be found either. The crowd is mostly indifferent too, the biggest pop happening when Luna Vachon - Goldust's new manager - jumps onto the back of Vader during his Vader Bomb finish. I'm not sure what the intention of this match was, but neither guy comes out of it more over than they were going in. A real disappointment. (1/5)

Next up, a 6-mini-man match pitting Max Mini, Mosaic, and Nova (no, not Simon "Nova" Dean) vs. El Torito, Tarantula, and Battalion. The guest referee is Sunny, who looks very good but refs very poorly and botches her one big spot (a leapfrog over Max Mini). This is "classic" early Attitude Era stuff as the WWE was really throwing all sorts of shit at the wall and seeing what would stick. The crowd is mostly indifferent, which is unsurprising considering that this was just filler for the sake of filler. I'm guessing Vince found having these "minis" funny - using little people for comedy gimmicks is as a tradition that dates back to the 80s in the WWE and maybe even earlier - but it also kinda shows how little he understood the appeal of the luchadores and Japanese wrestlers that had made WCW's cruiserweight division "must see" television. The "wrestling" is better than what we got in the opener, but because this is ultimately meaningless and serves no purpose, its the same level of uninteresting. (1/5)

The Intercontinental Championship is on the line in the next match - The Rock defending against Ken Shamrock. These guys feuded extensively and I know how much they appreciated that long stretch of matches...but I can't say that I'm a huge fan of this or really any of the matches I've seen between the two. Shamrock was a better wrestler in theory than I found him to be during his WWE run, where he should've just been steamrolling through people and forcing them to tap within minutes but typically just wrestled matches like this: standard, pedestrian, unremarkable. The Rock, meanwhile, was still finding his character at this point, a character that would really start to blossom in the summer of 98' (by which point he'd moved onto a feud against Triple H that would deliver at least one great match at SummerSlam), but had not put it all together yet. This match is really carried by the overness of both guys more than anything; The Rock is absolutely despised by the crowd and Ken Shamrock was over enough for the fans to want to see him rip through the entire dastardly Nation of Domination (especially after seeing Mark Henry turn on him on RAW in the build-up to this match). The finish helps keep Shamrock strong without giving him the title, which is smart because, even then, it was clear that The Rock was a future main eventer (and Shamrock was probably never going to be "take off" beyond the level he'd reached here). This was better than either of the matches that came before it, but still felt longer than its 10-minute runtime. (2/5)

The Legion of Doom challenge the New Age Outlaws for the WWE Tag Team Championships next. When people look back at the Road Warriors' run in the late 90s, it is often spoken of with 100% derision and more than a couple of mentions of the Hawk suicide angle - which would come several months after this - and the debut of Darren "Puke" Drozdov as a 3rd member of the crew. While these events cast a shadow on the final years of the Legion of the Doom, it should be mentioned that, even as late as January 98', the WWE was still pushing these guys. Jim Ross hypes them big time on commentary and they get a pre-match video package that makes them look like the monsters they once were. They still get a fairly big pop when they enter the arena, but its not what it was even a year earlier when they were feuding with the Nation of Domination. The New Age Outlaws had not yet reached their full potential as slogan-slinging fan favorites and were never a very interesting in-ring combo, but I do like their heelishness. After cuffing Hawk onto the bottom rope, they still put Animal over strong, ultimately taking the DQ loss after using a chair on the lone Road Warrior left. Hawk eventually uses his incredible strength to break the cuffs apart and cleans house, signaling that this feud is far from over even if there really wasn't all that much more to do with these teams. Another sub-10 minute match that was more interesting to talk about than actually watch. (1.5/5)

It's Rumble time! Cactus Jack and Terry "Chainsaw Charlie" Funk start things off and, after eliminating Tom Brandi (who comes in at #3 and lasts less than a minute), we get some weapons-based fun with The Rock (in at #4). A year later, Foley and The Rock would be engaged in one of the longest-running feuds/rivalries/eventual partnerships in WWE history. From here we get lots of entrants and very few eliminations and most of them are guys who stood absolutely no chance of main eventing WrestleMania - Mosh and Thrash, post-Blackjack/pre-Acolyte Bradshaw, Phineas Godwin, Steve Blackman, etc. Jeff Jarrett and Owen Hart further their feud, which I forgot ever happened. Kurrgan makes an appearance and it got me thinking about how, for at least a year, the early internet wrestling rumor mills - like RSPW, for example - worked themselves into a lather every couple months about how Kurrgan was one of Vince's pet projects and was going to be booked to feud with Austin over the title. Never happened. In fact, he was relegated to lower midcard tag matches for the rest of 98' and through 99' (when he was released). Anyway, throughout the first third of this match, all the real hype is about when Steve Austin will appear - its a real Poochie on The Simpsons vibe with everyone talking and wondering when Austin will show up whenever he's not on-screen. Other not-so-great entrants come in, including The Honky Tonk Man and a very angry looking Ahmed Johnson. I've written about Johnson before, but I totally thought he'd left the company by this point (in fact, he'd leave a month or so later). After feuding with the Nation of Domination in early 97', Johnson had then joined them in the fall - but got injured again - and was kicked out of the group in the summer and back to being a babyface. Anyway, he doesn't last too long in the match. It is interesting to think, though, what might've been in Johnson's future if he'd not been battling family issues, drug issues, and nagging injuries as he, at his physical peak and when motivated, had definitely connected with the audience and could've been a player in the Attitude Era (which had really only just begun by this point). Austin comes in at #24 and wisely evades detection by sneaking into the match through the crowd and tossing mofos the minute he gets into the ring. From here, things don't get any more or really less exciting - they just wrap up the way they're supposed to wrap up with Austin eventually toppling The Rock, Farooq, and Dude Love (who enters at #29) to get the victory. This isn't a bad Rumble, but its not a great one either, and the lack of depth to the roster really shows. On the plus side, they didn't overbook this either; Austin comes into the match fairly late, which prevents him from being overexposed or making him look like a Superman, which was never his gimmick (plus, they'd already kinda been down that road the year prior). (2/5)

Our main event is a match that got barely any mention on this show - The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels in a Casket Match for the WWE Championship. With the show built around Austin (and Tyson), its really not until just before bell time that JR and Lawler delve into the history that brought us to this match (with help from a nice, comprehensive video package that's only flaw is that it leaves out the role that Bret Hart played entirely). Taker and Shawn Michaels had put on a bit of a forgotten classic at In Your House: Ground Zero several months before this and then tore the roof off at Badd Blood in the first Hell in a Cell match, but this match shouldn't be slept on. It is all action from beginning to end and features some absolutely great spots - Michaels hitting a piledriver on the steel steps, Undertaker hitting a Tombstone Piledriver into the casket, a crowd-pleasing elbow drop from Shawn onto Michaels into the thing, the great visual of Michaels crotch-chopping Undertaker only to get grabbed by the throat from a never-say-die Deadman. Its worth noting that Michaels also aggravates a nasty back injury within the first 5 minutes of the match on a bump into the edge of the casket but goes on with the match. The finish isn't great - its basically a retread of the Yokozuna/Undertaker finish from a couple years prior - but it does lead to a Kane "heel turn" (predictable but the crowd bit on it) and a great post-match scene in which Kane and Paul Bearer douse the casket in gasoline and set it ablaze. I'd have to review a full list of casket matches to know for sure, but I think this might be the best Casket Match in history and that's a respectable honor to hold. The only thing that sorta hurts this - aside from the schmozz ending - is that its wrestled a bit more like a grudge match than a title match, with Taker's drive to regain the WWE Championship that Shawn Michaels kinda screwed him out of never driven home by the commentators. (4/5)

With a not-so-hot Kwang Score of 1.92-out-of-5, the 1998 edition of the Royal Rumble doesn't stand out as all that great. The main event is clearly the best match of the night and would probably land in the Top 10 Matches of the Year for the WWE, but this show really highlights (lowlights?) how thin the roster was at this point - which further proves just how over Steve Austin was. Yes, the Undertaker/Kane angle was big, yes, DegenerationX was a cool heel group (at this time), but, no, they weren't really moving the needle the way "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was. The rest of the roster? Mere backdrop at this point. But even if you're a massive Austin fan, you'll find much better moments of his career on other shows in 97' and further down the line in 98'.

FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver