What the World Was Watching: Over the Edge 1998 - In Your House

by Logan Scisco

-The show starts with the “Mr. McMahon’s Utopia” video package, which is one of the best WWF video packages of all-time.

-Jim Ross and Jerry “the King” Lawler are on commentary and they are live from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (otherwise known as the town that R-Truth can’t remember).

-Opening Contest:  LOD 2000 (w/Sunny & Darren Drozdov) defeat The Disciples of Apocalypse (w/Chainz) when Animal pins Skull after a powerslam at 9:48:

I mentioned in the Unforgiven review that that show was Sunny’s last WWF pay-per-view appearance, but this one actually is (I somehow forgot this show and jumped in my mind from Unforgiven to King of the Ring).  She definitely looks worse for wear and her firing shortly after this was not surprising.  Ross hypes the LOD’s AWA background on commentary since Milwaukee was a former AWA stop and some AWA legends are being honored later in the show.  This has a hot start, but the DOA choke the life of it (literally).  The DOA tries an illegal switch late in the match, but Droz nails Skull in the head when he runs the ropes and the LOD wins.  This match isn’t putting either team anywhere near the title picture, though.  Rating:  *

-Intercontinental Champion The Rock comes out and runs down the Milwaukee beer industry and their women.  Faarooq runs out and gives the Rock a piledriver on a chair (sort of) and then beats up some of the Nation before he leaves the ring.  The Rock does a stretcher job and Ross and Lawler speculate on whether we will have an Intercontinental championship match tonight or not.  The most ridiculous part of the stretcher job is they do not have EMTs come out to the ring and Owen is the one who has to put a neck collar on the Rock.

-Michael Cole talks to WWF Champion Steve Austin in the locker room.  Austin says he doesn’t care about the odds he faces tonight and says that no one has volunteered to watch his back in the title match.

-“Double J” Jeff Jarrett (w/Tennessee Lee) beats Steve Blackman after Lee hits Blackman with a karate stick at 10:19:

Blackman is like one of those non-credible challengers that Jarrett used to face in 1995 when he was Intercontinental champion.  During the bout, Al Snow is shown doing commentary with the Spanish announce team dressed in stereotypical Mexican attire (he’s eventually removed by security and gets a bigger reaction than the match).  The real highlight of this match is Lawler reading off country song lyrics to narrate big moments.  This is a serviceable match, but it has very little heat, and Jarrett picks up the cheap win via Lee’s interference.  You can hear the crickets as he makes his way to the back.  Rating:  **

-Marc Mero giving Sable the conditions for the match between him and someone of Sable’s choosing on last week’s RAW is shown.

-Sable’s Freedom vs. Sable’s Career Match:  “Marvelous” Marc Mero pins Sable with an inside cradle at 29 seconds:

Ross makes an allusion to Mero’s Johnny B. Badd gimmick by telling Lawler “You know, Mero looks a lot like Little Richard.”  Back in 1998, I thought Sable would pick the Undertaker as the superstar to face Mero.  However, Sable opts to choose herself for this match and Mero feigns sadness at having to wrestle her.  He decides to lay down for her, but when Sable covers him, he reverses it and sends her packing.  A guy in the front row yells “NO!  NO!” when Mero reverses the pin and that is pretty funny.  Mero actually gets a decent pop for the pin, but sadly he wouldn’t be done with Sable yet.  This was actually Mero’s last victory on a WWF pay-per-view.

-Cole recaps what we have just seen, as if we are idiots, and Sable thanks her fans for their support and tries to cry and can’t.

-Dok Hendrix is in the locker room with the Nation of Domination, but they refuse to talk with him.  Commissioner Slaughter has forced the Rock to defend the Intercontinental title regardless of what Faarooq did to him earlier.  There’s something that doesn’t seem quite fair about that to me, especially since Faarooq was unprovoked.

-Bonus Handicap Match:  Kaientai (w/Yamaguchi-San) beat Taka Michinoku & Bradshaw after Dick Togo pins Michinoku with a Senton Bomb at 9:53:

This is back when a bonus match actually made sense within existing storylines.  The Kaientai feud was the WWF’s attempt to give Bradshaw something to do after the New Blackjacks split up and the NWA angle was a bust, but it never really took off.  Seeing Bradshaw face Kaientai is like watching a real world version of Gulliver’s Travels.  It leads to some entertaining spots, though, with Bradshaw viciously slamming members of Kaientai on the arena floor and having all of the members of Kaientai try to take him down simultaneously.  Everything devolves into some really fun spots for the finish, which sees Kainetai’s numbers overwhelm their opponents and continue to build momentum with a win.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot for Kaientai to do after the Michinoku feud because their size created a credibility problem.  Rating:  **½

-Sable is shown slowly walking out of the arena with her bags.

-Intercontinental Championship Match:  The Rock (Champion) defeats Faarooq with the Flair pin at 5:09:

This is the big blowoff for the Rock-Faarooq feud that has been simmering throughout 1998, but Ross prefers to talk about it as an extension of the Florida State-Miami football feud.  The Rock initially refuses to come out for the bout, so Commissioner Slaughter walks out and orders him to come to the ring in ten seconds or forfeit the title.  So, we are supposed to buy Slaughter as a face in this situation after he beat up Steve Austin a few weeks ago on RAW?  The Rock does come out and we get a whimper of a match to settle this long-term feud.  Faarooq was not well-suited to playing a face and he would dabble around in the lower midcard before the Acolyte tag team revived his career. After the match, Faarooq piledrives the Rock and the Nation runs in to do a beatdown before D-Generation X makes the save.  THAT finally wakes up the crowd.  Rating:  *½

 -Mask vs. Mask Match:  Kane (w/Paul Bearer) pins Vader with a Tombstone at 7:22:

This is really the last pay-per-view where Vader had a great deal of credibility, but the WWF really spoiled the outcome by making this a mask vs. mask match.  I never understood why that stipulation held up in kayfabe anyway since WWF viewers had already seen Vader without his mask on several occasions, so who cares if he loses it?  Vader also did not get as much airtime relative to Kane’s ongoing feud with the Undertaker, so that was another clue that he was going to be cannon fodder here.  The only real interesting event of this match is when Vader hits Kane with a wrench that he acquires from underneath the ring, but that isn’t enough to stop the Big Red Machine, who remains undefeated against anyone not named the Undertaker.  Rating:  ½*

-After the match, Vader is unmasked and Lawler acts like this is an unheard of event.  In a funny moment, Kane puts the mask on Paul Bearer, who dances around like Vader and proclaims it “Paul Bearer time.”  Cole interviews Vader, who announces that he’s a “big, fat piece of shit.”  One would think this would create a small redemption angle for Vader that would see him return to his roots and vault back up the card, but it was not meant to be.

-The Crusher and Mad Dog Vachon are recognized in a small ceremony for AWA superstars.  The crowd is very appreciative of both men and I would guess that Jim Cornette played a role in putting this together, probably over Kevin Dunn’s objections.  Lawler takes objection to the ceremony, makes fun of Mad Dog Vachon, and the Crusher beats him up.

-Owen Hart, Kama Mustafa & D-Lo Brown (w/Mark Henry) defeat Triple H & The New Age Outlaws (w/X-Pac & Chyna) when Owen pins Triple H with a Pedigree on a tag team title belt at 18:34:

For the first time tonight, the crowd is really buzzing about a match.  Owen is the most over participant, getting an “Owen sucks” and being loudly booed when he enters the match.  Momentum swings back and forth and when all hell breaks loose things really step up a notch as Chyna decks Mark Henry and Billy Gunn and Triple H give D-Lo a spike piledriver on a tag team title belt.  However, Owen breaks that up and gets a measure of revenge against Triple H by finally pinning him on pay-per-view.  Of course, by the time that Owen has gotten this revenge he’s a heel and we’re supposed to be mad about it.  The match was just average, but it put Kama and D-Lo on the same level as the more recognized members of D-Generation X and thereby gave the Nation some credibility in their feud with DX.  Rating:  **

-A video package hypes the upcoming WWF championship match between Steve Austin and Dude Love.

-Hendrix interviews Vince McMahon, Pat Patterson, and Gerald Brisco and McMahon mockingly says that he will be an impartial referee tonight.  He says that if Austin touches him, he will stop the match and strip him of the title and makes it very clear that the match will end “by his hand only.”

-WWF Championship Match with Vince McMahon as Guest Referee, Pat Patterson as Guest Ring Announcer, and Gerald Brisco as Guest Timekeeper:  “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (Champion) pins Dude Love with a Stone Cold Stunner at 22:28:

This is one of my all-time favorite matches and there are so many things to love about it.  First, Howard Finkel gives a pre-written introduction for Patterson that compares him to Wayne Gretzky, discusses Patterson surviving a “grueling” tournament in Rio de Janeiro to win the Intercontinental title, and applauds him as a role model for children.  Second, Patterson gives the most hilarious ring introductions ever by saying Brisco is the reincarnation of Jim Thorpe and emphasizing that he’s a real Native American unlike Chief Jay Strongbow, arguing that Vince makes “life worth living” and has a “yes I can” attitude (too bad Linda didn’t run for Senate earlier and change the “I” in that to “we”), arguing that Dude Love is an inspiration, and that Austin is a “foul mouthed punk” and a “bum.”  Third, as the match proceeds, McMahon changes the rules to a no disqualification and falls count anywhere match (which were hilariously dubbed as “reminders”), which causes the Ross rage-o-meter to reach a 1.0.  And fourth, it has one of the wildest and craziest finishes to a WWF title match, as McMahon is inadvertently laid out by a Love chair shot; the Undertaker, who comes out before the match to watch Austin’s back, chokeslams Patterson and Brisco through the ringside announce tables to prevent them from counting a Love pin on Austin; and Austin takes an unconscious McMahon’s hand to register the three count after he gives Love a Stunner.  Ross sums the match up beautifully:  “Steve Austin is the toughest son of a bitch I ever saw!”  This was my Match of the Year for 1998 (I think it ended up finishing third in the PWI voting that year) due to the great build up, the ability of the booking to draw a loud crowd reaction, and a very witty ending.  Rating:  *****

The Final Report Card:  The WWF was still working toward “red hot” status, so this show is still in the transition period where they were reinforcing their gains against WCW.  The entire card aside from the main event is lackluster and is RAW fare, but the main event is the only thing that needed to deliver at the time and it did.  Surprisingly, this show drew fewer buys than Unforgiven and drew the fewest buys of any show in the Austin era.  The only thing that I think could account for that is that the fans felt Austin winning was a foregone conclusion.  I won’t give this show a thumbs up, since it is just a one match show, but if you have never seen Austin-Love, then you need to check it out.

Attendance:  9,822

Buyrate:  0.58 (+0.01 from the previous year)

Show Evaluation:  Thumbs Down