What the World Was Watching: King of the Ring 1998

by Logan Scisco

-Jim Ross and Jerry “the King” Lawler are doing commentary and they are live from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

-Opening Bonus Contest:  The Headbangers & Taka Michinoku defeat Kaientai (w/Yamaguchi-San) when Michinoku pins Funaki with the Michinoku Driver at 6:44:

This is one of two bonus matches taking place this evening.  The action is fast and furious here, with Michinoku carrying the match for his team.  He manages to get the winning pin after all hell breaks loose to avenge a loss to Kaientai at the last pay-per-view, and I imagine it helped that this time he evened the odds with the Headbangers.  Rating:  **½

-Sable walks out and welcomes out Vince McMahon, who comes out with the stooges.  As Sable leaves the ring, Pat Patterson, smacks her on the rear end and gets slapped.  Ross says that Patterson got in trouble because he got involved “in an area that he’s not familiar with.”  With the crowd riled up, McMahon says that tonight’s main event outcome will disappoint them, but that is okay because the crowd is full of people experienced with disappointments.  Not one of McMahon’s better promos and this was just filler.

-King of the Ring Semi-Final:  Ken Shamrock beats “Double J” Jeff Jarrett (w/Tennessee Lee) via submission to the ankle lock at 5:30:

When Jarrett does his “Aint I great!” spiel before the match, the crowd shouts back “Aint I gay!”  Add that to the list of things you may not hear on the WWE Network.  Jarrett isn’t wearing his usual entrance jacket, which makes for a weird visual.  Shamrock lets Jarrett get in some token offense on his leg before deciding to stop selling and win the bout.  After the match, Shamrock gives Lee a belly-to-belly suplex and hilariously remembers that he needs to sell the leg.  Rating:  **

-Michael Cole interviews Shamrock and Shamrock says that he did not come to the pay-per-view to finish in second place.

-King of the Ring Semi-Final:  The Rock pins Dan Severn after D-Lo Brown hits Severn with the Lo Down at 4:25:

Kama Mustafa, who accompanies the Rock to the ring with Mark Henry before being evicted by the referee, is starting to look more like his future Godfather persona with the hat and tinted glasses.  Finkel even announces him as such.  This match was a bummer when I initially saw the show because I wanted a Shamrock-Severn final, but the WWF made the right call here for two reasons.  First, if you are going to have Shamrock-Severn, you might as well promote that match to make money.  And second, the Rock is way more over than Severn.  This match is an awkward styles clash, as the Rock is not a technical wrestler, so he cannot adequately chain wrestle Severn, and Severn does not know how to sell the Rock’s usual offense.  For example, he looks completely lost selling the Rock’s flurry of punches in the corner.  I should add that D-Lo Brown debuts his chest protector, which he needed to recover from a “torn pectoral muscle” suffered at the hands of Severn in the qualifying round, when he interferes to put the Rock into the finals. This is Severn’s first singles loss since arriving in the WWF.  Rating:  ½*

-Cole interviews the Rock, who delivers a great impromptu promo against Shamrock by saying that Shamrock is going to eat “rock bottom” as he tries to climb the mountain to the King of the Ring title.

-A video package recaps what has been going on with Al Snow for the last two months.

-Jerry Lawler tells Al Snow, who is backstage, that he is going down tonight, but Snow says he is not laying down for anyone and that Too Much is going to get some Head like they have never had before.

-Too Much beats Al Snow & Head when Brian Christopher pins the Head at 8:26:

Does anyone remember when the Head was a playable character in WWF Attitude?  Just before the match, it is announced that Lawler is the guest referee and that goes about as well for Snow as you can expect.  The difference between Too Much and Too Cool is as much as night and day as Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor were devoid of credible victories or a great deal of charisma heading into this match, so the crowd just cares about the Head.  Snow gives Taylor a Snow Plow, but Lawler tosses Christopher a bottle of Head and Shoulders, thereby giving the Head shoulders and enabling Christopher to pin it for the win.  Some people hate that finish, but I found it humorous.  I have no idea why Snow did not go over here since it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to be part of the WWF after this.  Having him lose and enter the company anyway makes the original stipulation of Snow needing to win to get a meeting with Vince McMahon and get a contract a joke, but you know, Vince Russo.  Rating:  ¾*

-X-Pac (w/Chyna) defeats Owen Hart when Chyna gives Owen a DDT at 8:32:

This a rematch of the 1994 King of the Ring semi-finals and also has a backstory due to each man costing the other their King of the Ring tournament match.  We get a good technical match, but the real highlight is when Mark Henry runs out to give X-Pac a splash behind the referee’s back.  That cues a Vader run-in and Chyna interfering when Owen puts X-Pac in the Sharpshooter.  This match continues Owen’s winless streak in singles matches on pay-per-view this year.  In fact, each of those losses are due to Chyna.  Rating:  **¾

-Paul Bearer waddles out and gives us the sad story of Kane’s history, and how Kane watched WWF programming and wanted to be like his older brother.  Bearer nailed this promo.

-WWF Tag Team Championship Match:  The New Age Outlaws (Champions w/Chyna) beat The New Midnight Express (NWA Tag Team Champions w/Jim Cornette) when Billy Gunn pins Bombastic Bob after a double hot shot at 9:57:

This is the second bonus match of the show, which is a clue that a title change is highly unlikely.  The WWF could not get the old Midnight Express theme, but the one that they use for the New Midnights isn’t that bad.  After wrestling the lugs of the tag division for the last six months, the Outlaws finally get to wrestle a team they can have a good match with.  Ross has a great comment about Cornette during this bout concerning Cornette’s self-centered personality:  “Cornette’s dream is to die in his own arms.”  When all hell breaks loose, we get a nice series of false finishes, coupled with a required Chyna-Cornette confrontation where Cornette eats a low blow (with Chyna missing her initial cue), and the Outlaws barely retain the titles.  This should have led to the Midnights getting a higher place in the tag team division, but Russo’s emphasis on “super teams” at the expense of established teams did not do them any favors.  Rating:  ***¼

-Triple H and Chyna come out to do color commentary for the King of the Ring final.  Triple H was last year’s winner, but why did Commissioner Slaughter allow this?  The Nation doesn’t get to accompany the Rock to ringside for the final bout, so why does his enemy and the guy he put out of the tournament get to sit so close to the ring?  Clarence Mason never would have allow this had he stayed in the company!

-1998 King of the Ring Finals:  Ken Shamrock defeats The Rock via submission to the ankle lock at 14:11:

If this was a UFC tournament, Shamrock would’ve bowed out by now due to injury.  It does not take long for Triple H to get involved in this bout, as he spits water in the Rock’s face, but thankfully that’s the scope of his interference.  It takes ten minutes for the match to get a good rhythm going, as prior to that you have a few mindless brawling sequences and Shamrock being unsure of whether he should sell the leg injury he suffered in the semi-finals.  In the end, Shamrock surprises the Rock with the ankle lock and wins the King of the Ring, which was the right booking choice because it gave Shamrock the win in his feud with the Rock without taking the Intercontinental title, which the Rock needed for his feud with Triple H.  Shamrock does not get the crown and other royal properties, but that does not really fit his gimmick anyway.  Rating:  ***¼

-Hell in a Cell:  The Undertaker pins Mankind after a Tombstone at 17:00:

Going into this pay-per-view, many were not enthused about this match and people (correctly) predicted that it would not be as good as the Shawn Michaels-Undertaker HIAC match at Badd Blood.  However, it ended up being memorable for a different reason as Foley took a series of sick bumps to mask the shortcomings of the Undertaker wrestling on an injured foot.  The brutality of the match fits the feud between both men, as their first in-ring encounter took place at the King of the Ring two years ago and all of their encounters have been increasingly violent.  This was rated as Match of the Year for 1998 and while I disagree with that, one has to take into consideration that this was before people became desensitized to wrestlers jumping off ladders and doing other crazy stunts.  Jim Ross deserves an honorable mention for his commentary as well, since without it I doubt that the match would have received as much acclaim as it did.  It is very difficult to rate this match, since it does not fit within a conventional wrestling paradigm, and the match loses a good deal of its effect after you have seen it.  Still, you cannot help but be amazed at what Foley put himself through in this bout (which is really what the whole story of the match is about after you view it multiple times), and this match put him over for good.  Rating:  ***½

-A video package recaps the Steve Austin-Kane feud and the Undertaker’s role in all of it.

-First Blood Match for the WWF Championship:  Kane (w/Paul Bearer) beats “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (Champion) to win the title at 14:52:

In a nice attention to detail, cans of gasoline surround the ring so Kane can set himself on fire if he fails to win the title.  After three months of feuding with McMahon as WWF champion, Austin finally runs into a challenge that he cannot overcome as he fails to make Kane, who is wearing a mask and an outfit that has both (instead of one) arms covered, bleed.  However, his title loss is not without controversy as the Hell in a Cell lowers randomly during the match, and Austin is busted wide open when the Undertaker inadvertently (or intentionally?) hits Austin with a chair when he is aiming for Mankind.  The crowd goes DEAD quiet when the bell is rung and the pay-per-view goes off the air shortly thereafter.  Decent brawl, but the stipulation really hurt the drama of the match, and I never felt that either guy really put the other in a position to get busted open.  Rating:  **

-After the show goes off the air, several WWF officials and Mankind get Stone Cold Stunners from Austin.

The Final Report Card:  All things considered, this was a very successful show for the company and a thumbs up effort.  It drew the largest buyrate for the event since 1993, which was the first year that it was available on pay-per-view, and the Hell in a Cell match created a lot of buzz in wrestling circles and gave people another reason to watch the WWF over WCW.  The show also set the stage for the hot feuds of the summer as the Austin-Kane-Undertaker triangle continued and the Rock moved away from Shamrock to go against Triple H.

Attendance:  17,087

Buyrate:  1.1 (+0.6 from the previous year)

Show Evaluation:  Thumbs Up