We’ve all had matches that we were anticipating because of the storyline, the wrestlers, and the hype involved. The first one I was truly excited about was the Undertaker vs. Kane inferno match from In Your House 21: Unforgiven. This was before Unforgiven became a regular WWE PPV. This match was part of their feud during 1997-1998.
Looking at the feud overall, it was one of feuds that added to both superstars’ backstories. It’s something WWE just wasn’t doing at the moment—wrestlers who go way back and have bad blood. The fact is that Undertaker and Kane had no legit backstory in contrast to say Austin and Foley who were in WCW and ECW together at the same times or Foley and Funk.
No, this was the dark comic story during the Attitude Era and it rocked.
What I Expected from The Undertaker vs. Kane Inferno Match
However, this particular match was so disappointing that I was bummed after watching it. And I watched it scrambled—the whole PPV, actually. I was expecting someone to take a bump onto flames or the Brothers of Destruction to fighting a ring where the ropes were on fire. This was a match involving fire—it was an inferno match.
I’d seen the fire deathmatches in Japan and Puerto Rico by this point so I had this idea in my head of this epic, dangerous match. After all, this was when WWE had Attitude and RAW was raw. As a matter of fact, RAW was so raw that the stage and ramp were stripped down and kind of basic. It didn’t have the big time, prime time show vibe it received in 2000-2001.
I was expecting violence and carnage out of the Undertaker and Kane. I was 14, points against me for having my hopes up.
What I Got…
Yeah, I should’ve known better. What I ended up with was a match that could’ve been in that spot between Raw Is War and Warzone only with fire. There was nothing special about the match outside of how cool it was that the flames jumped on every slam. Hell, the flames were controlled so the danger here was reduced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAE-1KX1Io
I mean, I didn’t expect the match to spill out of the ring or anything that exciting. I just wanted violence and fire and could’ve gotten more excitement watching a burning dumpster behind the Chevron at the time. The match wasn’t even horrible it was just mediocre but it dropped to disappointing for 13-year old me.
At least future inferno matches would become better. That’s some form of consolation.
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