Kane appeared in the WWE in what was one of the greatest debuts ever to ignite his feud with the Undertaker, but it wasn’t until June 28, 1998 that he won his first WWE Championship on This Day in Wrestling History.
This moment gets swept under the rug because this pay=per-view is better known for the Undertaker and Mankind Hell in a Cell match.
It’s understandable since it’s hard for anyone to compete with someone getting tossed off a twenty foot talk cage and then chokeslammed through said cage.
But it was still a moment to remember for Kane.
A moment to remember
Special thanks to @awrestlinghistorian for the transcript and Vince Russo tidbit.
“Winning my first world championship in the First Blood match at King Of The Ring, of course, that was overshadowed by the Hell In A Cell match between Taker and Mick, but that was my first world championship and it was against Austin. And the thing is, when people ask me the highlight of my career, despite the fact that it was so early, that was it because Austin was well on his trajectory to be one of the three biggest stars of all time.
“To me it’s Austin, Hogan, and The Rock. And he was taking off and I was right there. The thing about Austin was you didn’t have to do anything because Steve was so over. He was so popular, it didn’t matter. Everyone was just waiting for The Stunner, and then for Steve to jump up on the ring post and turnbuckle, and drink some beer. And that was it. It made it so easy that it was just tremendous.” – Glenn Jacobs The Ross Report interview, August 16, 2017
The swerve
While it was pretty obvious that Austin would lose this First Blood match given Kane wore a mask and his ring attire, but that didn’t keep any of us from watching it to see how it’d end since there was always the chance of an unmasking.
What we didn’t know at the time or even expect was that Austin would win the title back the next night and that this match was simply a way to boost the ratings for Raw according to Vince Russo on The Swerve podcast.
Given this was during the Monday Night Wars we’re not surprised and it worked. At that time, we never could tell who would win the championship because the field was so stacked.
This Day in Wrestling History definitely made for a fun night and a cool but largely overlooked bit of historical trivia.
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