We’ve finally reached the summer for “Into the Vault” 1998 and it kicks off with WCW The Great American Bash 1998 on June 14. WCW had two hitters for the summer in GAB and Bash at the Beach. Let’s see if WCW can get back on track in the PPV war.
The Best of The Great American Bash 1998
You know the deal, folks. The opening match was a banger with Booker T taking on Chris Benoit in the final match of their “Best of 7 Series”. Their rivalry was all over just getting a number one contender’s shot at the WCW Television Title. These two fought like the belt or the World title was on the line and were throwing out good-to-great matches the majority of the time.
The final match in the series was no different and really delivered a dope finish to this part of their rivalry. They had enough room to groove and kept up a snappy pace mixed with some physicality for an exciting bout to kick off The Great American Bash 1998.
GAB 1998’s undercard kept the sizzle going in the following two matches as the versatile Kanyon defeated the versatile Saturn in an exciting follow-up to a hard-to-top opener. It did suffer from an unnecessary ending but the rest of the match made this a near-banger that showed that WCW had something special in these two if they utilized them better.
The age-old feud between Chris Jericho and Dean Malenko continued on this show with the now-vacant WCW Cruiserweight title on the line. If you’ve seen any of their matches, you know what to expect: crispy but speedy technical wrestling, a bit of aerial work—not too much, just a bit—and some shenanigans from Jericho when he could manage it.
By this time Malenko had become weary of wrestling “Lionheart” as there was always some loophole or curveball when he got a victory of any sort over Jericho. The last PPV showed that even swindling a title opportunity and beating the champion could result in a victory of sorts for Jericho. Speaking of which, Jericho picks up the win here in another bout that had enough dancing room.
I really enjoyed the match between Eddie Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero. We knew it was coming eventually with the whole thing involving Eddie trying to give Chavito some grit and struggling to teach him the Guerrero family ways. These two clicked as expected and delivered a really strong bout with Chavito picking up the win.
They had enough time to do their thing and made the most of it. There was a good amount of thrills and spills in addition to some strong pacing. The match was good enough to have stakes but the ongoing story was decent enough that this wasn’t just a really good exhibition match.
“The Duke of Double Duty” Booker T returns to challenge for WCW Television title after vanquishing Chris Benoit at the top of the show. Champion Fit Finlay really ate Booker T up, working over his leg and just pummeling the up-and-comer. However, Booker T would manage to pick up the win in a torturous match and claim his fifth TV title.
This one definitely deserves a thumbs up for not only being a good match but for Booker T coming out after dropping a banger in the opener and still having the juice to deliver a strong match. Also, Fit Finlay is timeless. If it’s a physical match or one where he’s particularly vicious, you can count on him delivering.
The Rest
I don’t know why Juventud Guerrera vs. Reese was jotted down as a match for one of WCW’s big yearly PPVs but there it is. This could’ve been just put on television instead of on PPV. Then there was the audacity to give a match involving Reese nine minutes on PPV. I’d say that this was a pretty firm fail in decision-making because it wasn’t good at all.
However, if it was meant to cool the crowd down, I think it overachieved in its job. Goldberg runs to Konnan in another defense of his U.S title. If you blink or sneeze, you’ll miss it.
Hollywood Hogan teams up Bret Hart to face off against WWE rivals Roddy Piper and Randy Savage. The star power was off the charts in this match but it just did not deliver. Hogan was more miss than hit in the main event by this point, Hart needs the motivation to do anything above a solid performance, Piper had gotten boring to see in WCW despite having an interesting storyline build most of the time, and Savage was going downhill.
All of this was going to make for a match that was “meh” at best—only this wasn’t meh at all. It was just uninteresting and unnecessary, to be honest. After the match, Savage is challenged by Piper and we get another match that you’d miss if you blinked.
The Macho Man ends up tapping in back-to-back bouts and I was confused as to why we needed the one-on-one between Piper and Savage in the first place. Just, put that sh** on Nitro.
Our main event was one of those rare instances where a WCW PPV main wasn’t straight booty cheeks. It was short but Sting and The Giant did just what was needed with just the right amount of time for this not to drag into totally garbage territory. Still, it was a bad main event bout that probably would’ve made for a decent TV main event.
WCW The Great American Bash 1998 Verdict: Bronze Medal (2.4/5)
These WCW pay-per-views tend to either have a good number of strong matches or are balanced against the bad or mediocre on the card. The problem is that the bad is extremely bad and that kills any effort by the better matches to elevate the rating of the overall show. I’m giving match of the night honors to the final match of Booker T and Benoit’s “Best of 7 Series”. Our runner-up is the showdown between the Guerreros.
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