So, August 1998 was a wash for WCW but let’s see if things turn around for the company with WCW Fall Brawl ‘98: War Games. This event took place in Winston-Salem, NC, and featured a three-team War Games main event!
The Best
It took until five matches in until we get a truly decent match as Juventud Guerrera defended his WCW Cruiserweight title against Silver King. Originally, Juvi was supposed to defend against Kaz Hayashi but this was a good substitution. There was just enough time to groove for both men. I’d say that 1998 was a very good year for Juvi performance-wise despite some flubs in matches. Meanwhile, Silver King was just consistently good when given the time and dance partners.
Yet another Raven’s Rules match and yet another between Raven and Saturn. Despite this being their third encounter on WCW pay-per-view and the fifth on PPV out of eight PPVs so far, it works perfectly. This was Raven’s schtick and technically, it’s sixth because the Bowery Deathmatch was basically a renamed Raven’s Rules match.
Never mind all of that, this match had a lot going for it and these two worked extremely well against each other. The crowd was really into the action and pulling for Saturn as the near falls got hot reactions. If there is a match to watch from this show, it’s Raven vs. Saturn.
Yes, that’s foreshadowing for how miserable of a show is overall, folks.
The Rest
We’ve got a very girthy line-up for “The Rest” and it’s not a decent-enough kind of line-up where you have a mix of lemons and a few acceptable bouts, folks.
First up, the opener with the Dancing Fools (Disco Inferno and Alex Wright) taking on The British Bulldog and Jim Neidhart. You have a team that was in its prime against a team that was past its prime at this point. You’d figure that given their ring and tag team experience, Bulldog and Neidhart could’ve pulled this match a bit further.
Perhaps this was as far as their experience could go on their end of the match was a little longer than necessary. I wouldn’t say it was the utter sh**s but this is something that could’ve been on television and been decent. On pay-per-view, this simply isn’t an acceptable opening—especially for WCW.
The next match saw Jericho defend his WCW Television title against “Goldberg” in just over a minute. It was a match to build towards a Jericho-Goldberg bout which wouldn’t take place until WWE Badd Blood 2003.
In the Ernest “The Cat” Miller vs. Norman Smiley bout, I was more impressed by Miller than Smiley. Before he became the cowardly, athletic gear-wearing Hardcore champion, Smiley just did nothing for me. Chalk this one up as match number #3 on the “Could’ve been on Saturday Night or Worldwide” list.
Oof…the Steiner Brothers squaring off is a program that should’ve taken place two years ago at the latest. This was a feud that was well past its expiration date and resulted in matches that just didn’t work. At this point, Scott Steiner was far from his prime mixture of aggression and athleticism as was Rick.
However, Rick could still put together a match that wasn’t going to have you on the edge of your seat but wouldn’t stink up the joint. Meanwhile, Scott was in “That was surprisingly good” territory—which isn’t good for someone who would be main event-bound the following year.
The last match was acceptable even though it would’ve been much better if it happened a few years earlier. Curt Hennig wasn’t in his best form against Dean Malenko but as far as a basic bout goes this was the best of the rest.
Konnan defeated Scott Hall in a battle of nWo Hollywood vs. nWo Wolfpack. Now, at this time, I was a big Wolfpack fan—that red on black and the wolf shirts were just so badass.
This match was anything but badassery. Konnan was fine here but Hall is another story and it’s a common theme in the deep 90s events. If you forgot the gimmick or have never seen it, this is when Hall began running with a drunkard gimmick. In short, this was a pretty bad match and probably would’ve benefited from being shorter to not expose Hall so much.
Our War Games main event saw nWo Hollywood (Hollywood Hogan, Bret Hart, and Stevie Ray), nWo Wolfpack (Kevin Nash, Lex Luger, and Sting), and Team WCW (DDP, Roddy Piper, and The Warrior) square off. Honestly, there’s way too much to go into this mess of a match.
This was no one’s finest moment although DDP won and picked up a title shot at Goldberg’s World Championship. Also, this War Game match featured a new stipulation where pinfalls are allowed. There were one too many dancers on the dancefloor, botches galore, and the pace was a mess. A sad ending for the OG War Games cage in WCW.
WCW Fall Brawl ‘98 Verdict: Bronze Medal (2.09/5)
Oof…this was an uncharacteristic 1998 WCW pay-per-view, folks. The undercard wasn’t even as brolic as normal as it took towards the middle of the card for things to truly become interesting. Even then, that was only for a handful of matches before it went back to just being bad.
It’s a shame because Fall Brawl was a show that I looked forward to for the War Games match and the undercard. Juvi defending his Cruiserweight title against Silver King was the runner-up while the Raven’s Rules bout between Saturn and Raven was the match of the show.
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