WWE Survivor Series 1998 was more of an audacious show than an ambitious one. That’s purely down to the “Deadly Game” tournament and the error of running it on pay-per-view when most of the matches were lousy.
The Best of WWE Survivor Series 1998
Mankind taking on Stone Cold in the semifinals of the tournament was a blessing for this card. If you’ve seen the results and the card overall, you’d know that it took a while to get to a pretty good match. We’re talking fifteen matches in. This one had a good pace, it didn’t need too much room to groove, and both men were even in the bout.
Foley returns in the finals to take on rival The Rock for the WWE Championship. While Rocky picks up the win, Mankind doesn’t make it easy for him at all! Similar to his matches with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Foley had great chemistry with Rocky Miavia and didn’t have to change his style or how he approaches matches.
The Rest
To save a bunch of time on matches that could’ve just aired on HeAT, Shotgun, or the first hour of RAW, just skip most of the first-round bouts. I’d say that outside of Goldust vs. Ken Shamrock and The Rock vs. Shamrock in the quarter-finals, all of the matches were meh.
As for the two Al Snow bouts, I believe that they suffered from a lack of room to groove Snow actually needs more room to groove. Like he’s been given three minutes and change and hopefully wasn’t told to have a good match with just that.
Pretty much everyone who was a main eventer during this period spanked their opponents. I mean Mankind opened the show facing Duane Gill and clapped him in around 30 seconds. The Undertaker vs. Kane bout could’ve been something, it had a little bit of time but at this point, the chemistry still wasn’t there for them.
Oh yeah, mixed in we had Sable defeating Jacqueline for the Women’s title in quick order. For WWE women’s matches of the time, this wasn’t awful but it was far from good and far from interesting. Put it on Shotgun Saturday Night or as a featured match on Superstars.
The best of the rest saw The Rock defeat The Undertaker in the semi-finals of the “Deadly Game” tournament. It wasn’t a good or great bout; it was just solid enough and had some added stakes going in.
Rocky was on the rise, the WWE title had escaped The Undertaker twice at this point, and technically, The Rock shouldn’t have had to do a tournament. He won the triple threat cage match against Mankind and Shamrock a few months ago. If anything, the tournament should’ve been to select The Rock’s opponent for the vacant title.
Anyway, we round out “The Rest” with a triple tag team match as The New Age Outlaws successfully defend the Tag Team titles against the teams of Mark Henry and D’Lo Brown and The Headbangers. There’s nothing to write home about here other than WWE needed concrete, better-than-decent tag teams badly.
Together, The Outlaws were a good unit but when you look at their pay-per-view performances it seems as if they were either working with what WWE could get as far as tag teams go or they were unmotivated. Like, these are not the outings of motivated, top-of-their-game teams, folks.
WWE Survivor Series 1998 Verdict: Bronze Medal (2.18/5)
I hope WWE never runs another “Deadly Game” tournament. It was just lengthy and unnecessary. As a result, Survivor Series suffered from not putting the opening tournament action on the B-shows. In short, WWE blew a several pay-per-view lead streak over WCW with this one.
The match of the show goes to Mankind vs. The Rock in the finals while Mankind vs. Stone Cold takes runner-up honors.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWe99KqmdLY
