After going through 1997 in wrestling with WCW, WWE, and ECW, we’re now in 1998! This was an interesting year not just WWE but wrestling in general as far as television goes but how did all of that add on pay-per-view?
Let’s dive into WWE’s first PPV of the year with Royal Rumble 1998 and a main event title defense! That’s right: Shawn Michaels defends his WWE Championship against The Undertaker in a casket match and the Royal Rumble match!
Best of the Show
For the most part, the IC title bout between Ken Shamrock and champion The Rock was pretty much a RAW or In Your House match. However, both The Rock’s selling and the cheat finish bumped it up just enough. While I rocked with their WrestleMania match more, this match showed that these two worked extremely well against each other.
Battle royals are an odd match. They can be entertaining but that is down to when the bigger stars are mixed in. They’re always going to be made up mostly the undercard but the 90s was a dismal time for WWE’s undercard. The late 90s got better but 1998 wasn’t one of those times.
There were a few who you felt could move higher up in the undercard or even crack into the main event such as The Rock, Shamrock, Mankind, Owen, and Goldust—then you had the rest of the undercard. These guys had little chance of advancing but would chill in the Rumble for lengthy periods of time thus bogging down a match that often goes over an hour.
The Royal Rumble 1998 edition was under an hour but still as boggy as the ones before it. So, why is it one of the best parts of the show? It’s an important match in Austin’s march towards the World title at WrestleMania XIV.
And Austin achieved a repeat win—although it wasn’t as epic as his 1997 win as he came in with a favorable number this time around. Outside of that shining light, it was a pretty run-of-the-mill Rumble.
The main event saw HBK defend the WWE Championship against The Undertaker in an amazing bout. This is what you want from WWE all the time: a PPV main event that sells you on the show and actually caps off the show perfectly. Also, it was one of the better casket matches in WWE.
Like a battle royal, casket matches are a pretty difficult match to make interesting for a lengthy period of time. Even in shorter matches, the Undertaker has had both mediocre and stinker casket matches but with the right opponent, fans can get a good casket match and HBK was the right opponent.
Another thing is that the best version of a match made for The Undertaker—casket match, buried alive, Hell in a Cell—often features Taker either losing or getting a bitter win. When he gets the W, it can go either way.
The Rest of the Show
The opener between Vader and Goldust—in his “Artist Formerly Known as Goldust phase—was an acceptable match. It was something that I would’ve appreciated more if it was a RAW match, honestly. This is Royal Rumble, one of WWE’s big four PPVs. You’d think things would’ve started off hot and exciting.
Then again, this is 90s WWE we’re talking about and it’s expected that most PPVs from that decade started off mid-at-best. The action in the minis six-man tag match was actually pretty entertaining. It was a very textbook intro to 90s lucha if you weren’t following WCW and didn’t want to sit through three falls. What took away from it was Lawler’s corny commentary.
The best thing about the Tag Title matches between The New Age Outlaws and challengers Legion of Doom was that it was pretty short. This was one of those matches where you could go and grab some snacks and bevs. You won’t miss anything but it won’t necessarily hurt to sit eight minutes.
WWE Royal Rumble 1998 Verdict: Silver Medal (2.7/5)
WWE actually started off 1998 on a higher note—at least outside of its usual bronze medal performance from 1997. Most of the matches were mid in nature but some of them had a little something extra that made them more than tolerable.
The one match that was far from mediocre was the main event—which is also the match of the show.
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