The 2002 WWF Royal Rumble Match: A Great Royal Rumble Match

ER: I had not watched this Rumble since it originally aired, and I was surprised at just how many specific things I remembered. I have real goldfish brain these days and yet I somehow remembered more about this Rumble than almost any of the 20+ that have happened since. I watched this one specifically for the 2002 Boss Man content. Boss Man was good enough in 2002 that it's worth checking out a 70 minute match for what is no more than a few minutes of Boss Man action. This was his final PPV match appearance before spending the next few months working compelling matches on Heat. Going out like a legend. But this match had a lot more value than just a few minutes of Boss Man. This is one of my favorite Rumbles, one with nothing but great punches and ass kicking. Goldust/Rikishi was a great starting two for this Rumble. Honestly, Goldust making his WWE return and looking this damn good is something that should be brought up every time you talk about Dustin career highlights. He and Rikishi were pacesetters for this, focusing snug punches, fast near eliminations and hard bumps, and at least 15 guys in this Rumble focus on the same. Boss Man is actually the third guy in this whole thing, and in a Rumble where half the men involved made a case for having the best punches in WWF, Big Boss Man made the best case for #1. 

Based on this Rumble alone, the 10 best punchers of 2002 WWF were:

1. Big Boss Man

2. Matt Hardy

3. Val Venis

4. Goldust

5. Perry Saturn

6. Mr. Perfect

7. Chuck Palumbo

8. Christian

9. Scotty 2 Hotty

10. Steve Austin

Goldust/Rikishi/Boss Man makes for a really great fast paced three way, with all taking big bumps and throwing stiff strikes. Goldust gets crotched up top, Boss Man gets whipped into Goldust's groin, and Boss Man slips Rikishi ass over elbow with a running forearm shiver. During his few minutes in the Rumble Match, Boss Man threw upwards of 16 different precise punches to Rikishi's and Goldust's body and face. 

He made the most of his too brief time, then took a real tough elimination: He was the matches' lone Stink Face victim, and it was a particularly aggressive and lengthy, just buried. What were they doing out there. How were we a baby step away from a wrestler being allowed to put his balls in his opponent's mouth or something. Boss Man staggered into a big bump elimination, Rikishi blasting him with a fully extended superkick and a freight train clothesline over the top. I still can't believe how great Boss Man was in 2002. 

Goldust has some of the best in-ring timing of any wrestler of the last 20 years, but we get blessed with an unintentionally hilarious Rumble moment where Goldust starts a corner 10 count punch sequence on Bradshaw at almost the exact same time the countdown clock begins, so you have 13,000 people colliding on numbers with everyone going in different directions. 

Undertaker clearing the ring, laying waste to everyone - Goldust claiming best elimination with his chokeslam bump elimination - was really well done. Undertaker felt like a real force and everyone in 2002 moved like they were somehow injected with extra testosterone. But the best past of Undertaker eating waste was Matt Hardy and Lita beating the shit out of him, and it only got better when Jeff Hardy came in because then all three of them kicked the shit out of him. I wish we got more of that before Taker made his comeback, but I just love the Hardys. The Last Ride on Matt was huge, and Jeff got to distract Taker enough for Maven to make him look like a bug eyed idiot. But they got a lot of good mileage out of the Undertaker/Maven brawl, with Undertaker beating the shit out of the never-eliminated Maven and then walking down the aisle to punch Scott 2 Hotty in the face before just walking back to continue the beating. Maven bleeds and gets dragged into the concourse area, security guards having to actively shove fans out of the way as they crowd in. 

There's a lot of star power, and the guys who get less of a reaction all do stuff to make the crowd pay attention. Christian, DDP, Scotty, Chuck Palumbo, Godfather, Albert, all worked hard for their 1-10 minutes, everyone of them throwing hands and bumping big. DDP had this great tumbling backwards bumps through the ropes after a Scotty superkick; Christian, Palumbo, and Perry Saturn all have a face punching challenge and we are all winners, with Saturn and Chuck especially teeing off on each other. 

The match can be divided up 65/35 between the build to Austin charming the big crowd by running the ring, and the comedown when Austin has to share the ring with HHH. Even though the entire Rumble has good parts, it is top loaded and I like how everyone filled time before HHH was in there. Austin is a great battle royal worker. That's no secret. I love watching him fill time and I loved the gag of him eliminating everyone too quickly, so needing to punch everyone back into the ring to eliminate them again. Austin runs through several guys and it's a weird call to have Val Venis show up for the first time in 8 months and be the first guy in the match to ice down Austin. Turns out, it was a good call. I liked the Austin/Venis stretch so much that I immediately checked for any singles matches they had, and now I'm definitely going to watch their 1999 Smackdown match. I don't think HHH is bad in this Rumble per se, but he's so fucking serious and it kind of spoils all the fun. He's a scowling frowning buzzkill who glowers and sucks the fun out of exchanges, and spends a lot of time lying down and catching his breath. The first 70% of the match is kids having a blast at a sleepover, and the last 30% is like kids still having fun, but it's on a field trip while a teacher keeps telling them to be quiet. 

I really loved this match as Mr. Perfect's last big moment. Making the final three, swatting his gum into the crowd while Austin and HHH try to eliminate. What a guy. Does anyone else swat their gum like they're Mr. Perfect? I think I'd be too afraid of it getting stuck to my hand or whiffing. It takes high levels of confidence to pull Curt Hennig's gum swat success rate. Do you remember the little buzz after Perfect came back after almost a decade? I was on those message boards. I was talking about how great the Perfect/Tommy Dreamer match was on Heat. I didn't know he wouldn't even work 20 matches after that one. Is the Curt Hennig Puerto Rico any good? What about the XWF that he recorded right before returning to WWF? It probably is, and I'll probably watch that along with the Austin/Venis match. This Rumble has a lot of fallout. The push to the finish of the match was exciting enough. Big Show looked really good in the double strap Bundy singlet. Kane lifting, walking, and tossing Big Show over the ropes to eliminate him was legitimately impressive, Kurt Angle had a lot of enthusiasm, the Austin elimination was fairly shocking, and you're left with a 70 minutes match that did not at all feel 70 minutes long. I think that counts as high praise. 

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WWF Raw 5/18/98: Would You Look at These Great On-Paper Matches!!

Scorpio vs. Val Venis

ER: What a fucking wild match. First, it's an incredible rib to have two months of vignettes building up your big dick porn star wrestler, and then debut him against the Legendarily Dicked Too Cold Scorpio. And the match is such a colossal failure as a Val Venis debut that it's crazy to me that this match isn't more renowned. Everyone remembers how bad Jericho was made to look in his debut, but here's Venis working his in-ring debut after two months of vignettes, getting my ass completely handed to me by Too Cold Scorpio's most dominant performance of 1998. Jim Ross points out on commentary that Scorpio has been looking a whole lot tougher and more confident since teaming with Terry Funk, and from there we get this unexpected resurgent babyface performance from Scorpio that completely overshadows Val's debut. 

They work a fast paced, tidy All Japan juniors style match that really plays to the strengths of both, but Venis is too good at bumping and Scorpio is too good at delivering stiff offense. I really liked Venis's 1998 offense, especially his corner work. He had several different great strikes that he could play with his opponent in a corner - tough to do - with a big chop, great submarine uppercut, nice overhand right. And he really plays chicken a couple of times with shoulderblocks that neither backed down from. But this was Scorpio's story, and if your debut turns into somebody else's story, well then I can not think of many worse circumstances to debut under. Scorpio just keeps hitting cooler and cooler offense that keeps sounding louder and louder, and the more spin kicks he does the more the Nashville crowd starts getting behind him. Scorpio lays Venis out with hard back elbows and clotheslines, and yes three different spin kicks. So Venis kept bumping for Scorpio and Scorpio just kept getting flashier, hitting a gorgeous sunset flip out of an electric chair and an incredible worked Wrestling II knee lift. 

But the truly greatest moment of the match comes when Scorpio nails his twisting splash off the top, and Venis kicks out as late as possible, and the crowd was disappointed that Venis kicked out! If it hadn't been clear at that point, it was now crystal clear that this crowd was now fully behind Scorpio bucking the lifelong trend that has been ingrained into us that the debuting gimmick always wins. I still think I have a personal Mandela effect with Bastion Booger losing his debut against Virgil, then winning a rematch the next week. Did that happen? It felt so weird seeing a guy with a gimmick, whatever the gimmick was, lose in his debut. When they had a rematch the next week I was sure it was because there had been a mistake and that Booger was clearly supposed to have won. Scorpio starts visibly playing to the fans, really leans into taking that debut away from Venis. I swear Val got no offense in the last 4 minutes of this match, just took a real noble beating in the match that was supposed to highlight his cool new moveset to a crowd who had never seen him. Scorpio misses a big moonsault (to the disappointed groans of the Nashville Arena) and then Venis wins with an okay big splash (he hit many more better). Scorpio even kind of showed him up on his own finisher, as he got into position for the Money Shot into an active way. He was on his stomach after missing his moonsault, then made a bit of a show out of struggling up to his hands and knees before falling over and winding up on his back in the center of the ring. 

Two weeks later they had Val Venis squash Papi Chulo, or, the very obvious guy you have on the roster to debut against a new heavily promoted babyface. I don't think Scorpio got to shine brighter than this over the rest of his WWF run. 

Terry Funk vs. Marc Mero

ER: Great Terry Funk performance, really putting on a show for a Nashville crowd that I bet he assumed would be more into a classic stumbling babyface performance, instead of chanting and leering at Sable as if they were heckling to get under Rob Dibble's thin skin. And so, Funk staggers, doing a fun bit on the apron where he gets punched by Mero, swinging Funk around for the fans to see as he barely holds onto the top rope, and does that a few times before walking and falling right off the apron. Mero is almost exclusively punches and cheater elbows here, but Funk is a guy who will lean in to your cool elbow strike and then throw back a few lefts of his own. Funk has an awesome western lariat and gets to hit a bitchin piledriver, but Sable's presence at ringside means the fans will not care at all about what Funk or Mero do. Sable does get involved, screeching loudly, Mero hits a low blow, and Funk somehow kicks out at 2? Funk might be the only guy in 1998 to have balls durable enough to not get immediately pinned after getting uppercutted in them. Funk even gets to no sell Mero's TKO finisher, as Sable gets on the apron a bit too early to call attention to the low blow, meaning Mero has to get in her face earlier, meaning Funk gets to stand right up after the TKO to spike Mero with a DDT for the win. 

LOD 2000 (Animal/Hawk) vs. D.O.A. (Chainz/Skull)

ER: This felt like it should have been better, but still kicked enough ass to deliver. I like when we get Chainz into the DOA mix instead of the twins, and I thought Hawk and Animal looked like they were trying hard even while being clearly a step off. Hawk looks a little messy but has the best punch exchange of the match when he fires at Skull's ribs in the corner. Animal hits a big powerslam and hits a really high leaping elbow, and I always get into Chainz' methhead crank biker energy. A longhair biker hitting a big boot and dropping a bunch of frantic elbowdrops feels like the offense of a crazed NoDoz and mescaline fueled biker. Hawk hits a big size powerbomb on Skull, we get a switcheroo with 8-Ball, and you know what I think this did fully kick ass. 

Dude Love vs. Dustin Runnels

ER: Dustin/Foley is always a cool match up, no matter the gimmick or era. Dustin during the Runnels era was an impressively raw babyface in hindsight. It isn't a well thought out progression, and they don't capitalize on things they could have, but matches from Runnels era really show Dustin's barest bones babyface skills. I've seen Dustin work with several different sized house show crowds, and he's always been one of those guys who knew how to do little things to connect to a crowd. This part of 1998 felt visually painful when I watched it at the time, his storyline a sad struggling man rather than a walking tall babyface. I thought his promos came off a little pathetic at the time, clearly a man between stages of his career, yet still somehow under 30 years old. But his in-ring still connected with crowds, and they connected to him here as a babyface fighting for his career (there was a "Dustin Must Win or Not Be Paid for 30 Days" stip added to this match, but barely promoted before, during, or after the match), and the whole match is basically Dustin kicking Foley's ass for 2 minutes before getting distracted and losing by way of mandible claw. The 2 minutes of fired up Dustin were really cool, with Runnels pulling Dude's sports jacket over his head and hitting him with hockey punches, really just 2 whole minutes of Dustin throwing punches before losing immediately. Neither guy looked in their best shape, both were moving a little slow, but the beating looked great. 

The Head Bangers vs. Dick Togo/MEN's Teioh

ER: A total mess of a match that nobody knows how to react to. Kaientai only took one week to move from their MPro gear into their street gang clothes, but Togo was really the only member who actually looked cool in street clothes. Teioh looks like a debatably tough junior high school student, wearing baggy jeans and basketball shoes, and is completely dwarfed by both Head Bangers. The Bangers easily handle the much smaller Kaientai, doing some nice double teams like a crossbody vertical suplex and a middle rope clothesline from Thrasher. Funaki and Yamaguchi cheat from the floor, but it never seems very effective. Kaientai really doesn't do much of anything until Togo gets in and gets a nice corkscrew senton off the top, a springboard axe handle, and a nice cannonball. Eventually all of Kaientai are in the ring blatantly interfering, Taka and Bradshaw run out, and nobody knows exactly what to do or where to go. Neither Bradshaw or Taka run in and actually hit anyone, so you have all four members of Kaientai, both Head Bangers, and now two new people all kind of standing around, and somehow when Taka finally does make a move at someone he runs squarely into referee Tim White. WWF's severe lack of any other "small" wrestlers really made Kaientai look like Lilliputians during the formative debut time where they were supposed to look cool. 

New Age Outlaws vs. The Rock/Owen Hart

ER: Owen Hart in the Nation still comes off like one of his weirder periods in WWF, honestly feels like he was going through the same gimmick crisis as Dustin was going through, he just happened to wind up around a hotter act instead of lost in the shuffle. This starts as a big DX/Nation skirmish (X-Pac/Henry is a fun underrated pairing btw) and settles down into a pretty nice tag match. The Rock and Road Dogg were really complementary opponents, both good at taking the exaggerated strikes of the other, Road Dogg taking super fast back bumps off Rock punches, clotheslines, and a back elbow. Owen comes in with a couple of nice atomic drops, and somehow Road Dogg's ear gets cut open. Owen improvises and goes all the way in on Road Dogg's ear blood, biting at the ear and getting Road Dogg's blood all over his mouth and nose. I don't think Jim Ross really knew how to react to how psychotic Owen looked while biting Road Dogg's ear, so he just kind of fumbles around and moves on quickly. This is certainly the era of really blatant interference, and this just ends when Faarooq runs in and hits the Dominator on Rock while the ref somehow had his back turned the entire time. 

Steve Austin vs. Gerald Brisco/Pat Patterson

ER: I did not give a single goddamn about Patterson and Brisco wrestling in matches during 1998, literally wanted to see anybody else on the roster get ring time than these two. Watching it back over two decades later and it's pretty fun seeing what kind of stupid bumps and finishers two men in their mid to late 50s are willing to take. I still would much rather see the dark match from after this episode of Raw (which was Vader/Terry Funk/Undertaker vs. Rock/Dude Love/Kane), but it's clear neither of them were dogging it. Austin threw a bunch of hard fists at the side of their heads, and Patterson takes an insane bump into the turnbuckles, suddenly channeling his inner Psicosis. Patterson winds up hanging from the top rope/turnbuckle by his knee, like he took the upside down corner Flair bump and just hung there after. It looked like an old man trying his damndest to tear his ACL. All of them eat Stunners (including guest ref Sgt. Slaughter), Vince comes out of the crowd dressed as Austin wearing a mask, Foley comes out and eats a lariat, and it's another Raw that ends with Austin scrapping against five guys while refs hold him back, the exact Raw ending that would make me and my friends flip out and love pro wrestling as teenagers. 

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WWF Raw 6/15/98: A Great Episode of Wrestling TV

Vader vs. The Rock

ER: Even though they were in the same fed for two years, Rock and Vader aren't two guys I think about matching up too often. It's a cool match, and it did happen a couple times, but my brain thinks of them as from two different eras. And I think this is our only Vader match vs. "The Rock" as opposed to Rocky Maivia which is a whole other thing. There were a bunch of Vader/Rock matches from 10/98, and my reaction to that was "Wait Vader was still in WWF in October of 1998?" Babyface Vader just crushing the Rock is really damn fun, and Rock is game to get rocked. Vader hits some nice avalanches (loved his short arm lefty clothesline as Rock staggers out from the corner), a bear attack, a big splash off the middle buckle and also a great standing splash. Vader takes a big bump to the floor off a Rock clothesline and while down there takes a standing splash from Mark Henry. Mark Henry had nearly the exact same form on his standing splash as Vader did, which is cool. The match simply ends with a Rock Bottom after the Mark Henry interference, but this was a cool bit of megastars who barely missed each other colliding. 

 

Darren Drozdov vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: This match was not much, nor was it meant to be much. It runs about 2 minutes, focuses a lot of attention on Marc Mero/Jacqueline at ringside, and mostly appears to be killing time until Mero punching Jarrett in the balls. I am still curious whether Droz actually got good before his injury, because he does not look ready for Raw so far. Some of the spot set ups are unintentionally humorous, like Droz doing a big boot so that Jarrett can catch it and sweep a leg, and a lot of the problem is that Droz doesn't move around the ring who understands wrestling. I'm curious if he found a steady moveset that fit him or got more comfortable in there, because right now he feels like an undercooked Power Plant guy, only without the cool danger of a Power Plant guy. 

Chainz vs. Val Venis

ER: Now this I thought was really good. Val Venis was really good in 1998, and I think his offense would have made him a really good regular All Japan gaijin if he had made a different career decision. He did a couple of All Japan tours the year before and I really would have loved to see him settle in with that 98/99 AJPW roster. Chainz could have done well in Japan too, and his cool offense really made this in a hard scrabble match, a nice 1998 TV gem between two guys nobody remembers having a 5 minute TV match. They both kick each other in the face with big boots and mafia kicks, Venis took a high backdrop, Chainz took a hard bump on a snap suplex, and all of the strikes looked great. Venis had a few different strikes he threw from a couple angles, a big looping low starting arm slot uppercut (which is honestly one of the best  strikes in 1998 WWF) and a full body knife edge chop. Chainz throws some strong turnbuckle mount punches and throws a great overhand right up at Venis while Venis was on the top rope. This had the stronger pacing of a same era WCW TV match, and even though they weren't getting a lot of reaction for what they were doing, it didn't stop them from hitting each other. Venis buries his knee on his kitchen sinks, and Chainz has these awesome fast drop running elbow drops, tons of action crammed into its run time. This is the kind of gem you'd hope to see on WCW Worldwide or WWF Velocity. 

Dustin Runnels vs. Marc Mero

ER: Dustin gets the sad "already waiting in the ring" entrance, but the Texas crowd still reacts louder for him than many other people on the show. The match was much more angle than match, and there's a certain awkwardness that comes with a 4 minute match that's playing into more than one angle. Not only is it very obvious that Sable is going to show up, but Jeff Jarrett and Southern Justice are also at ringside the entire match, so you have two pros not working a match with any throughlines, just filling time. And two pros filling time is kind of cool, because none of it is going to flow anyway, the two guys know that the cameras are going to constantly be cutting to people at ringside, so you might as well break out some neat stuff in a vacuum. Dustin flies full speed into armdrags and throws a couple of his own, and I just love how Dustin takes arm drags. Mero even hits a powerbomb at one point! No real set up for it, just decided to powerbomb Dustin in the middle of all this. The distraction finish is a real fun lemons into lemonade situation, as Sable comes down to distract Mero, but instead of Dustin getting just a simple schoolboy on Mero he runs into the frame with an awesome bulldog. Dustin has one of wrestling's greatest ever bulldogs, and beating a distracted man with something cool like that will always be more interesting that the distraction -> rollup finish they went to a ton in this era. 

X-Pac vs. HHH

ER: I remember my friend being so excited for this match, a big Waltman fan who had been wondering every week since he returned to WWF and was just WAITING for him to actually wrestle. The crowd seemed both excited for the match (and not knowing what would happen in a singles match between two members of DX) and also like they had no idea how to react. They seem to root for X-Pac, but he also had the flashier highspots, but mostly had no idea how to react. X-Pac looked great in his in-ring return, and I'm not sure he has hit as many of his kicks this squarely under the chin in any match. HHH was good at doing his fast back bumps for X-Pac's kicks. Yes I know that these are the exact same fast back bumps that HHH takes for every single strike, but Pac's kicks earned those bumps. His leaping spin kick is really great and he was throwing all of them with real accuracy. Almost all of HHH's offense is based off Irish whips, the kind of thing you can't unsee, but X-Pac is one of the few wrestlers who can take an insanely violent Irish whip bump off a turnbuckle. Pac flies into the buckles so hard a couple of times that I have no clue how they weren't skeleton shifting. Both guys took big bumps to the floor (both seem to be in competition to see who takes a faster bump to the floor, and we ALL win), but this was a real X-Pac showcase, and you could see HHH actually wanting X-Pac to be showcased, and that is the unique thing about HHH working matches against his friends. 

Mark Henry/Owen Hart vs. Dan Severn/Ken Shamrock

ER: This kicked so much ass. Every pairing brings something really original and it had a really quick violent pace for its 5 minute runtime. Shamrock/Owen was a hot opening, with both going really fast. Owens hits a fast spinning heel kick and Shamrock just cannonballs himself into Owen at full speed. There's this awesome competitive vibe to the Henry/Shamrock section, as Shamrock drops a charging Henry with a drop toehold, and it looked messy which made it look better, like Henry was getting dropped by a spike strip. Henry took it like a man not quite expecting to go down from a drop toehold, which is of course going to make it look better. Henry was much better much earlier than we gave him credit for. Even us Henry stalwarts didn't really start beating the drum unit 02/03. What change did many of us go through collectively in 2003 when we realized how we had completely ignored Honda and Henry up until then? After Henry got taken down, he scrambled to his feet faster than Shamrock, which looked really cool, and I love Henry's full rotation powerslam. 

Severn/Henry is an awesome encounter I didn't know we ever got, and Severn hits a big belly to belly that really looks like he deadlifts Henry, and also has the gall to try to hit a German suplex (Henry throws a back elbow right to the temple to shut that idea down). Severn/Henry is just a cool match up that we should have got again, but they were moving Henry into a Vader feud, and instead Severn fought mostly against Owen for the rest of his WWF run. But we got a minute of Severn and Henry and it was what you would want. Owen and Severn were very good together, with Owen especially good at moving around the kind of non-moving Severn. Severn wound up in some wrong places some of the time and kind of stood still (this was a feature of Severn that I enjoy, I don't view it as a bug), but the two of them had a killer mat scramble and Owen looked like he could have taken him. Severn also must have still been imagining he was giving Mark Henry a German, because he LAUNCHED Owen over quickly with a German so fast that it surprised JR. This ended in a big huge schmozz with DX and The Nation and Vader all running down to fight, great way to protect everyone while still having a cool match. 

PAS: This was Owen Hart and three mega athletic guys who clearly didn't fully grasp pro-wrestling. Hart kept it together, while the other guys did a bunch of cool looking things which were 10% off from the way wrestlers work things. Shamrock was so jacked up everytime he is in the ring, and hits this crazy spinning bodypress. Loved the Severn vs. Henry stuff, including Severn hitting a couple of big suplexes on Mark. Green Henry ruled, he always looked like he was going rip someones arm off. I would have loved to see what he could have done in a shootstyle fed.

Tag Team Royal Rumble

ER: This was weird but kind of good in that good 90s battle royal way. But this was a tag team royal rumble, which was clunky to start but got to the right place. They must have been running short on time, as they had teams enter every 30 seconds. 30 seconds is close enough between that you wonder if things would have just been more satisfying had everyone started in the ring like a traditional battle royal. By the time all the teams were in only a few minutes had gone by and only the New Midnight Express had been eliminated. So with the quick entrances they may as well have just started with everyone in the ring, as they basically got to that point anyway. But once the rules silliness and quick entrances were out of the way, it was easy to just settle in and enjoy the wonderful little battle royal details that we got: 

This was obviously a hugely emotional battle royal, as a few of these teams never teamed again. Faarooq and Steve Blackman (a team that had several matches as a team! And disappointingly they did not team long enough for Russo to brand them Two BlackMen) never teamed again, unable to get past their battle royal loss. Same thing with the team of Bradshaw and Taka Michinoku (who clearly would have already been slotted into the team name of Bradshaw and Rickshaw by Russo), and this might have been our final appearance of the only mildly cool era of the Oddities, when they still had carnival music and were both heels, Kurrgan still in his black tights and Golga in his filthy brown gear. We got some bizarre interactions, with none weirder than Terry Funk getting into it with Kurrgan. Funk throws some truly terrible looking strikes that also probably felt stiff as hell, but it's the exact kind of thing you want from a battle royal, because who else ever realized that there was any kind of Terry Funk/Kurrgan interaction? The eliminations come quick and several guys take hard spills. Taka gets press slammed to the floor, Brian Christopher gets eliminated, then kicks a just-eliminated Mosh on his way to the back, Bradshaw throws a couple of stiff full arms strikes to Kurrgan, and unexpectedly the battle royal comes down to Kane/Mankind and....Funk/Scorpio. Kane makes a Scorpio spin kick look terrible, Funk hits a full swing chairshot on Kane, then takes one from Mankind right to the face, and by the end this had more than enough moments of small joy to make this a recommendable battle royal. 

The show ends with a bunch of great chaos that I remember from watching in high school. Once Paul Bearer came out and the Cell lowered, I thought "Doesn't Bearer hit a big blade job here?" And he does! Kane and Mankind are out to take on Austin and Taker in a Hell in a Cell, with the Texas crowd clearly waiting around all night JUST to see Austin run out and attack people. Austin gets into it with Kane and Mankind, Bearer is inside the ring/Cell, Taker rips his way up from underneath the ring to surprise Bearer, and the beating Bearer takes is really well done. The blade job looks great, Taker looks like he really kicks him several times in the ribs and scrapes his face across the Cell, Kane climbs to the top of the Cell to try to get in and help Bearer, great chaos. All I could think of was how cool it would be to be there live watching, seeing Kane scale the Cell, seeing Bearer bleed out, love it. 

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WWF Raw 6/8/98: A Fine Episode of Wrestling TV

I didn't feel like watching AEW tonight, but here's an old episode of Raw filled with a ton of pairings that I loved. I did not write about any of the DX segments, but they happened - were plentiful - and were skipped. 

Kama Mustafa vs. Ken Shamrock

ER: This was an opening round King of the Ring match, and they worked it like a 3 minute round in a Different Style Fight. That's exactly what you want from this pairing, and it's one of the best Kama performances we have. He came off like a cool shoot fighting monster here, integrating kicks and strikes with cool big man pro wrestling like a heavy avalanche, hard clothesline to Shamrock's chest, and a brick wall shoulderblock. This had a nice Brawl for All feel to it, but if the fights were actually interesting in a worked way. Kama should have worked like this more often. Shamrock always tried weird things in the first year of his WWF run, here he gets caught in a big slam after leaping up knees first into Kama's shoulders like he was going for his rana on someone super tall, or adlibbing a chest breaker. Shamrock gets a cool roll into the ankle lock, this whole thing ruled. 

Marc Mero/Jeff Jarrett vs. Faarooq/Steve Blackman 

ER: This tag has a cool FMW feel to it, even though it features four guys who didn't work FMW. It's got a martial arts guy, a boxer, a Memphis guy, and a tough guy power wrestler. And they all wrestled as those exact styles so the whole thing was a constant style clash in the best way. Blackman was working somewhat awkwardly timed karate sequences, Jarrett caught Blackman in a nice Russian legsweep, Mero threw punches, Faarooq threw big blocks into shoulder joints and yanked on an arm, it was great. Over in less than 3 minutes, cool combination of the roster. 

Scorpio vs. Owen Hart

ER: This was always a great pairing, and this match is no different. We got this pairing a lot, and it felt more like a regular WCW series, like Malenko/Eddie. The crowd was real icy here for no reason, certainly not for lack of effort. I think Scorpio was pretty low profile at that point and people weren't taking to Owen's tough whiny guy heel turn. Confusing characters aside, the ring action was as fun as you'd expect. They were the only guys on this episode to go off the top rope, and they still worked as snug as the other matches. So you had sturdy landing German suplexes and a big heavy Scorpio crossbody, each had stiff spinkick variations, nice mix of snug work and flying. Owen takes out Scorpio's leg with a real nasty chop block, cool way to set up a submission finish. 

Chainz vs. Darren Drozdov

ER: Chainz was the worker of DOA, but it was pretty surprising to see him (fairly easily) beat Drozdov here. I liked the way they ran into each other, liked how Chainz actually made Droz duck on clotheslines, and thought Chainz made good use of his offense. He's got a good big boot, and a great high rotation powerslam, and he missed a kneedrop off the middle turnbuckle like he was Bobby Eaton. Droz at this point didn't have the poise of a wrestler, not quite blending from one spot to the next very well. Did that get better by a year later? I honestly don't remember anything about the in ring abilities of 1999 Droz. Chainz was gone from WWF this same month, so again it's so weird seeing him get a clean win off a Death Valley driver (was that Chainz' finisher?), but hey, I'm a Chainz guy. 

Mark Henry vs. Vader

ER: These two weren't in the same place for long, so I'm glad we got a few singles matches out of it. This was the first of their singles matches, and I imagine if these two crossed paths in another time, another place, we could have had some real classics. I still loved what little we got here, it really felt like something that could have been good for both if they ran with it. You know it's a big hoss battle when JR compares them to at least four different kinds of animal (we got bulls, Clydesdales, thankfully avoided comparison to large apes, but I got nervous the more he kept running through the large mammals), and it's awesome that these two are not only identically sized but really similarly built. They both do cool full arm strikes while refusing to budge, both standing chest to chest and throwing arms at the side of heads. 

Henry leans way into throwing a huge elbow strike, Vader boxes his ears, and we get some cool attempts at Vader slamming Henry. Henry makes a show of doing a clean jerk on Vader, snatching him up and walking with him a bit before slamming, and then hits a great elbowdrop and great legdrop (Vader sells the legdrop like Henry landed all his weight on his eye socket). It feels like a big moment when Vader finally bodyslams Henry, and I liked how they set up Henry powerslamming Vader, with Vader leaping off the middle buckle into him and Henry turning it into a slam. Sadly, Taker limps down to the ring wearing sweatpants and a weightlifting sweatshirt that hugs his gut, then relies on these two leaping into his chokeslam. Taker was interrupting stuff all night and it made Henry and Vader look like real dweebs to just lie there and put up literally no fight whatsoever. They should have flattened him together and then formed an unstoppable monster tag team, then taken that tag team to All Japan. 

D-Lo Brown vs. Dan Severn

ER: Thankless crowd, but some great stuff happened here. Severn was a little slow on the draw, more hesitation than in his other WWF matches so far, but D-Lo did a really great job of filling in the gaps. Severn kept locking in these real constricting rear waistlocks that led to some heavy landing amateur takedowns. D-Lo throws some nice overhand rights and was surprisingly good at neutralizing Severn as Severn went for takedowns. I don't remember seeing matches with much D-Lo grappling, and I can't imagine he was doing a ton of that pre-WWF vs. Wolfman or Power Ranger in Smoky Mountain. But you could see it here as Severn goes after takedowns like a Pitbull and D-Lo is great at grabbing Severn's leg to block things and make his body dead weight. That dead weight makes Severn's big suplexes look earned and finisher worthy. D-Lo knocks Severn down with a nice calf kick, then taunts him and clubs him while down, leading to Severn grabbing his arm and throwing him with a trap arm belly to belly. 

Severn's German suplex is a real highlight, and this one was closer to a Tamon Honda Dead End than any other suplexes being thrown in 1998 WWF. Severn threw D-Lo much more like an MMA suplex, the form looked a lot like Frank Shamrock dropping Igor Zinoviev. It would have been a cool time to try a stoppage finish. The match was already getting a completely icy reception, it's not like a KO stoppage would have made things worse. The German didn't read as a pro wrestling suplex, it made no loud ring bang noise, it was just a crazy throw. I'm sure it would have made Severn look like more of a threat than the bow and arrow submission he finished D-Lo with, if only because the application of the hold took far longer than it should have. The hold itself looked awesome when it was fully applied, looked like he could snap D-Lo in half, but the application was unnecessarily sluggish. Still, the overall match was one of the strongest match-ups for Severn, and I wonder what a full return match would look like. Wait is this the submission that lead to D'Lo getting his chest protector? Maybe it was a worthwhile finish. 

Val Venis vs. Dustin Runnels

ER: This had a kind of weird match dynamic on its face, as Venis got his full entrance and long pre-match promo, while Dustin was already waiting in the ring. But Venis works heel through the whole match, and Dustin gets arguably the best in ring babyface reactions of the night. The crowd was mostly quiet ALL NIGHT through a lot of wrestling, but when Dustin comes out of the corner punching Venis and hitting a swing for the fences lariat to knock Val to the floor, the crowd was loud and alive. They don't fully capitalize on that reaction, as they quiet things back down as Venis controls with decent punches, and I liked how they worked through a miscommunication. Dustin had gotten Irish whipped into the ropes and came out with a great back sell, dropping to his knees after it sounded like he knocked the turnbuckle loose. Val had clearly been running in with a clothesline right as Dustin dropped to his knees, and Val took the opportunity to use his outstretched arm to lock in a sleeper. I really like how they transitioned things back to Dustin, with a good version of that transition Faarooq always puts in matches, where he catches knees to his balls after dropping his weight down on his opponent. Venis works it far more plausibly than Faarooq and Dustin aims the knee perfectly, and Venis was incredible at selling his balls, doing his hip shimmy as a ball sell instead of as a towel removal. Dustin hits an inverted atomic drop after, just to give us more of Venis selling balls. Dustin practically takes Val's arm off with a great arm drag, and the crowd reacts big to his dropdown uppercut and great old school style bulldog. Sweatpants Undertaker also interrupts this one with chokeslams for both, so we get deprived of another finish. It was cool to hear the crowd so fully into Dustin, as I'd remembered the Runnels Era being a more unappreciated era for him. 

8-Ball/Skull vs. LOD 2000 vs. New Age Outlaws

ER: I really like Washed LOD. Both still do cool things while also occasionally stumbling and/or losing their balance, it gives this great vulnerable monster feel to their matches that was never there. Animal works a fast rope running/drop down exchange with Gunn and hits a great powerslam and Hawk hits a nice wobbly enziguiri after an exchange, adds in these little suck it taunts to the Outlaws all match, love my old washed boys. The Outlaws were the ones who saved this, as they actually looked great. The highlight for me was this great drop toehold/kneedrop combo they did, which I get sounds like a way to backhand compliment a match, except it was a perfect drop toehold/kneedrop. Gunn's drop toehold was especially great, really grapevines that leg to force a faceplant, right at the exact moment Road Dogg is there with a knee. Billy Gunn was great at working with Animal and there was this cool Road Dogg moment against 8-Ball where he skidded to a stop after ducking a clothesline before reaching back with a punch. This is the match that made the "Outlaw Rule" as both wind up in the ring together while the other four guys have to distract themselves so none of them can get in the ring in time to break up the pin. JR even points out what fucking idiots LOD and DOA are for trying to get the NAO to fight. Strong Outlaw performance in a mostly bad match, but the Outlaw highlights were enough, while Sunny in her Never Hotter LOD 2000 gear at ringside was undeniable. 

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