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But for right now, it’s time to get a little more modern, as we look at Survivor Series 1998, which featured the Deadly Game tournament for the vacant WWF World Title. A bit of backstory on this one: Steve Austin had been the WWF Champion for all but one day since Wrestlemania 14, and Vince McMahon had spent nearly his every waking moment trying to get the title off of Austin and onto somebody more corporate-friendly. The plan that finally ended up working was when McMahon put Austin into a triple threat match with the Undertaker and Kane, and the only way either Undertaker or Kane could win was to pin Austin. Turns out that’s what they both did, they hit a double chokeslam on Austin and both covered him, so the title was definitely off of Austin, but both men had a claim to the title, so another match was made the following month between Undertaker and Kane for the title, with Steve Austin as the guest referee, with the stipulation that if he did not call the match down the middle, he would be fired.
Sure enough, Austin ended up giving both men the Stunner and declared himself the winner, prompting Vince McMahon to fire him on the spot. This led to the infamous episode of Raw when a rogue Austin took McMahon hostage and held a gun on him in the ring, but when he pulled the trigger a banner came out that said Bang 3:16. Even though this did not stop McMahon from peeing his pants (literally), Austin announced that he had been resigned to a multi-year deal by Vince’s son Shane. As punishment, Vince busted Shane down to being a referee.
So Austin was back in the WWF, but there was still the matter of the vacant WWF Title, so a tournament was devised for the 1998 Survivor Series with the winner becoming the WWF Champion. This was the second time the WWF did away with the elimination match concept (the first being in 1992), but in my opinion this made for a far more interesting show than the very disappointing 1992 edition.
The Undercard
Before getting into the tournament itself, there were two non-tournament matches on the show that had no bearing on anything else on the show, so let me quickly discuss those and get them out of the way.
The first was Sable defeating Jacquelyn for the WWF Women’s Title. The title had been revived a few weeks before this after being active since 1995 when Alundra Blayze took the belt to WCW and threw it in a garbage can on Monday Nitro. Sable, of course, had been the former valet of Marc Mero, but had been replaced by Jacquelyn, whom Mero had helped defeat Sable to claim the vacant title. This was the rematch and Sable won, and there was little else to say about it.
The other non-tournament match was WWF Tag Team Champions the New Age Outlaws defending against the Headbangers and D-Lo Brown & Mark Henry. Nothing match that only lasted a couple of minutes and was just there to give the Outlaws something to do on the show and to give us a few minutes between rounds of the tournament. Outlaws picked up an easy win.
Deadly Game Tournament: Opening Round
Moving on to the tournament itself, the opening round had six matches, with both Undertaker and Kane getting byes to the quarterfinals. The opening match of the tournament (and PPV) featured Mankind, who had been handpicked by Vince McMahon himself to be his champion, took on a mystery opponent. The crowd was chanting for Shawn Michaels, who they expected to return from his back injury, but the injury would end up keeping him out of action for several more years yet. Instead, we got longtime WWF Superstars jobber Duane Gill, with the idea that Vince had arranged for this match to give his guy an easy road to the second round. Mankind literally put him away in about 30 seconds with a double arm DDT, and then actually rolled him into a near side cradle for the win. I guess he can wrestle after all.
That was followed by a nothing match where Al Snow beat Jeff Jarrett after hitting him with Head, and then we got one of the big matches of the first round, as Steve Austin defeated the Big Boss Man by DQ. The Big Boss Man had just been brought back to the WWF a few months before this and had basically been Vince McMahon’s personal bodyguard/hitman, and in this case he was sending him to take out Austin. Boss Man eventually got his nightstick and started beating Austin up with it and got himself disqualified, but he ended up doing such a number on Austin that it was questionable whether he would be able to compete in the second round or not.
This may have seemed like a victory for Vince at the time, but the next match between X-Pac and Steven Regal (doing the Real Man’s Man gimmick) was supposed to determine Austin’s second round opponent, but ended up going to a double countout, meaning that Austin would get a bye to the semifinals, which did not make Vince happy. This was followed by Ken Shamrock (who had already won two tournaments in 1998, the first being King Of The Ring and the second to win the Intercontinental Title on Raw) defeating Goldust with the ankle lock to advance, and then the Rock defeating the Big Boss Man to advance as well. Rock was supposed to face Triple H, but Hunter was still out of action with a knee injury, so Vince sent out the Boss Man in his place, and the Boss Man ran in and Rock caught him in a small package to pick up the win in about four seconds.
Deadly Game Tournament: Quarterfinals
The quarterfinals opened with the Undertaker taking on his brother Kane, the latest installement in their love/hate/love/hate/love/hate/love/hate relationship. For simplicity’s sake, Undertaker was bad at this point and Kane was good. Unfortunately for Kane, he never paid attention to Dark Helmet in Spaceballs when he said that evil will always triumph because good is dumb, and indeed Kane the Dumb Good Guy allowed himself to get distracted by Paul Bearer and allow Undertaker to catch him in the Tombstone for the win.
From there, Mankind pretty handily defeated Al Snow, furthering the idea that Vince McMahon was purposely designing the tournament to be as easy as possible for Mankind to get through, and then of course Austin had his bye to the semifinals. This brings us to the last quarterfinal match between the Rock and Ken Shamrock. These two guys had been wrestling one another all year and Shamrock had made Rock tap like a little girl nearly every time out, but this time around luck was on the Rock’s side, as the Big Boss Man (who by this point is starting to appear as clumsy and inept as a MAD agent…points to anyone who gets that reference) comes down to ringside and tries to toss his nightstick to Shamrock, but Rock catches it and uses it to knock Shamrock out and pick up the win to advance to the semifinals himself.
Deadly Game Tournament: Semifinals
So now we’re down to four men: the Undertaker, the Rock, Steve Austin, and Mankind, and it was really up in the air at this point which one was going to come away with the title. In the first of the semifinal matches, the Rock defeated the Undertaker by DQ when Kane came into the ring and chokeslammed the Rock, basically just to get the Undertaker disqualified from the tournament. It seems like a lame copout finish on the surface, but if you really think about it it’s great booking and something I’m surprised nobody’s really done since.
The other semifinal saw Steve Austin take on Mankind, and Austin was in control of the match, but the ref got bumped, so when Austin hit the Stunner, there was nobody to count the fall because Vince McMahon, who had been confined to a wheelchair for months, suddenly jumped out of the wheelchair after Austin hit the Stunner, dragged the ref to the floor, and knocked him out. Austin hit another Stunner, prompting the entrance of Shane McMahon, Referee Extraordinaire, who comes in and counts 1, 2…and then flips Austin a double bird. Austin just looks at him in shock, but is even more surprised when the Stooges (Pat Patterson and Gerry Brisco) attack him and lay him out with a chairshot, allowing Mankind to cover and Shane to make the three count. After this, the McMahons, the Stooges, and the Boss Man all run to a waiting limo and speed away, having successfully screwed Steve Austin out of a shot to regain the WWF Title.
Deadly Game Tournament: Finals
This all brings us to the finals of the tournament between Vince McMahon’s handpicked champion Mankind and the Rock, who had seemed to find himself in Vince’s crosshairs himself in recent weeks. Vince McMahon and company ended up back at ringside for this one, and if you don’t see the outcome to this one coming a mile away, you just haven’t paid attention to any main event angles since 1997. Rock puts Mankind in the Sharpshooter, and Vince tells the timekeeper to ring the bell, so in the first of what would become about ten million rehashes of the Montreal finish, Rock wins his first WWF World Title, turns heel, and joins Vince McMahon’s Corporation, which he becomes the centerpiece of. Mankind doesn’t understand what happened and asks Vince why he did what he did, resulting in Vince and everybody beating down Mankind. This prompted the entrance of Steve Austin, who ran out and beat up the entire Corporation, then gave Mankind a Stunner for good measure to close the show.
Final Analysis
There were no real good matches on this show, but from an entertainment perspective, this was as well booked a show as anything during the Attitude Era, and if you watched it today you would never believe that the WWE of today was once able to put together a show where everything mattered and it all came together in the end with a proper payoff that made sense. Vince’s whole master plan of using the Boss Man to repeatedly come out and move Rock ahead in the tournament, while using Mankind to eliminate Steve Austin and be the flunky who would end up getting left for dead in favor of Rock in the finals was beautiful. If you’re the type who freaks for workrate and star ratings, you probably won’t like this show, but it was definitely fun to watch if you can put that aside for a night.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back soon with Survivor Series 1999, featuring vehicular assault! Until then, thank your for reading and as always, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com. Take care, everybody!
