WWF King of the Ring 1998 Review

Overall 5.00 of 5 view all 2 reviews

StarSoldier1
Lake In The Hills, IL

..... did he just get tossed off a 16ft high steel cage there!?

watching chick flicks

Pros

Foley is F'N crazy

Cons

Some segments are a little slow

JUN

2008

The June 1998 WWF King of the Ring is without question one of the most talked about Pay Per Views (or PPV for short) in Wrestling history. This tape not only has the 1998 tournament to crown the next King of the Ring but it also features some of the most outrageous matches I ever seen in the WWF (or WWE) like the vicious Hell on a Cell match between Mankind and the UnderTaker, to the funny Too Much vs. Al Snow and Head match. If you do buy this video, you'll be in for a wild 3 hours here.

The first match on this is The Headbanders & Taka Michinoku (faces) vs. Kaientai (heels). The coolest thing about this match is seeing Taka in his prime performing several high risk moves and being fairly modest. It looks like some of the shots were missed but it was a great opener that was fast paced.

Now out comes the popular female wrestler Sable in a very nice and very tight black spandex outfit.... this is reason enough to buy the video until she introduces the power hungry chairman of the WWF Vince McManon and he just rabbles on for a good 5 minutes while asking Sable to leave. This part is just filler talk to hype the rest of the PPV here I guess.

The next matches are the semi-finals for the King of the Ring tournament featuring Jeff Jarrett, Dan The Beast Severn, The Rock, and Ken Shamrock. Without spoiling too much unless you already know, the past winners of the King of the Ring usually go on to great success in the WWF but it really never happened to this KOTR winner despite being fairly a big name. These matches were pretty good and straight forward but not excellent.

After the two KOTR matches you'll see one of the weirdest matches I ever witnessed. Too Much (heels) vs. Al Snow & Head (faces): if Al Snow wins he gets a meaning with Vince but if he loses he's out of the WWF, but Jerry the King Lawyer is the special referee and he doesn't like Al Snow or Head. First Too Much (the former and gayer version of II Cool) are not only very annoying but they also cheat heavily during the match and the King allows it. This is Jerry Lawyer at his best. J.R. is also funny in this very strange contest.

The next match between the late Owen Hart (heel) and Xpac (face) is a short but fairly decent match with a lot of effort by both men. After that there is a fairly average Tag Team title match featuring wrestlers from another company.

After the final KOTR match with funny commentary by last year's winner Triple H, you'll see the first of the double main event match; Hell in a Cell: The UnderTaker (face) vs. Mankind (heel). Put the kids to bed and call your friend's over for this one. This is the match that made Mick Foley (a.k.a. Mankind) "famous." The match starts off on top of the cage and less than two minutes going into the fight, UNDERTAKER PUSHES MANKIND OFF THE 16FT CAGE ON THE SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE........ that fall was planned but the next fall wasn't. After a bloody Mankind barely climbs the cage back up to the top, the UnderTaker continues his brutal assault. THE UNDERTAKER THEN CLOKESLAMS MANKIND AND HE FELL THROUGH THE CAGE! Sorry for using all caps there but if anything deserves that it's this match. The officals instantly enter the ring to see if Foley is OK, and the match somehow still continues. After a few counters a now very bloody Mankind manages to make a remarkable comeback, he even adds real thumb taxs to the ring?!

There is no way the final match can top the last match but it was still a cool street fight type bout between Austin (face) and Kane (heel) for the WWF World Heavyweight title. If Kane loses he'll kill himself by lighting himself on fire (yeah right). During the fight the Cell unexpectingly lowers just to add more suspense to a basis beatdown between the two. Not a bad match to end a great show overall and it leaves you wanting more after it's done.

Whoa, what a bada$$ show! No one match was below average and some of those images of poor Mick Foley I just can't get out of my head. He really steals the show here in this video here. Even if you don't really like wrestling, you have to see this insane Hell in a Cell match to believe it. Still one of my favourites and if you liked to be entertained for a good three hours then this comes highly recommend.

King of the Ring 1998 overall rating: 98/100

-Starsoldier 2008
(Ryan Genno)