Great Matches: 1998

    I'm not going to type anything about this match. It would just be redundant. Everyone knows about this match but I had to list it to make the list complete.

-Goldberg vs. Hollywood Hogan (Nitro, 7/6/98)
    This is one of those matches that while not technically amazing, was such an emotional watershed that it must be included. The fact that Hogan, who had never been allowed to look weak his entire career (even as a heel ironically) was steamrolled by the juggernaut known as Goldberg, made this match something else entirely. Goldberg evoked the spirit that Hogan once had in 1983, when he was a fresh commodity. The power, the menace and the legitimate charisma helped make Goldberg WCW's version of Steve Austin in 1998. Unfortunately this match remains the highlight of Da Man's career when his legs were cut out from him during his title run by backstage politics and jealous wrestlers.

-The Rock vs. Triple H (Fully Loaded, 7/26/98)
    A classic NWA style best 2 out of 3 falls match for a new generation of WWF fans. The story of the match was fairly simple: two leaders of opposing factions were battling for midcard supremacy and tried to dominate the other. Fairly simple stuff. The non-simple stuff was the way that the WWF essentially made The Rock into a 1990s version of Ric Flair with this match and HHH had become a modern day Ronnie Garvin (you know, the time when he didn't suck). Rock won the first pinfall with a Rock Bottom and some liberal help from Nation members Mark Henry and D-Lo Brown. X-Pac and Chyna helped neutralize the faction in the second fall with a DDT from the Amazon that gave HHH the next pinfall. Rock and Hunter battled back and forth and finally Triple H nailed his finisher, the Pedigree, to put Rocky down for the count. However as the referee's and was about to come down for three, the bell sounded. It seemed that the time limit had expired, allowing Rock to narrowly escape with his championship. It was a finish that old school NWA fans had seen a thousand times but to a new, younger audience watching wrestling for the first time it was fresh stuff that they had never seen before and helped define this new generation of competitors.

-Goldberg vs. Diamond Dallas Page (Halloween Havoc, 10/25/98)
    Let's forget about the debacle when cable networks were uninformed about the fact that the PPV was going over the 11pm timeslot and nearly 25 percent of the viewing audience lost feed and remember the match for what it was: one of WCW's best babyface matches ever. Goldberg was approached with a guy that the fans believed, for the first time other than the Hogan match, could conceivably beat him. The common theory was that Page would hit the Diamond Cutter when Goldberg had him up for the Jackhammer. Interestingly enough this spot would occur but it wouldn't be the end for Goldberg. Page carried him to his most technically sound match of his career and despite being relatively short for a main event (clocking in at just over ten minutes) it was still decidedly long for a Goldberg match and showed that with patience and training, Goldberg could develop into a wrestler that could wrestle longer bouts. Unfortunately WCW never had the patience needed to allow Goldberg to develop into that kind of wrestler and had him lose to wrestler turned booker Kevin Nash two months down the road.

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