Great Matches: 1998

-The Rock vs. Mankind (Survivor Series, 11/15/98)
    The "Deadly Game" tournament finals to crown a new WWF Champion was met between two men: The Rock and Mankind. Mankind had been deemed, due to his previous loyalties to Vince McMahon, the chosen corporate champion. The Rock, on the other hand, had been denounced as being to unpredictable and too closely associated with the audience to be McMahon's wrestler of choice. The match started up as most matches in 1998 did, with an exchange of right hands. The match eventually built up to a near fall, crowd gasping back and forth roller coaster ride that makes you love to be a fan. But even greater than the kick outs of the Rock Bottom and the counters to the Mandible Claw, was the finish of the match. With Mankind down Rock went over to him and raised an eyebrow to Vince McMahon, locking the Hardcore Legend in a sharpshooter. As soon as Rock had turned Foley over McMahon had shouted for the timekeeper to ring the bell. Foley had been screwed in a near perfect recreation of Survivor Series 1997. Nobody had seen The Rock's turn coming and were in complete shock when Rocky, Vince and Shane embraced in the center of the ring. Then suddenly the series of events leading to the Survivor Series made perfect sense. Rock's road to the number one contendership, which had it not been for McMahon's constant placement of him in high profile matches, would never had happened. His win over Mark Henry to get back into the tournament was because of carefully placed "botched" interference from McMahon's own cronies. Hell, his tournament matches had been against men that worked directly with McMahon or were won directly as a result of one of McMahon's plots (Bossman's throwing the nightstick "accidentally" to Rock and the provocation of Kane to attack Rock and give him the win via DQ). It all made sense. Keep in mind that this was before McMahon went completely overboard with his obsession with the Survivor Series in recent years. Back then this was fresh, cutting edge stuff that really showed just how on the pulse of America the WWF truly was.

    Yeah, I know that the list isn't nearly complete. You want to know why the Ken Shamrock-Rock match for King of the Ring isn't on the list. Why there is only ONE ECW match on the list. Why are nearly all the matches from pay-per-view? And why didn't I list the Foley-Rock match where Foley finally wins the World Title, surely that must be considered one of the most emotional matches of all time. I know and I will get to those. I certainly don't consider this my last foray into the great matches of 1998 but I wanted to get this article off the ground and see what kind of response I got before I start making it a regular feature. Once again, thanks for your support and enjoy the matches!

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