Back in 1998, there was a one-night “deadly games” tournament at the Survivor Series to determine the winner of the vacant WWF Championship.
On Nov. 22, 17 years later, there will be another one of those to determine the successor of WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins, who is out of action for six to nine months after injuring his knee.
Looking back at it now, the 1998 Survivor Series Deadly Games tournament was the epitome of the Attitude Era, for better and for worse. There were swerves, turns, wonky finishes, and about 100 things going on at once. For fans of the era, they will pine for the likes of Steve Austin, The Rock, Mankind, and The Undertaker making up the final four men that were battling it out for the title.
It’s true that in 2015, the “final four,” whoever they may be, won’t have the pedigree (no pun intended) to match up to those four men. But the reality is the 2015 tournament has every opportunity to be better than the 1998 version.
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It’s difficult to compare eras in wrestling. The product we see in WWE in 2015 is practically unrecognizable from the WWF of 17 years ago. But just remembering it now, the original deadly-games tournament was kind of an absolute mess.
To recap, Stone Cold Steve Austin (in the midst of his feud with Mr. McMahon) was placed as a special guest referee in a world title match between Kane and The Undertaker. After counting both men out, Austin declared himself the champion, only to see Vince McMahon fire him, holding up the title. Austin got his job back by holding McMahon at gunpoint (the infamous Bang 316! moment) and then getting Shane McMahon to sign a five-year contract that guaranteed him a championship match.
Meanwhile, McMahon was also feuding with “the People’s Champion” The Rock, and grooming (literally) Mankind to be his next champion.
A 14-man tournament was then declared to determine a new champ at the pay-per-view, with Kane and The Undertaker having byes into the quarterfinals.
Just the idea of having 12 matches on a three-hour show (there was also a women’s title and tag-title match) is something they wouldn’t do today. You can be sure that by the time we get to Survivor Series there will be a maximum of eight men still in the running for the belt.
The show itself was a bit of a cluster. Mankind got a cheap victory in the opening round against Duane Gill, The Big Bossman was entered in twice, the second time losing to The Rock in four seconds. X-Pac and Steven Regal would end in a double countout eliminating both men, two matches would end in disqualifications, and nearly every match had an unclean finish.
Ironically, while this was par for the course in the Attitude Era, many fans who bash the current product and yearn for the late-’90s style of WWE wrestling would lose their minds if all of that happened on the 2015 card.
There was also the issue of depth. The top of the card was stacked, but the rest of it…not so much. Al Snow won a match. There was the two aforementioned Big Boss Man matches. Steven Regal was in the tournament and would be off television almost immediately afterwards.
I’m not saying the 2015 tournament is going to be loaded, but there are at least some options. The shoe-ins would appear to be Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose, Ryback, Alberto Del Rio, Kevin Owens, Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro and Sheamus. If you expand to 16, you can give young guys like Neville and Tyler Breeze a chance to shine. You could also go the route of bringing up someone from NXT like Samoa Joe to make a run. You could dip into the tag team scene for depth with The New Day, and The Dudley Boys being legitimate draws, and The Uso’s, The Prime Time Players, and The Lucha Dragons being believable enough opening round opponents. If they opt to go deeper into the mid-card, you have talented veterans like King Barrett, Stardust, and The Miz who can go a round or two and give the rub to guys who need it. Or you could just say screw it and enter in the whole Wyatt Family. WWE could make this as large as a 32-man tournament and it still have the depth to do so if they really wanted to, and I’m not so sure that was the case back in 1998.
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The issue however becomes the number of candidates to actually win the damn thing.
In the original deadly games, Stone Cold seemed like a heavy favorite to win, but you also had Kane, The Undertaker, Mankind, and the eventual winner The Rock who were all believable choices.
This year, it’s tough to really picture anyone outside of Roman Reigns or Dean Ambrose winning. We all would love it if Cesaro finally got his deserved chance to shine. Kevin Owens would without a doubt excel in the role of world champion. Bray Wyatt probably should get a world title reign at some point if he’s going to be capturing people’s souls and controlling elements, and there’s no real time better than now to do so.
But can you really picture any of those guys winning the strap? With Rollins, Cena, and Randy Orton out, WWE has backed itself into a corner after electing not to allow the majority of the roster to take strides into becoming legitimate main-event talent in recent months.
With just a few more relevant wins here and there, it wouldn’t be that out of the question for Cesaro to be a world champion. Or Dolph Ziggler. Or Owens.
But only Reigns, and to a lesser extent Ambrose, have been positioned as world championship material, so it seems highly probable that one of the two will be walking out with the championship. While predictable, those results aren’t necessarily bad. Roman Reigns turning heel and joining The Authority would be the right move, and would echo the move his cousin made 17 years prior when he won his first world title.
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A heel turn from someone seems inevitable, but while the general consensus is that it will be Ambrose, it’s Reigns who would benefit the most from a position as Rollins’ replacement in The Authority.
The quality of the matches in the deadly games tournament in 1998 were lacking to say the least, and you will assuredly see a better in-ring product this time around. But the question is, can WWE replicate the storytelling aspect of the bygone era, or will we be headed for a predictable outcome that leaves us in the same position as we were before Rollins’ injury?
Seeing their world champion go down is the worst-case scenario for WWE, but we’ve touched on how it could be exactly what they need. In a stagnant product, losing three of their top stars (four if you count Brock Lesnar being on one of his many hiatuses) is forcing WWE to “break glass in case of emergency.” It’s forcing them to reset, to pull a rabbit out of a hat, to do something different.
The tournament at Survivor Series will be a lot of fun no matter the outcome, but while the 1998 tournament had its faults, it did help plant or grow the seeds of many of the Attitude Era’s most popular feuds such as The Rock vs. Mankind, The Rock vs. Stone Cold, and The Corporation vs. The Ministry of Darkness.
If WWE can replicate that this year and make the product feel fresh with multiple main-event storylines coming out of the show, it will be a success, no matter who walks out with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship around their waist.
