Ep. 51: 1998 WWE Survivor Series
The Lapsed Fan wrestling podcast delves into the heart of the Attitude Era this week, and the game your co-chairmen play is most certainly deadly.
Your deep dive into the 1998 WWF Survivor Series \u201cDeadly Game\u201d scrutinizes all angles of the WWF title tournament that sharply turned The Rock heel just as he was beginning to catch babyface fire, and the lessons that can be applied to a certain Roman Reigns.
Immerse yourself in attitudinal booking with a study on the elements that helped the WWF, by this point in 1998, decisively pull ahead in the Monday night ratings wars, and never look back.
The show includes:
- SO MANY signs in the crowd. Just a sea of neon cardboard.
- The Rock breaks through a bonafide top guy
- Vince makes each and every bout of manipulation sing from his wheelchair in a vintage performance
- The confounding first WWF run of William Regal as the \u201cReal Man\u2019s Man\u201d
- The Big Bossman invades every nook and cranny of the show, except the run-in he was supposed to do in Austin v. Mankind, killing the match\u2019s heat
- The name of the football squad Duane Gill coached to glory
- JR on X-Pac\u2019s \u201csuddenness\u201d
- Ken Shamrock huracanranas
- The crowd is asked to react to an Undertaker who just admitted he set the fire that destroyed his family and was blamed on Kane
- JR actually says this: \u201cMankind has opened up offensively now after realizing that the tube sock was around the mannequin head.\u201d #AttitudeEra
All that and so much more, as TLF dissects the qualities that make the 1998 Survivor Series a true harbinger for a WWF product re-imagining that sent the company to new heights (and occasionally new lows).