Fall Brawl '98: War Games: WCW Breaks the One Gimmick It Didn't Need to Fix

The opening tag is slow before anything goes wrong, and that matters because Fall Brawl desperately needs early momentum. Alex Wright supplies the cleanest movement, Disco Inferno keeps the heel team organized, and the British Bulldog can still generate recognition from the crowd. Jim Neidhart, however, struggles through several exchanges, and the match repeatedly loses rhythm instead of building toward a convincing finishing sequence.

The lasting issue is the trap door built into the ring for The Warrior's later entrance. Bulldog takes a bump onto the hidden structure and badly injures his back, turning an otherwise forgettable opener into one of the show's bleakest historical footnotes. He still finishes the match, but the awkward powerslam ending feels secondary once that context is known. This is bad wrestling attached to an even worse production decision.

Chris Jericho's entrance with his own security entourage is genuinely funny because it takes Goldberg's presentation and turns every serious detail into a joke. The fake Goldberg reveal gets the intended reaction, and Jericho's frightened heel behavior makes the segment entertaining on a character level. As a piece of comedy, it is one of the few portions of the show with a clear point.

As a match, there is almost nothing to score. The impersonator gets a spear, Jericho immediately recovers, and the Liontamer ends the farce in barely more than a minute. The segment also underlines the larger problem that the real WCW World Heavyweight Champion is not defending his title on the pay-per-view. Jericho makes the material work, but the company is selling an angle where a match should be.

Norman Smiley is already the more complete wrestler, and the match briefly improves whenever he is allowed to control the pace. His suplexes and uppercuts give the action structure, while Ernest Miller relies heavily on kicks and taunts. The crowd never receives a reason to care beyond the performers' personalities, so even the cleaner exchanges feel detached from the rest of the card.

Miller wins with another kick from the top rope after just over five minutes, and the finish lands with almost no emotional weight. Nothing is advanced beyond keeping his push moving. On a pay-per-view already suffering from too many angles and too little meaningful wrestling, this is exactly the kind of match that should have remained on television. It is short, but it still feels unnecessary.

Rick and Scott Steiner finally begin the singles match WCW has been teasing for months, and for the first few minutes the crowd responds exactly as expected. Rick attacks with urgency, Scott sells the family grudge, and the physicality suggests the feud might finally receive a straightforward payoff. The anticipation is doing almost all the work, but at least the work has an emotional foundation.

Then Buff Bagwell takes the staged neck-injury bump, the match is abandoned, and the broadcast spends an extended period presenting the situation as serious before revealing the swerve. Scott and Buff eventually attack Rick near the ambulance, turning the entire match into setup for another chapter. The result is one of the night's defining frustrations: WCW had a feud people cared about and still refused to give them the match.

Juventud Guerrera and Silver King rescue the card by simply wrestling with purpose. Silver King gives Juventud enough power resistance to keep the champion from running through his usual sequence untouched, while Guerrera's speed forces the challenger to adjust. The match uses dives and quick counters without turning into a disconnected exhibition, and the crowd gradually responds to the fact that something competitive is finally happening.

The closing stretch is compact and effective, with Silver King creating believable near-falls before Juventud lands the 450 splash to retain. It is not among WCW's greatest cruiserweight matches, but the comparison with the first four bouts makes it feel almost revelatory. There is a championship, two wrestlers trying to win it, and a decisive finish. Fall Brawl spends much of the night proving how valuable those simple ingredients can be.

Perry Saturn and Raven have something almost nobody else on the card receives: stakes the audience understands. If Saturn wins, The Flock is freed from Raven's control; if he loses, he becomes Raven's servant. That premise gives every interference spot and every escape a purpose. Raven controls the environment naturally under his own rules, while Saturn keeps fighting through Kanyon, Lodi, and the accumulated punishment.

Kidman's involvement helps turn the Flock itself against Raven's control, and Saturn eventually counters the Evenflow before landing the Death Valley Driver for the clean emotional release. The crowd reacts because the match pays off months of television rather than postponing the story again. It is physical without becoming shapeless and dramatic without requiring a nonsensical finish. This is the match Fall Brawl should have been built around.

Dean Malenko starts aggressively and gives the match an immediate technical direction by attacking Curt Hennig's leg. Hennig sells enough to make the strategy matter, and Malenko's dropkicks, holds, and attempts at the Texas Cloverleaf create more psychology than most of the card. The wrestlers are capable of much better, but for several minutes the match at least resembles a serious grudge contest.

Rick Rude's involvement steadily overtakes the wrestling until he finally breaks up the pin and triggers the disqualification. The post-match attack on Malenko and Arn Anderson pushes the Horsemen story forward, but it also means another pay-per-view match exists mostly to deliver television business. The work before the finish is respectable. The finish reinforces the night's exhausting refusal to conclude anything cleanly.

Konnan has enough crowd connection to carry a basic singles match, but Scott Hall's drinking storyline makes the entire presentation difficult to engage with as wrestling. Hall pauses for drinks, stumbles through character beats, and works at a pace that repeatedly drains the audience. Even if the behavior is viewed strictly as a storyline choice, it leaves Konnan wrestling around an angle instead of building a competitive match.

The Tequila Sunrise finish arrives suddenly after another ringside distraction, giving Konnan the win without giving him much momentum. The larger problem is taste. WCW is taking a wrestler's widely known personal struggle and turning it into entertainment, then asking viewers to sit through twelve minutes of it on pay-per-view. The match is poor on its own terms and unpleasant in historical context.

The 1998 WarGames rules destroy much of what made WarGames work. Three teams enter, pinfalls can end the match, and the individual who scores the fall earns a world-title shot, which means teammates have conflicting incentives from the start. The early entries produce scattered brawling rather than growing danger, and the famous names never combine into a coherent team struggle. The stipulation becomes crowded without becoming intense.

Once Hogan enters, the match largely stops being WarGames and becomes a vehicle for The Warrior's smoke-and-mirrors confrontation. Wrestlers lie around while the production focuses on disappearances, reappearances, and Hogan fleeing the cage. DDP eventually recovers and hits Stevie Ray with the Diamond Cutter to earn the Halloween Havoc title shot. The correct winner emerges from an atrocious structure. One of WCW's signature concepts is reduced to background scenery for another feud.