In Your House 14: Revenge of the 'Taker (1997): Two Great Feuds Rescue a Show Full of Bad Endings

The opener has good ingredients and a finish that exhausts the crowd's patience before the rest of the card can use it. Owen Hart and The British Bulldog are skilled enough to make the Legion of Doom's power offense feel organized, while Hawk and Animal remain over enough that the audience genuinely wants the title change. That desire becomes the match's problem.

Animal appears to pin Bulldog after a second-rope powerslam, but Owen is ruled the legal man and the match restarts. The champions return after threatening to leave, another extended sequence follows, and the Legion of Doom eventually hit the Doomsday Device before Bret Hart attacks for the disqualification. The challengers win without the titles after already appearing to win them once.

There is competent tag wrestling underneath the machinery, particularly from Owen, but the match teaches the audience that the finish will matter less than the next angle. That is a rough lesson to deliver in the opener.

Rocky Maivia and Savio Vega work a match with almost no natural heat, and the Nation of Domination story gradually becomes more important than the championship. Vega leans on holds, Rocky's comebacks show athletic promise, and the crowd reacts more strongly to Faarooq's presence than to most of the actual wrestling. The future Rock is visible only in flashes.

Vega sends Rocky outside, where the champion collides with Crush and takes the Heart Punch. Rocky cannot answer the count, so Vega wins without taking the Intercontinental Championship. The Nation then turns its frustration into a post-match attack until Ahmed Johnson makes the save.

The angle advances the Nation story, but the match exists mostly as a delivery system for that angle. Coming immediately after another championship non-finish makes the countout feel even cheaper.

Rockabilly is introduced as The Honky Tonk Man's new protégé, and the presentation immediately feels like something Billy Gunn will need to escape. Jesse James has a little more crowd connection because of his singing entrance, but neither wrestler has enough singles identity to make six minutes feel important. The dancing, eye gouges and chinlocks produce more gimmick than momentum.

James counters a suplex into a small package for the clean pin. The best thing about the match is historical irony: the two men look limited as opposing singles acts and will later become enormously more successful together as the New Age Outlaws. Nothing in the match itself suggests that solution is weeks away.

Undertaker and Mankind begin like two wrestlers who no longer believe a normal wrestling match is possible between them. The fight spills outside quickly, Undertaker targets Mankind's head against the rails and Mankind responds by attacking the champion's burned eye and using the urn. The pace is far more urgent than anything in the first hour.

The violence escalates without losing the championship story. Mankind smashes a water pitcher and chair against Undertaker, drops the elbow to the floor and uses multiple piledrivers, while Undertaker survives and grows more forceful. After the referee goes down, Mankind applies the Mandible Claw to a replacement official as well, creating the opening for the match's final escalation.

Undertaker dropkicks the ring steps into Mankind, removes the mask and then knocks him head-first from the apron through the announce table with the steps. The image is grotesque and unforgettable. Mankind still survives a chokeslam before the Tombstone finally ends the challenge.

The match is not as famous as their 1996 gimmick matches or the 1998 Cell, but it may be one of their strongest conventional pay-per-view performances. The rules become flexible to the point of absurdity, yet the hatred is so established that the looseness feels more natural than a clean technical contest would.

Hart and Austin cannot reproduce WrestleMania 13 because the emotional conditions have changed, so they build the rematch around consequence. Austin enters with an already damaged left knee after being attacked backstage, and Hart immediately treats the injury like a blueprint. Every stomp, chair shot and figure-four variation makes the new heel version of Bret more explicit.

Austin's selling is the match's foundation. His knee buckles during attempted offense, he limps through brawling sequences and he never magically recovers when it is time for a comeback. That consistency lets Bret's attack feel cumulative rather than decorative and makes every Austin burst of offense feel reckless.

The visual reversal of WrestleMania is excellent. Austin traps Bret in the Sharpshooter, Owen and Bulldog intervene, Austin fights them off and applies the hold again. Then Bulldog hits Austin with the chair and the referee calls for the disqualification just as the crowd is ready for the decisive payoff.

Austin wins officially, then attacks Bret's knee with the chair and re-applies the Sharpshooter after the bell. The ending hurts the match grade but helps the feud, because the bloodied victim from WrestleMania has now become the aggressor while Bret's increasingly self-righteous cruelty keeps expanding. This is the forgotten third great match of their pay-per-view trilogy.