World War 3 1998: Sixty Men, Three Rings, and One Missing World Champion

Wrath enters with momentum, and the audience is willing to react to his power offense. That gives the opener more life than its reputation sometimes suggests, because the basic story is easy to understand: Glacier has to survive a larger opponent who is being positioned for bigger things. Wrath throws him around convincingly, and the Meltdown gives the finish a definitive visual.

The problem is that the match never develops beyond that simple idea. Glacier's comeback is brief, the pacing is closer to an extended television squash, and the eight-minute runtime feels long for the amount of escalation involved. It is not disastrous wrestling, but World War 3 needs an opener that creates urgency. Instead, the show begins by telling the audience to wait for something more important.

Konnan has crowd connection and Stevie Ray has physical presence, but those strengths never combine into a coherent match. Much of the bout is built around slow control segments, basic strikes, and Vincent's interference, leaving Konnan to manufacture energy in short bursts rather than building a sustained comeback. The audience reacts to familiar personalities more than to the wrestling itself.

Then the finish makes everything worse. Vincent accidentally catches Stevie Ray with the slapjack, Konnan attacks, and the referee disqualifies him for putting his hands on the official. Nothing is resolved, nobody looks meaningfully stronger, and the match feels like an angle that wandered onto pay-per-view. On a show already facing questions about delivering advertised attractions, this kind of non-payoff is especially damaging.

Perry Saturn and Kaz Hayashi should give this match a strong athletic base, yet the structure never allows them to establish one. Ernest Miller's kicks and Sonny Onoo's comedy dominate the tone, so the bout keeps slipping away from the wrestlers most capable of creating momentum. There are scattered useful exchanges, but they rarely connect into anything that feels like a pay-per-view story.

The finish is particularly deflating, with Onoo ending up on top for the pin after Miller's involvement. Saturn's position on the card feels diminished rather than advanced, and Hayashi receives little chance to make an impression. The match is short enough to avoid becoming exhausting, but that is faint praise. Three matches into World War 3, the show still has not produced anything that feels essential.

Juventud Guerrera and Billy Kidman rescue the card by doing what WCW's cruiserweights routinely did in this era: treat limited narrative support as an invitation to create their own stakes. They use the three-ring setup for movement and counters rather than letting it become a distraction, and the match builds through increasingly ambitious offense without losing sight of the championship.

Rey Mysterio Jr.'s involvement adds storyline texture without overwhelming the wrestling. Kidman's Shooting Star Press delivers a decisive finish and another title change, while the LWO material after the bell keeps the division moving forward. The bout is not flawless, and a few spots take time to assemble, but it is easily the best match on the show. For fifteen minutes, World War 3 finally resembles a major event.

Chris Jericho gives this match structure through character work, selling, and his ability to make small transitions matter. Bobby Duncum Jr. is still being introduced to the audience, so the central challenge is not technical competence but emotional investment. Jericho can create heat for himself, yet Duncum's offense rarely produces the kind of response that makes a challenger feel dangerous.

The match improves as it goes and contains enough solid wrestling to separate it from the first three bouts. Still, the finish relies on Duncum becoming distracted by Ralphus before Jericho uses the television title belt, which is another shortcut on a card already full of them. Jericho retaining makes sense. The path to that result feels needlessly ordinary for a pay-per-view.

The concept is still the concept: sixty wrestlers spread across three rings, with too much action happening at once for television to communicate clearly. WCW improves the presentation somewhat once the field shrinks, but the early stages remain more spectacle than readable wrestling. Kevin Nash dominates one ring so aggressively that the booking direction becomes obvious, while many talented wrestlers disappear before viewers can follow what happened.

The final stretch at least produces recognizable stakes. The Giant is eliminated to a major reaction, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko survive deep into the field, and Scott Hall, Lex Luger, and Nash give the closing minutes star power. Nash ultimately eliminates Hall and Luger to earn the Starrcade title shot. The outcome matters historically, but the match itself remains a cumbersome vehicle for reaching it.

Diamond Dallas Page and Bret Hart have enough history and enough technical understanding to give the main event a respectable foundation. Hart targets the leg, Page works from underneath, and the United States title gives the match a clear reason to exist. The pacing is deliberate, but both men are experienced enough to make the slower sections feel connected to the eventual finish.

Then WCW adds another officiating complication. A referee bump, an nWo referee, and a reversed submission decision turn what could have been a clean championship match into another argument about procedure. Page eventually lands the Diamond Cutter and retains, so the correct result survives the clutter. The wrestling is solid. The booking refuses to let solid wrestling be enough.