WrestleTalk Roundtable – WWE Raw – September 10, 2018

Raw has left me in a bit of a Terry Funk lately. And by that I mean that I usually get an hour in before I feel the uncontrollable urge to launch myself off a ladder and through several burning tables.

This was a go-home show, as surprising as that sounds – the final episode of Raw before Hell in a Cell this Sunday. Much of it was dedicated to celebrating (commemorating?) the 20-year anniversary of Mick Foley’s unforgettable encounter against the Undertaker inside the cell at King of the Ring in 1998. We were repeatedly asked to think back to that match, and remember the devastation and brutality that so often plays out inside the hellish structure.

In the true spirit of reflection, I thought it might be appropriate to also revisit the corresponding go-home episode of Raw twenty years ago. How did the build to that Foley / Undertaker match differ from the modern day equivalent?

The Raw before King of the Ring 1998 emanated from Austin, Texas on June 22, 1998. In true ‘Attitude Era’ style (and because there’s a cap on how long these intros can be), I’m going to run off every major event from that night’s show, in quick succession and with limited context. Brace yourselves.

Kane uses his electronic voice box to announce the stipulation for his match against Stone Cold Steve Austin for the WWF Championship. It’s a First Blood match and if Kane loses, he’ll set himself on fire (don’t expect an explanation, because we didn’t get one twenty years ago either.) We were given four King of the Ring qualifying matches, Al Snow dressed as an old woman, the debut of Edge (which tragically ended barely a minute into the bout when Jose Estrada broke his neck) and a match between the Rock and Triple H, which lead to a chaotic brawl between D-Generation X and the Nation of Domination. The final angle of the night featured Stone Cold getting a vat of fake blood dumped on his head (no context!).

And they managed all that in just two hours. The 90s were a crazy time.

But how did last night’s episode of Raw stack up against its historical counterpart? Like I said, this was a go-home show. But even that’s not telling the whole story. Because this wasn’t just any go-home show: Hell in a Cell as a pay-per-view lends itself to chaos and unbridled violence. It’s the very premise of the event in fact… things have gotten so out of hand, so uncontrollable, that only a cell can possibly contain it. So you would rightly expect the lead-in episode to be eventful.

But was it? Join our WrestleTalk writing team as we delve into the good, the bad and the ugly from last night’s Raw. Which moments did we enjoy, and which missed the mark? Read on to see our thoughts, as well as our rating of the show overall.

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