 |
| "Cos it's a deadly game! Deadly game! Deadly game!" |
The one time Russo managed to perfectly apply his
approach to a pay-per-view was at the 1998 Survivor Series. That's the one, in
case your wrestling lore is rusty, that featured a one night tournament (dubbed
the Deadly Game tournament) to crown a new WWF champion. It allowed Russo to
cram in everything he was good at and enjoyed, namely pushing the mid-card,
constructing satisfying arcs for main event talents, and swerve developments,
into one show, perfectly built to over the preceding months.
Part of the reason the show worked as well as it did (and
holds up better than practically anything else Russo booked) was the build it
had. After SummerSlam in August he and his writing partner Ed Ferrara set about
repositioning key players in preparation for the story they knew they'd be
telling at Survivors. Mankind became a sympathetic, comedic good guy. The Rock
dropped the Nation of Domination (an albatross around his neck by SummerSlam
anyway) and officially went face, dubbing himself 'The People's Champion'.
Undertaker and Kane, who had been at loggerheads since Kane's debut the
previous October, formed the first of many alliances and began pursuing WWF
champion Steve Austin. Really, Austin was the only man not recast after
SummerSlam. He remained the top babyface with the same agenda he'd always had:
having the title and being a thorn in the side of Vince McMahon.
Vince was central to all of this. He butted heads with
The Rock, based on his own hatred of "the people". He began
manipulating Mankind, promising to make him his new "corporate"
champion but clearly having little but disdain for him and using him simply as
a tool in his wider plans. Which he did with Undertaker and Kane, of course,
only they were presented as being intelligent enough to understand his schemes,
playing along because it tied into their desire to be the champion. And, of
course, his hatred of Austin was undiminished.
Through a typically Russo-esque convoluted sequence best
summed up here as a double pin from the Brothers of Destruction, Austin was
stripped of the WWF championship. An attempt to crown a new champion in a
'Taker v Kane match didn't work out because Vince (stupidly) made Austin the
guest referee, leading the match to end with Austin attacking both competitors
and declaring himself the winner. Vince's next plan to crown a champion was the
Deadly Game tournament, bringing us back around to Vinnie Ru's greatest
triumph.
The show featured a ludicrous fourteen matches (plus
another four before the broadcast
began) but was paced and structured so well that it avoided feeling bloated.
Practically every match contributed something to the larger story of the show
and the handful that didn't were either enjoyable enough to be overlooked
(Shamrock v Goldust) or were short enough for it not to be an issue (Snow v
Jarrett). The main characters were all placed in matches that advanced their
own plots. Mankind found himself pitted against blatant ringer Duane Gill in
the opening match (amusingly hyped up so much by Vince so as to deliberately
mislead people into believing they' be seeing the injured Shawn Michaels),
setting him and the audience up to believe that he truly was Vince's chosen
one. Rock found himself pitted against Team Corporate henchmen in his first two
matches and against Undertaker in his third, making it clear McMahon was doing
everything in his power to keep him away from the final, and that the audience
were right to believe in him because he overcame Vince's stacked odds.
Austin was ever so slightly an afterthought, odd
considering he was the clear cut top star. He trounced Big Boss Man in his
opening round match, received a bye in the second when nobody advanced to face
him, and was double crossed in his semi-final match against Mankind. But this
was all done for a reason. It allowed Rock and Mankind to close the show,
helping to raise their status in the process. The double cross aspect of his
semi-final loss was done to reunite Vince and Shane McMahon after Shane had
been demoted to, in Vince's words, a lowly referee. It created a reason to
further protract the McMahon-Austin rivalry to and neatly took 'Stone Cold' out
of the title picture until WrestleMania.
Of course it's the main event that this show is, rightly,
most remembered for. Mankind versus The Rock was a competitive match (although
not as good as the work they'd do together over the months that followed) that
played out with McMahon and his entourage at ringside. It was set up to make
viewers believe that Mankind was Vince's choice for champion and Rock was the
underdog fighting against all the odds. Not only did it make sense in its own
right but it was a framing device designed to call back to the main event of
the previous year's show. For anyone unfamiliar with that (not that I'd expect
many bothering to read this far to be unfamiliar) the '97 Survivor Series had
seen WWF champion Bret Hart defending against on-screen and real life arch
rival Shawn Michaels, with it being (fairly) common knowledge that Hart was on
his way out of the company and refusing to lose the belt to Michaels. The match
ended with Michaels applying the Sharpshooter, Hart's own finishing hold, to
Hart and Vince, who was uncharacteristically at ringside for the match,
demanding the bell be rung and Michaels announced as the new champion.
That sequence, by November 1998, had become known as the
Montreal Screwjob (because it was a screw job that took place in Montreal,
obvs). It's something that's been played on a lot since, both by the WWF and
others, but in late '98 it wasn't something that the WWF seemed reluctant to
acknowledge or dwell it. That changed when Rock placed Mankind in the
Sharpshooter and McMahon had the bell rung.
 |
| A successful swerve. |
Russo and the rest of the WWF's creative types had had
the genius idea of ending the show with a swerve turn, a reveal that The Rock
and Vince had been in cahoots all along, Mankind a mere patsy in the chairman's
villainous machinations. Russo has rightly been accused of booking too many
swerve turns in his career but this one made complete sense and provided a neat
payoff. Of course it was The Rock, with his movie star good looks and third
generation status, that was Vince's chosen one, not the affable, slightly out
of shape Mankind. Rock's victories over Corporate henchmen in the earlier
rounds immediately made sense. His only real challenge all night had been his
match against 'The Dead Man', and he'd won that after interference from Kane.
The show provided a great climax to story threads that
had been present since SummerSlam and set up fresh ones that ran the company
through to WrestleMania XV the following March. It was a pivotal show for the
promotion creatively and showed just how good the Russo approach could be with
the right conditions. He would never again produce anything this good.
Certainly not enough to concoct a top five list.
