The Wheel of Reviews has determined that we should spend the festive period across the pond, taking a look at 1998’s WWF Capital Carnage. The event comes to us from the former London Arena (which I learned from Wikipedia was demolished in 2006) on December 6, 1998, about a week before Rock Bottom: In Your House. Which I recently reviewed along with a number of one-off WWE PPVs from the 90s, which you can check out here. This will be the first time that I’ve gotten to watch a UK-only WWF pay-per-view, and while I think I know what these shows are it’s still cool to look for some hidden gems.
Our opening contest pits Gangrel against Al Snow and London loves both guys. There are Styrofoam heads everywhere in the crowd. The first thing you’ll notice about this show is just how hot the London crowd is. It’s pretty evident from the get go that this crowd is going to love whatever is put in front of them. Such is the case here, as Snow and Gangrel have a decent Raw match during which JR and the King would only talk about the opening promo featuring Steve Austin. The Brood eventually surround the ring to distract the referee right after Snow hits a tornado DDT. The distraction from Christian gives Snow enough time to give Gangrel head, but then eat a missile dropkick from Edge and Gangrel steals a victory. Again, nothing really special here but a competent opening contest.
Tag team action next as the Legion of Doom-ish of Animal and Droz take on the Headbangers. JR reminding us this match is coming just 3 weeks after one of the most disgusting angles of 1998 and the Hawk suicide segment. The less said about that abomination the better. Droz gets to show off quite a bit of athleticism in this nothing of a tag match, until he makes a rookie mistake and gets rolled up. Three and a half minutes that just flew by really. Some of the little storytelling happening with this show came after the bell as the tension between Animal and Droz boiled over and they came to blows.
Val Venis continues his rookie year in the WWF next, facing off with former Intercontinental Champion Goldust. Both men would hold that belt over the next few months during a very busy 1999 for that title. Oh god, I forgot the also horrible angle that was the Val Venis/Terri Runnells pregnancy-not-pregnancy angle with Goldust tagged in the middle with his ex-wife. Look, not all of the Attitude Era was gold, no pun intended and this and the last match are reminders of that. So far it’s the most intense match of the night as it started hot and never really slowed back into first gear. Goldust even busted out a slingshot belly to back suplex, which I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him do. The finish had much to be desired as Val stopped a shattered dreams attempt by pulling the ref in front of him then hitting Goldust with the most devastating move in sports entertainment: the roll-up!!! Dustin did get his shine back after the bell and got to deliver shattered dreams. Despite the ugly angles that brought these two together, this was the most entertaining match so far.
Out comes the McMahons and the Stooges to needle the crowd. Patterson announces some changes to the card. Triple H is being pulled out of the WWF Title match and gets to face Jeff Jarrett, while The Rock will defend the title now against X-Pac. Gerry Brisco announces that Vinnie Jones is in the building. Shane cuts a pretty homophobic promo on Jones, which is another reminder that the 90s was a different world of garbage. Vince wraps us up by running down the British, the British Empire, the Falkland Islands and tea time and works in some classic Asian racism as well. Classic heel shit though I wouldn’t have minded if you cut 2 minutes off of these promos and let Val and Goldust go a little bit longer.
Right after Vince’s racist zinger against Britons of Asian descent, here’s Tiger Ali Singh to square off with Edge. Some day, there’s probably a deep dive piece into the WWF career of Singh to be researched and written. It’s the crowd’s chance to be racist when they boo the man calling out the suffering dealt out to its colonies by the British Empire. And then here comes a Canadian. It’s been a really weird 15 minutes of show time. Edge might have spent more time running interference earlier than he did in this match, as he beat on Singh for about three minutes before going for a cross body and having that turned into a slam and pin combination. Singh was supposed to get his feet on the ropes to score the win, but they landed too far out and he literally covered and pulled Edge close enough that he could get a foot on the middle rope. Quite a bit of meh here.
In the house show spirit of doing everything on the card, we get a mixed tag match between Marc Mero and Jacqueline and the odder pairing of Sable and Christian. Jackie starts right off by double legging Mero, paying off the fact that Mero had fired her several weeks ago. This would be Mero’s final match in the WWE, as he’d leave along with then-wife Sable in 1999. I will say this about the in-ring stuff. Until just now, I’ve never seen anyone throw a superkick in segments, but Sable managed that feat. Her trying to get to Jackie and Jackie not wanting any part of the woman who just took her WWF Women’s title for some reason is the story of the match. The men grappling is just the window dressing. Sable wins it with a TKO. Jackie jumped referee Tim White, climbing on his shoulders and allowing Sable to rip off Jackie’s shirt. Of course it was censored on Peacock, but apparently not on the original VHS release. So, uh, I also forgot that Sable was… was the drizzling shits in the ring. There’s no other way to describe it. Pass this one and like all of her in-ring work.
Ken Shamrock puts the WWF Intercontinental title on the line next against Steve Blackman. JR is indignant that the referee of the main event, the Big Boss Man, is accompanying his Corporate running mate Shamrock. Props to the London ringsiders getting a “you fat bastard” chant going at Boss Man. This one started out pretty hot but slowed down to a bit of a grind. Despite this rivalry being seemingly perfect for each man, it just never seemed like there was much of any chemistry between them. See their Iron Circle match at Fully Loaded ’99. Boss Man does come into play, clocking Blackman in the leg with his night stick and allowing Shamrock to get the anklelock and a submission win. I don’t remember if Blackman and Boss Man got a program out of this, but Blackman would transition into the Boss Man’s territory in ’99: the hardcore division.
Now, I like the possibilities here in Jeff Jarrett vs. Triple H because you’ve got too good workers who can tell good stories. Granted, they were literally just thrown together tonight so I dunno what story is to be told but still. They had a decent back and forth match, with the finish centered around Chyna stopping the outside interference of Debra then stopping Jarrett from using a chair. Pedigree, 1-2-3. Solid, but another match that could have used more than the 6 minutes it was given to get to another level.
Former European champion D’Lo Brown and Mark Henry challenge the New Age Outlaws for the WWF Tag Team titles next. London is no fan of their former champion, dumping on D’Lo right from his entrance. This one started out like a New Age Outlaws match. The champs got some big spots, got off a nice double drop kick on Mark Henry. Road Dogg got beat on a bunch, Billy made the save but he took this one home all the way to a rather abrupt ending, pinning D’Lo after a piledriver.
The Rock makes his first pay-per-view defense of the WWF Championship next against X-Pac, who was entered into this match mid-show. And it feels very much like a house show title match. They have a back and forth opening until X-Pac gets the better of the champ one too many times. That causes the Rock to tell London the hell with them, then hell with X-Pac and the hell with this match, grab his belt and make for the back. That is until his progress was stopped by Triple H and Chyna. From there, X-Pac did his thing: get pounded, try to fire back before getting knocked down again but still somehow kicking out of every pin. There were a couple of well built spots as X-Pac makes his comeback and keeps coming oh so close to dethroning The Rock, including a Triple H distraction and a Chyna low blow into a near fall. The Rock eventually escapes with the title by rolling to the outside and shoving Chyna, which draws the ire and fists of Triple H and eventually a disqualification. If this one was on Raw, I’d say it was a great build for a cage match or street fight to blow off the mini-program but that was about it. The Rock went right back to his feud with Mankind, defending his title a week later against Foley at Rock Bottom.
Before out fatal four-way main event, Shane comes out to run the McMahon special to the match. Shane will be the guest ring announcer, Pat Patterson is the guest timekeeper, Gerald Brisco is replacing the Boss Man as guest referee but the Boss Man will be the outside enforcer for this no DQ brawl and Vince himself is guest commentator. All Corporate, all the time. At the time, it always made sense because Vince would do anything to beat back Austin and Austin would always find a way. At the end of the day, this was a 1998 WWF PPV main event. It was a big, kinda messy brawl that lived up to the hype with the level of violence but were far from being considered mat classics. I will say, they forgot to go back and freeze frame the chair shots in this one like they have to some of the other big shows of the era. Undertaker walloped Mankind right between the eyes and it was live and in living color. Austin has the match won after stunning Kane but Brisco refuses to count, so he gets decked. Earl Hebner is there to make the count after Kane eats a second stunner and Steve Austin once again escapes the Corporation’s best laid plans.
FINAL GRADE: D+
These UK-only shows were glorified house shows that were pushed along by the fact that the crowds were always white hot whenever the WWF came to town. They still are really. Turns out the Brits love their wrestling. But this would be an average episode of Raw at the time, minus story development. There’s nothing really here that you need to rush to Peacock to see, but if you’re looking to pass an afternoon with some Attitude Era product, you’ll probably kept for 3 hours, if not entertained.
Next week’s Retro Review is not a randomized choice and not that retro really, but it will be new to me because I was too hungover to take this one in when it originally aired. So next week, the last review of 2023 will take us all the way back to… 2022 and WWE Day 1!
The Finisher 