Ken Shamrock vs Owen Hart (WWF, 8-30-1998)

WWF SummerSlam, New York, NY

Well, I did the DUNGEON MATCH from Fully Loaded ’98 earlier, and that remains super fun, so let’s add in the LION’S DEN MATCH from the following month’s SummerSlam.

SummerSlam was at Madison Square Garden, but they chucked a cage into the MSG Theater for this match, and got an additional live crowd in there, too. It’s a rowdy little atmosphere. Steve Blackman was supposed to be in Shamrock’s corner and he isn’t, they’ve had recent problems.

Shamrock drives Owen into the cage quickly, then takes him over with a fireman’s carry and goes for the arm. Owen gets free and slams Shamrock down, then tries to ground-and-pound but Shamrock turns that over. Shamrock hits a back suplay, now controlling with a version of the sleephold. Owen breaks that with a low blow, it’s anything goes.

Owen whips Shamrock into the fence, then just kind of stands there like a dolt waiting for Ken to come off and clothesline him. Shamrock takes Owen’s shirt off and chokes him with it. Owen bleeding from the mouth a bit. Shamrock drives some good knees into Owen’s head.

Shamrock parkours off the side of the cage and then hits a belly-to-belly suplay. Shamrock gets his head cracked off the beam, though, and Owen is going to work now. He hits an enzuigiri.

With a live crowd and a more structured space (being inside a structure and all) this is way more of a normal wrestling match than the DUNGEON MATCH, and that’s not to its advantage. They can kinda do Irish whips and shit halfway normally here.

Hart goes for a piledriver or whatever and gets backdropped over. Owen jumps up for a no-momentum Frankensteiner which is just him getting himself power bombed. Shamrock leaps off the side of the cage for another flying back elbow, then hits his front high kick to the face, and then he leaps off the cage again and is caught in a Hart powerslam.

Owen with a belly-to-belly. It’s, like, the stuff they’re doing mostly looks fine and all, but it’s caught in this awkward middle zone where it is neither the pure novelty of DUNGEON MATCH nor a regular wrestling match. It half-asses two things instead of whole-assing one, as they say.

Hart gets the Sharpshooter, but Shamrock claws up the cage and breaks out, and then hits a tornado DDT of sorts. Owen comes back and gets the dragon sleeper, or as we’re treating it here, the special Ultimate Fighting Choke taught to him by Dan Severn. But Shamrock escapes quickly and gets the ankle lock again. Severn considers throwing the towel, but just leaves in disgust and Owen taps out.

The Dungeon Match is significantly better.

Rating: 2/5