[1998-07-12-WCW-Bash at the Beach] Hulk Hogan & Dennis Rodman vs DDP & Karl Malone

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Such a weird dynamic when the crowd turns on the main event of the biggest drawing pay-per-view in WCW history. Rodman can do impressive looking things for a few seconds at a time but he can't sustain it. I could write several paragraphs on everything wrong with this match but I don't think I have it in me. Malone being put in a position to sell as FIP makes no sense. Starting the match with Rodman and Malone when that's the pairing everyone wants to see makes no sense. This match just goes and goes and goes and I don't understand that approach. They did a perfectly fun/fine sub-15 minute match the year before. There were parts of this that were okay and I think they could have edited this down to something okay. But it fell really flat.

[Childs]

Such a weird spectacle, because I guess it did work on paper in terms of attracting buys, but it couldn't have been good in building any kind of loyalty to the product. Rodman was actually a pretty good heel--the only big pops came because of the heat he'd put on himself. But the crowd didn't give a shit about Malone, and he had nothing in his tool kit to make them care. They also didn't care much about DDP, though he sure tried. Check out that non-ovation when he took the hot tag from Mailman. Also, the match went on and on and on. The cardinal rule with these things is keep it simple and build to a few fun moments. They did that with the previous year's Rodman match. This one dragged on into a huge bore.

[soup23]

Unmitigated disaster. This crowd was dreadful all night but the booking was destined to fail here as everything took so long to come together. They tried to milk every altercation but it fell flat. Rodman looked really disinterested at times and his sequence with DDP was so awful. I also didn't enjoy the finish at all as Hogan and Rodman win and get one over on DDP with the Disciple who know one cares about. Bad omen of big WCW matches since Starrcade. (*1/2)

[Migs]

This crowd seemed way more into the basketball players than the wrestlers.

[PeteF3]

Highlights:

 

- DDP springing to the top turnbuckle and coming off with a good-looking clothesline.

 

Lowlights:

 

- Everything else.

 

A WMOTYC candidate, honestly. Rodman was a mess here and likely on something--Malone totally outworked him, as scary as that sounds. The layout as mentioned makes no sense. Even though I just praised his ability to lay out and work a simple match with a limited opponent like Goldberg, the bloom is really off Hogan as even a smart worker at this point. You simply cannot build a PPV main event in 1998 around rinky-dink bullshit like complaining about phantom hair pulls, double noggin knockers, ten-count turnbuckle rams, and other shit out of the 1986 WWF Tag Team Formula 101 Textbook. The only thing missing was Gorilla Monsoon there to yell, "Holy mackerel! It's pandemonium!" and other assorted cliches. What the hell happened to the people agenting the '97 BATB main event? Cheap-ass finish that was one step above a Fake Sting in terms of lack of creativity, and of course it's the goddamned Disciple who gets the heat for the win. Six days after the Georgia Dome WCW has gone right back to looking like a promotion on fumes.

[TravJ1979]

This was waaaay too long. The crowd sounded like they were chanting "You both suck" multiple times during the match. Rodman can't stand up. Just bad all the way around.

[G. Badger]

Watched this match for nostalgia's sake and had pretty low expectations. In fact, I was expecting some botched moves and other overall sloppiness. However, there was none of that. In fact, this was quite fun! This was probably around the time I stopped following basketball so, to see two greats like Malone and Rodman in the ring was nice and a prime example of how wacky WCW was getting. Nonetheless, that did get non fans interested at the time...at least at my high school. I think if we try to analyze it like a "real" wrestling match, there are so many things to find wrong. But as a spectacle now, 22 years later, its a neat little time capsule match.