[1998-07-26-WWF-Fully Loaded] Steve Austin & The Undertaker vs Mankind & Kane

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. The biggest problem the WWF had at this time, which was somewhat unavoidable, was that they had so little depth on top that it became tough to distinguish their TV and PPV main events. We've seen so many combinations of these four guys, and while they weren't at the point yet where it was completely stale, this wasn't really a worthy PPV main event either. Undertaker stands on the apron, leaving Austin to work most of this match by himself. But when Austin makes the hot tag, Undertaker seems to have a change of heart. Crowd comes unglued for that, because they frame it as an end to the conspiracy rumors. Undertaker pins Kane, which gives Austin and Undertaker the tag titles, giving us the second version of Tag Team Partners Who Hate Each Other to build up a main event feud.

[soup23]

I really dislike the main rivals as tag champs narrative as it just shows how undervalued tag wrestling and cohesiveness is. Still, the pop for Taker's hot tag was great and I thought Kane was working really hard here getting huge air for the chokeslam and bumping around for Austin.

[PeteF3]

Definitely a throwaway in the annals of Attitude Era PPVs. The dueling-tag-champions gimmick isn't completely played out yet, but it's rapidly approaching that point. The action we see isn't really that good, with some weirdly inconsistent selling by Austin, but Undertaker does a really good job of working on the apron despite (or precisely because of) not doing anything until deciding to tag in.