Rock Bottom: In Your House

Production

Background

In Your House was a series of monthly professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) events first produced by the American promotion World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in May 1995. They aired when the promotion was not holding one of its then-five major PPVs (WrestleMania, King of the Ring, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and Royal Rumble) and were sold at a lower cost. Rock Bottom: In Your House was the 26th In Your House event and took place on December 13, 1998, at General Motors Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This was the second In Your House at the venue, after In Your House 9 in July 1996, and fifth In Your House in Canada overall, including In Your House 4 in Winnipeg, Manitoba in October 1995, In Your House 16 in Calgary, Alberta in July 1997, and Breakdown: In Your House in Hamilton, Ontario in September 1998. The event was named after The Rock's finishing move, the "Rock Bottom". The Rock himself was also involved in a prominent match on the card.

Storylines

When The Nation split up, D'Lo Brown and Mark Henry were left as a tag team, with Henry's gimmick being that of the ladies man Sexual Chocolate. When Terri Runnels revealed she was pregnant, Val Venis admitted to having a vasectomy and disowned her, aligning himself with The Godfather by virtue of his pimp gimmick. Jacqueline had also been ditched by her partner Marc Mero and so she formed Pretty Mean Sisters with Runnels, putting their needs first and ostensibly being seduced by Mark Henry.

The Headbangers turned heel in November. The Oddities had come to the ring with Insane Clown Posse, who sung their entrance theme at the time and when The Headbangers came to the ring, they joined in dancing with the stable. However, after spraying silly string into the crowd, they then sprayed into the eyes of The Oddities and since then had been utilising weapons and other underhand tactics to win matches. Most notably, they challenged Insane Clown Posse to a match but the two asked The Oddities to substitute for them before the Posse attacked Oddities and helped The Headbangers win.

On September 28, Owen Hart (kayfabe) broke Dan Severn's neck with a piledriver. He announced the following week that he would retire from professional wrestling, however at exactly the same time a lucha libre type character started making appearances called The Blue Blazer. The Blazer was a gimmick of Hart's in the late '80s and this did not escape the fans, or the attention of Steve Blackman. The Blazer began to regularly interfere in matches, using moves that were associated with Hart and eventually Blackman caught up with The Blue Blazer backstage, trying to rip off his mask and prove that it was Hart. When he did this, however, Hart came at Blackman from behind and locked in his dragon sleeperhold. A variety of repeated attacks continued to occur, with The Blazer attacking Blackman, or Blackman attacking The Blazer only for Hart to use this as a distraction to further beat Blackman until on December 7 he officially came out of retirement to meet Blackman at the event.

On December 6's Sunday Night Heat, the sexually charged Goldust challenged Jeff Jarrett to a match in which, if he won, Jarrett's business-like valet Debra would have to strip naked. Jarrett accepted the match on the condition that without a valet, should Goldust lose he would have to do the same. The following evening on Raw, Goldust came to the ring in just a trenchcoat, flashing Jarrett and causing him to lose his match while later in the evening Debra would do the same to Goldust, but as his opponent Owen Hart was also distracted, it actually helped him win the match.

Event

D'Lo Brown offered little resistance to Val Venis or Godfather when he was tagged in. Similarly when Mark Henry was tagged in, he was thrown around the ring and received the Ho Train from Godfather. He managed to reverse an Irish whip, though, and began to slam Godfather around the ring. Despite Venis tagging in, Henry still remained dominant and tagged in his own partner, Brown who successfully took down Venis with the Sky High. The match was effectively reset when Brown missed the Lo Down causing him and Venis both to crawl to their partners slowly. With Godfather in the ring, Brown was thrown out as Mark Henry received a double team suplex. Although Venis continued to dominate Henry in the ring, a fight outside the ring between The Godfather's Hos and PMS distracted the referee while Jacqueline pulled down Venis' trunks, distracting him and allowing Henry to push him over and finish him with a big splash followed by a pin.

Mosh fought his way out of the corner to begin the match, jumping over the turnbuckle to pull Kurrgan's neck onto the top ropes. When Mosh tried to jump on Kurrgan, though, he used his height to catch Mosh and slam him into the mat. Mosh fled to tag in his partner, Thrasher, who similarly felt the mat with a sidewalk slam. Golga briefly used his weight with seated sentons and leg drops to further take out Thrasher but when Kurrgan was brought back in, he missed a splash and both Headbangers teamed up to suplex him, following up with a frog leap. Being dominated, Kurrgan desperately tagged in Golga who managed to turn things round, utilizing running jumps again to take out Thrasher, but Mosh made a blind tag and while Golga was busy missile dropkicked him and followed with a pin while Thrasher held Kurrgan's leg to prevent him from breaking up the pincount.

Steve Blackman entered the ring on the receiving end of floor kicks from Owen Hart who then suplexed him. Blackman was able to counter an Irish whip and forced Hart into the corner, clotheslining him then kicking him out of the ring as Hart tried to flee. Blackman brought him back into the ring to deliver a snap suplex and a backbreaker before locking an Indian crossbow hold. When Hart would not tap he released him and tried to use his leg in a throw but received an enzuigiri which allowed Hart to dominate again, teasing a Sharpshooter but merely kicking him in the torso. After a low blow in the corner and an inverted atomic drop, Hart suplexed Blackman and climbed the ropes for a diving elbow drop. When Blackman would not be pinned, Hart tried to secure him with a sleeper hold but Blackman stood up out of it and regained some momentum, the two clashing with kicks and throws. Hart untied the turnbuckle pad but found himself thrown into it, Blackman then jumping out of the ring to drag Hart's neck onto the top rope. He climbed back in the ring and Hart countered a sleeper with the Dragon Sleeper. Hart followed this with a DDT but when he tried a flying move, Blackman was able to side step him and lock Hart in his own move, the Sharpshooter. Hart crawled for the rope break and then left the ring in pain; Blackman initially followed to fight him but became aware of the referee's count and ran into the ring to win via count out.

Reception

The event has received generally negative reviews from critics.

In 2008, J.D. Dunn of 411Mania gave the event a rating of 3.5 [Bad], stating, "How bad was this PPV? Steve Blackman was in the best match. I don't think Debra's all that attractive, so the stips for the Jarrett/Goldust match didn't mean much to me outside of drawing heat. The rest was just [God-awful] boring. Unfortunately, while their TV would heat up to the point where they were beating the NBA nearly 7-to-1, the PPVs would continue to flounder off and on until into the summer.

Thumbs way down here."

In 2016, Kevin Pantoja of 411Mania gave the event a rating of 2.5 [Very Bad], stating, "Considering how successful the year of 1998 was for the WWF, it kind of sucks to see the PPV side end on such a whimper. Outside of the WWF Title match, nothing on this show is really any good. There are two decent matches hidden in there but this is an easy skip. Even the main event, which the WWF was mostly nailing at the time, is an abysmal waste of time."

In 2019, CJ of Retro Pro Wrestling described the event as "OK, but nothing special," stating, "This is one of those shows that you keep waiting to get better. Instead, you find yourself sitting there, match after match thinking 'yeah, that was OK, but nothing special.'

That was the frustrating thing about this show. Every match was decent in its own right and nothing was particularly terrible. Even the match involving The Oddities had at least some entertainment value, but other than that, there was nothing that was must-see." He praised the WWF Championship between The Rock and Mankind as an exception.

Aftermath

The Rock and Mankind continued to feud with each other over the WWF Championship throughout the beginning of 1999. Mankind won his first WWF Championship on the January 4 episode of Raw is War by defeating The Rock in the main event thanks to interference by "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. The pre-taped episode was a turning point in the ratings war between WWF and rival promotion WCW; WCW Senior Vice President Eric Bischoff ordered announcer Tony Schiavone to give away the result on a live episode of WCW Monday Nitro that same night, which Schiavone did whilst sarcastically remarking "that'll put some butts in seats!", prompting 600,000 viewers to switch from Nitro to Raw so they could see Mankind's victory. This also coincided with the Fingerpoke of Doom, another controversial WCW angle that saw Hollywood Hogan win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in a screwjob and the subsequent re-unification of the New World Order. Mankind lost the WWF title back to The Rock in a brutal "I Quit" match at the Royal Rumble. Rock and Mankind traded the belt back-and-forth until WrestleMania XV, when The Rock finally lost the WWF Championship to Austin, with Mankind serving as the special guest referee.

On the December 14 episode of Raw is War, The Rock defended his WWF Championship against Triple H, but due to interference from The Corporation and the debuting Test, The Rock retained his title. That same night, the New Age Outlaws lost their WWF World Tag Team titles to the Corporate team of Ken Shamrock and Big Boss Man, who would retain them until January 1999, when they would lose the titles to Jeff Jarrett & Owen Hart, the last title Hart would hold before his death following an in-ring accident.

This would be the last WWF pay-per-view in Vancouver until 2024, when the now-renamed WWE would hold Survivor Series: WarGames in this arena, which had been renamed to Rogers Arena in 2010.