100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 28 - Kai En Tai vs. The Oddities
Summerslam 1998
Earthquake wrestling in a mask and an Eric Cartman t-shirt. Oh yeah, it’s the late 90s.
This is a 3 on 4 handicap match featuring the three behemoths Golga, Giant Silver and Kurgan against four members of Kai en tai (Dick Togo, Men’s Teioh, Funaki & Taka Michinoku). For those unfamiliar with this, you may think this is a bizarre match. You probably have many questions such as:
Why is this on a pay-per-view?
Why is this on a Summerslam?
Why is this ten minutes long?
And you would be right to ask all of these questions. In fact someone who has watched so much of this time period of WWE, and I still do not know why this ever happened.
If you’re watching on the Network/Peacock, you’re probably even more confused why you can see Insane Clown Posse out of the corner of your eye. They performed for the Oddities entrance, not that you would know this from the Network version because the Oddities are already in the ring immediately following Mankind’s promo. WWE presumably didn’t want to pay the rights to the song performed by ICP. To make matters worse, almost as soon as the match ends it abruptly cuts to the next match. This is an already confusing and out of place match even at the time, that has somehow only become more baffling and jarring today with the editing of this event.
The match follows a simple premise. The big guys are big and beat the ever loving hell out of Kai En Tai. Kai En Tai can’t do much of anything to them. The big guys are basically taking the piss for nine of the ten minutes with multiple comedy spots throughout. Such genius comedy spots as a man pouring a drink into a smelly shoe. If I have a feint bit of praise, I did enjoy some of the 4-on-1 tag moves onto Golga, albeit briefly. And hey, if you ever wanted to see Earthquake play face-in-peril for 30 seconds against four tiny Japanese men, this is the match for you.
You may be forgiven for thinking that watching four little guys bump around like madmen could be entertaining. The problem with that is that the big guys are so horrible that their bumping just looks silly, and not in a good way. It’s one of those matches that JR is unashamedly calling shit through, which isn’t surprising considering two of the big men almost make Giant Gonzalez look like a competent wrestler. It’s your classic big guys that can’t throw a convincing strike to save their lives. It’s outright embarrassing at times. The giants hit a four-man chokeslam on Kai en Tai, and Golga hits all four with a splash to pick up the win.
Of course with all comedy matches, ultimately it comes down to do you find it funny? There’s few things worse than comedy in wrestling that misses the mark - something that we’ll see later with perhaps one of my more contentious choices later on. But perhaps the more pressing issue is this is ten minutes long, which is unreasonably long for what it is. If this were three minutes, it probably wouldn’t touch this list. I can’t really imagine anyone finding this funny, or even entertaining in the slightest. In fact, I have no idea who this is for at all. By all means if you are a psychopath that enjoys this, please let me know and then consider checking yourself into the nearest psychiatric hospital.
Up Next - Perhaps the most infamous example of WWE fans hijacking a match.
Previous Entry:
Next Entry:
