Judgment Day: In Your House was a 1998 professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It was the 25th In Your House event and inaugural Judgment Day event. It took place on October 18, 1998, at the Rosemont Horizon in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. Nine professional wrestling matches were scheduled on the event's card.
The main event saw The Undertaker and Kane fighting each other, despite their alliance at the time, for the WWF Championship which had been vacated after company owner Vince McMahon stripped former champion "Stone Cold" Steve Austin to further the storyline. Austin was made the special guest referee for the match, a role he was not keen to accept. The card included four other championship matches. All WWF championships except the WWF Women's Championship, which had been reinstated only a month before, were contested at the event.
This was one of the In Your House events which later became the title of an annual pay-per-view, replacing the method at the time of making new names for all events aside from the "Big Five" (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, King of the Ring, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series). Judgment Day returned in May 2000, becoming the promotion's annual May PPV until its final event in 2009.
Production Background
In Your House was a series of monthly professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) events first produced by the 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. Judgment Day: In Your House was the 25th In Your House event and took place on October 18, 1998, at the Rosemont Horizon in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois.
Storylines The major storyline entering Judgment Day involved the WWF Championship and WWF owner Vince McMahon’s rivalry with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, into which The Undertaker and Kane were drawn.
Shortly before SummerSlam, it had been revealed that Undertaker had formed an alliance with his brother Kane. After Austin successfully defended the WWF Championship against Undertaker, the alliance between the brothers was revealed to be of a more conniving nature than had been previously thought: McMahon had struck a deal with them in order to try and remove the title from Austin, which he had been trying to do from the moment Austin had first won the championship at WrestleMania XIV earlier in 1998.
Everything came to a climax at Breakdown: In Your House, which was held in September in Hamilton, Ontario. McMahon signed a triple threat match between Austin, Undertaker, and Kane for the WWF Championship. However, he added a stipulation where Undertaker could not pin Kane or make him submit, while Kane could not do the same to Undertaker. This turned the contest into a de facto handicap match, since either man could only score the fall over the champion to win the match. Austin was pinned simultaneously by Undertaker and Kane, thus losing the match. He also lost the championship, which McMahon retrieved from the ringside area and walked out of the building with while giving Austin the finger. However, since both Undertaker and Kane had scored the fall, the status of the title was unclear.
The following evening on Raw is War from Detroit, McMahon held a ceremony to crown the new champion and called both Undertaker and Kane to the ring. While McMahon was speaking, Austin commandeered a Zamboni backstage and drove it out to the ringside area, then dove from atop it into the ring and began assaulting McMahon. Austin was eventually separated from McMahon and arrested by the security detail in the ring, then taken away.
Once Austin was removed, McMahon resumed the ceremony. However, he announced that the deal he had brokered for Undertaker and Kane to receive a title shot was contingent on them protecting him from Austin. Since they had failed to do so, he said he was not going to award the WWF Championship to either one of them. Instead, the championship was to be considered vacant and Undertaker and Kane, “whether they liked it or not”, would face off for it at Judgment Day. McMahon then went further and inserted Austin into the contest as the special guest referee, saying that he wanted to see Austin “suffer the indignity” of having to count the fall and award the WWF Championship to one of the two men who caused him to lose it.
McMahon then wished the brothers luck, claiming they were going to need it. He then claimed that dealing with the two of them was like “dealing with the handicapped”, calling Kane physically handicapped and Undertaker mentally handicapped; Undertaker responded by telling McMahon that he and Kane would make him handicapped if he crossed them again. McMahon then made an obscene gesture toward the two, which Undertaker caught him doing. Undertaker then took McMahon down and began assaulting him, with Kane joining in by stomping him. Undertaker then went to work on McMahon’s leg, attacking it with several elbow drops and locking in a submission hold while Kane kept McMahon’s associates Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco from stepping in to stop them. Finally, the attack moved outside the ring where Undertaker used the steel ring steps to crush the injured leg.
Austin, meanwhile, got further revenge on the injured McMahon on the following week’s Raw by invading his hospital room and attacking him with a bedpan and a defibrillator before finally sticking an enema tube in his rear end. On October 12 Raw, Austin poured cement on Vince McMahon's Chevrolet Corvette and delivered a promo where he said that he had no intention of cooperating with McMahon and declared the only hand he would raise in victory would be his. McMahon countered by warning Austin that if he did not perform his duties properly and award the championship to the winner of the match, he would fire Austin on the spot in front of the audience at the event.
Other stories Dustin Runnels began preaching evangelistic-style condemnation against the controversies of the Attitude Era, specifically the sexual content. On Sunday Night Heat, on September 13, Runnels was walking through the crowd carrying a sign expressing his views when he decided to jump the barrier and assault Val Venis, whose gimmick was that of a pornographic film star, from behind with the sign. The next night on Raw, Venis responded by showing Runnels one of his films, The Preacher's Wife, which showed Venis with Runnels' wife, Terri Runnels. The two met at the Breakdown: In Your House pay-per-view with Venis coming out on top due to interference from Terri. The following night on Raw, Runnels revealed the nature of his evangelist message "He is coming" when the arena turned gold and a video played, presaging the return of his erstwhile persona, Goldust. During Heat on the night of Judgment Day: In Your House, Goldust further mocked Venis by sending him a present as he was guest commentating. It was a gold-coated protective cup.
Irate at being hospitalized by Kane and The Undertaker, Vince McMahon returned to work and instantly stripped Triple H of his Intercontinental Title mid-week on October 9 due to a knee injury. A quick tournament was held the following week on Raw is War, which saw Ken Shamrock crowned with his first WWF championship after assaulting X-Pac (Sean Waltman) to aid him in the final.
After losing the European Championship to X-Pac on the September 21 episode of Raw is War, D'Lo Brown got a rematch and won the title back when X-Pac was caught on the outside of the ring by Nation member Mark Henry, who ran X-Pac into the ring post and then back into the ring, setting him up for a Lo Down from Brown.
Event + Other on-screen personnelRole:Name:English commentatorsJim RossJerry LawlerSpanish commentatorsCarlos CabreraHugo SavinovichInterviewerMichael ColeRing announcersTony Chimel (Sunday Night Heat)Howard Finkel (PPV)RefereesTim WhiteEarl Hebner Jim KorderasBruce Prichard "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (Kane vs. The Undertaker)
Sunday Night Heat Before the broadcast began Steve Blackman pinned Bradshaw after a pump kick. Also The Oddities (Giant Silva, Kurrgan and Golga) defeated Los Boricuas (Jose Estrada, Miguel Pérez, Jr. and Jesus Castillo) by pinfall after Golga struck Castillo with the Avalanche Splash. The final two non-pay-per-view matches were The Godfather using a thrust kick on Faarooq before pinning him and Jeff Jarrett lost to Scorpio with a roll-up pin.
Preliminary matches The actual pay-per-view started with Al Snow facing Marc Mero. Before the match, Jeff Jarrett came to the ring, trying to goad Snow into a fight. While Snow was distracted with Jarrett, Mero hit him from behind but it did little to help his plight, Snow slamming Mero from an Irish whip and landing him on the ground several times. Mero tried taunting Snow by attacking Head but Snow stopped him before he could manage it and later in the match, Snow moonsaulted onto Mero but rather than attempt a pin he was distracted by Jacqueline on the apron, allowing Mero to lowblow him. Mero then replied with his own moonsault crossbody but could not secure a three count. Snow then gained momentum after his trademark series of headbutts, followed by an enziguiri. When he tried another moonsault, though, Jacqueline pulled Mero out of the way reversing the match briefly until Snow rolled out of a Wild Thing, only stopping a pin count with his foot on the bottom rope. In the ensuing struggle Mero set up the TKO but as he swung Snow round, the wrestler found his way back onto his feet and pinned Mero after a Snow Plow.
The six-man tag team match began with Animal being whipped around the ring by Skull but after clearing him from the ring, Hawk was tagged in and despite some reversal attempts on Skull, continued to dominate until he tagged in Droz who, after being distracted by 8-Ball on the ring apron, suffered at the hands of Disciples of Apocalypse who illegally choked him in the corner. Eventually Paul Ellering made a brief appearance, kicking Droz before tagging back out. With a flukey DDT, Droz managed to pause the match, eventually making a tag to Hawk and as all of the six man fought, Droz took Ellering and 8-Ball out of the ring. Skull, meanwhile, was set up for the Doomsday Device after which Droz ran back in the ring and took the pin, despite not being the legal man, much to the chagrin of Hawk.
The first of five championship matches, for the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship, started with the champion Taka Michinoku kicking Christian out of the ring and flooring him with a suicide top rope crossbody. When Christian tried to reenter the ring, kicks to his midsection left him hanging on the rope and Taka flew a knee drop onto him. Christian managed to gain some momentum after kicking out of the turnbuckle, slowing Taka's dynamism with a falling reverse DDT and afterward delivering a succession of two suplexes and a facebuster. With Taka thrown out of the ring, Christian mimicked the champion with a suicidal crossbody dive. The match was reset even after a big splash from Christian left him floored. Christian then became the recipient of a dropkick to the outside, then a baseball slide finished by an Asai Moonsault. His gesturing to the crowd allowed Christian some rest time though, and Taka could not pin Christian inside the ring, especially after he escaped a Michinoku Driver II. A second attempt at the driver was reversed into a cradle pin, allowing Christian to win the championship on his debut appearance, with Edge watching on from the back of the crowd.