Talk about it here.

Once again, WHERE IS THE WAR GAMES BUILD UP?

 

Good interview in spite of me not being a fan of this angle.

100% what Loss said.

Yeah, all the War Games guys are all over this yearbook and there is no mentioned of them being in that match. Quite the difference from the build up of 94 War Games.

Rude with a good heel promo saying Steamboat can't get through him, but no mention of their PPV main event.

Boy, I'm pumped for this big Rude/Steamboat title match at WrestleWar!

 

The roles are reversed but this angle is way, way too similar to the Liz/Savage/Flair triangle.

Good promo from Rude, but, like Loss said, where is the buildup to War Games? With all these great promos, I'm bummed that the blowoff to Rude/Steamboat was the Iron Man Match, which was non title?

It just hit me; this angle would have made more sense if it had been a rehash of the Cheryl Roberts angle from 1988. Have Rude as the stalker and Steamer as the one looking to humble him and avenge Bonnie by taking the U.S. title. Yes, it's a note-for-note copy of Savage/Flair/Liz, but sometimes you can't improve on the "original" (note the quotation marks).

 

Rude does well for what he's given here, but this angle's already so strange and uncomfortable that it really doesn't matter. Knowing that WarGames, WCW's ultimate proving ground, is being largely ignored and that the blowoff to this feud will be non-title kind of makes the whole thing a wash no matter how good the performances are at a given time. Even if Steamer beats Rude in the end, he gets nothing whatsoever for his trouble. They'd have been better off stashing Vader in the bullpen for a while, having Rude go title vs. title with Sting, and either sending Steamer after Austin and the TV belt or keeping him with Dustin to feud with Arn/Eaton over the tag belts. (What do you do with Windham? Who knows?)

Hard to fault Rude here, he does great with what he is given.  Just hard to swallow the whole way this was booked.