As the WWE moved into the middle months of 1997, they faced a bit of a clashing of styles. Despite finally building up a roster of players that was pretty solid, they were still using old-school formulas to pair them up. In a few years, this would all change: Stone Cold would become the beer-swigging everyman, The Rock would be Mr. Cool, and the McMahon itself would even take center stage. Like it or hate it, I would argue that was a much needed shake-up because of what we see in events like King of the Ring 1997: Great talent in boring match pairings.
Let's look at a few of them:
-HHH beating Mankind for the KOTR mantra. "HHH" was not yet the more interesting "Triple-H" character, while Mankind had yet to sprout his different personalities. As a result, this is just a typical match between two good ring athletes, with little to no heat behind it. -Michaels/Austin suffers from the fact that for whatever reason, that pairing doesn't quite work as well as Austin/Hart (as seen at WrestleMania 13). These two were the top superstars in the game at the time, but again really didn't have any angles to play off of. Once again: a solid match with little hype. -Featuring Faarooq in any sort of main event is a bit ridiculous, but at the same time the WWE was running out of opponents to pair with Undertaker. It wouldn't be until Kane came along later that 'Taker really got a compelling opponent.
So, KOTR '97 is a bit odd in that it features a very solid stable of talent, yet with most of those figures not reaching (or being allowed to reach) their full potential. A straight-down-the-middle 5-star rating is the result.
Let's look at a few of them:
-HHH beating Mankind for the KOTR mantra. "HHH" was not yet the more interesting "Triple-H" character, while Mankind had yet to sprout his different personalities. As a result, this is just a typical match between two good ring athletes, with little to no heat behind it. -Michaels/Austin suffers from the fact that for whatever reason, that pairing doesn't quite work as well as Austin/Hart (as seen at WrestleMania 13). These two were the top superstars in the game at the time, but again really didn't have any angles to play off of. Once again: a solid match with little hype. -Featuring Faarooq in any sort of main event is a bit ridiculous, but at the same time the WWE was running out of opponents to pair with Undertaker. It wouldn't be until Kane came along later that 'Taker really got a compelling opponent.
So, KOTR '97 is a bit odd in that it features a very solid stable of talent, yet with most of those figures not reaching (or being allowed to reach) their full potential. A straight-down-the-middle 5-star rating is the result.