October 26, 1998 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Steve Austin takes Vince McMahon hostage on Raw

In an episode basically lifted from a fairly unknown movie “Swimming with Sharks,” Steve Austin took Vince McMahon hostage on the live Raw on 10/19 and spent most of the show teasing that he was going to kill him before shooting him with a pop gun, resulting in McMahon supposedly peeing in his pants.

Between the ridiculously bad overacting by McMahon, the silly storyline that has potentially scary repercussions seeing 13,000 people enthusiastically rooting for Austin to pull the trigger on McMahon, and one of the worst main events in Raw history with an Undertaker vs. Kane casket match that was actually worse than their PPV match the previous night and ended in a chorus of boos when both simply walked to the dressing room for a non-finish, it was generally, but not universally considered the worst episode of Raw in a long time.

The movie this was based on was about a man fired from his job in an ad agency who takes his boss hostage in his boss’ home. Many of the spots from the movie were re-created in the television angle which was teased from the start of the show. McMahon, acting ballsy, got all the wrestlers in the ring and said firing Austin was better than sex and claimed he could fire any of them at any time. Austin appeared on the TitanTron in the parking lot with a .38 special. Two police officers (Milwaukee indie wrestlers) instead of arresting him, were asking him for autographs while McMahon cried to Gerald Brisco, Pat Patterson and Sgt. Slaughter. Earlier a police officer with the guard dog gimmick from last week walked out tired of McMahon’s browbeating. In a lame excuse to get Brisco, Patterson and Slaughter out of the picture, all three left 35 minutes into the show to get coffee and were never seen again. At the start of the second hour, McMahon got a phone call in his office from Austin, and tried to escape in his limo, but Austin was waiting and kidnapped McMahon and held him hostage the rest of the show as he constantly pulled out weapons such as a knife and bow & arrow and teased he was going to kill McMahon at the end while McMahon cried, and even oinked like a pig.

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