Sports Entertainment

WCW shitting themselves? Don't forget Starrcade 1997! Starrcade was WCW's version of Wrestlemania and the 1997 show as the biggest show they would ever do. The main event was Sting versus Hogan after a year long build in which Sting would watch from the rafters and stalk the NWO (and not wrestle) to have Hogan beat the piss out of him and a finish fucked on multiple layers. Nash would also no show because he was booked to lose to The Giant.

The wheels were coming off that cart when things were running at their best. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for Michael Buffer, pyro up the ass, creative control for people that fucking loved politicking, major talent mismanaged (Benoit, Eddie, Jericho, Rey, Flair, Bret when they got him) and then Russo joins the team and the whole thing burns down.

Arbitrary said:

WCW shitting themselves? Don't forget Starrcade 1997! Starrcade was WCW's version of Wrestlemania and the 1997 show as the biggest show they would ever do. The main event was Sting versus Hogan after a year long build in which Sting would watch from the rafters and stalk the NWO (and not wrestle) to have Hogan beat the piss out of him and a finish fucked on multiple layers. Nash would also no show because he was booked to lose to The Giant.

The wheels were coming off that cart when things were running at their best. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for Michael Buffer, pyro up the ass, creative control for people that fucking loved politicking, major talent mismanaged (Benoit, Eddie, Jericho, Rey, Flair, Bret when they got him) and then Russo joins the team and the whole thing burns down.

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The best part of the Sting stalking was NWO acting scared. Like Scooby Doo scared!

Brahma said:

The best part of the Sting stalking was NWO acting scared. Like Scooby Doo scared!

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RUUUUUN VINCENT RUUUUUUUUUUUUN

Gavinmad said:

I saw the night his streak started against Hugh Morrus. Even if Morrus wasn't a huge name back then, you know something big was coming when Goldberg kicked right out of his moonsault. I didn't watch Starrcade but they talked about it on Nitro the next night and I couldn't believe they did it with a taser.

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I remember watching some shoot interview with Nash recently talking about it, in his mind booking the match that way was done to "protect" Goldberg in the sense that the only way the streak could be broken and him beaten was with outside help, and something insane like a taser/cattle prod. Nash seriously thought it was good business for Goldberg to lose this way, then have him drop the belt the next night back to Hogan with the Finger Poke of Doom so that Goldberg could fight them all over again.

Merrith said:

I remember watching some shoot interview with Nash recently talking about it, in his mind booking the match that way was done to "protect" Goldberg in the sense that the only way the streak could be broken and him beaten was with outside help, and something insane like a taser/cattle prod. Nash seriously thought it was good business for Goldberg to lose this way, then have him drop the belt the next night back to Hogan with the Finger Poke of Doom so that Goldberg could fight them all over again.

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Surely the whole point of undefeated streaks is to elevate the person who has it, then the person who breaks it.

Yet WCW thought "Why make 2 stars when we can make 1 star?". Would have been better if Nash won clean, maybe then people who still care about him. Meanwhile Goldberg is still picking up massive WWE cheques.

Reminds me of Charlotte breaking Asuka's streak when Charlotte was already established at the top of the company. They could have done something like have Sonya Deville break it (saw her have some good matches with Asuka) and make a new star instead of being a jobber forever.

WCW definitely had some great moments, but there was fundamental issues that made it unsustainable. it was ALWAYS destined to lose because of that. i love kevin nash, but he's the perfect example of why you never give creative control to an active wrestler. i don't even blame him or hogan or any of those guys who were booking one night, then wrestling the next. when you're in that position, you can't see the forest for the trees.

when sting was appearing in the rafters for a year prior to starcade, it was gold. absolute gold and that's due in no small part to hogan and how he reacted to it. starcade was a mess, according to hogan, because sting was a mess. he was going through a divorce, he was drinking and drugging pretty hard, he hadn't been working out, he couldn't have even been bothered to get a tan. hogan was worried that sting wouldn't even be able to perform, since he hadn't wrestled in over a year. hogan had some legitimate concerns.

in a position like that, you would have a 3rd party go and basically evaluate sting, but because WCW didn't know what they were even doing at the time, they had hogan do it since he had so much authority in the company. hogan's ego got the best of him and he couldn't stop himself from screwing with the ending so that if sting didn't look good, hogan would still look strong. but also so did like, 3 other people and no one made any specific commands so it all fubar'd and the whole thing looked stupid.

al snow did an interview several years back, i'm sure most of you have seen it. but he talks about how every wrestler is a selfish baby and none of them are happy with anyone else succeeding. if one guy is in the background of a shot for 5 seconds, you'll have someone else wondering why THEY didn't get to be to be in the background for 5 seconds.

i don't think EVERYONE is like that, especially now, but there's a lot of truth to that. hogan and nash were main eventers in WCW because they were the ones booking the main event.

I mean, Hogan was a main eventer because he was Hulk Hogan. Also his contract I remember had a whole lot of guarantees beyond just base pay where he got certain %'s of PPV's he was on, etc...so made sense to book him in the main events since he was taking home some of the cheddar. Nash much the same way, guy was booked as a monster in WWF, and like it or not fans remember that. Plus he could talk with the best of them back then.

I get where Nash was going with the idea...eventually Goldberg's streak had to end, and if they made it a screwjob it's not like he REALLY was beaten, they use the finger poke of doom to reunite the NWO factions and put the belt back on Hogan, and Goldberg gets to build up again going through everyone in the NWO. Or, he sidetracks with Nash or Nash and Haul for a bit while another babyface goes after the belt. In the end it just didn't work, and the whole hammy Elizabeth having Goldberg arrested so it could be Nash v. Hogan the next night on Nitro didn't help in the slightest.

hogan and nash were definitely over, no doubt about that. but i don't remember a SINGLE main event in WCW that didn't involve them.

like i said, i love nash. they called him big daddy cool for good reason. but there was no sense of quality over quantity with those guys. and again i get all the reasons WHY that happened, and i don't particularly blame the talents themselves... those contracts NEVER should have been offered like that.

it's like a movie or a tv show or something... the director/showrunner is the one who makes the decisions on how much screentime the actors get because they are the ones who understand the big picture. if you give that power to an actor, then regardless of whether or not it fits, the actor basically can't help but make their own part more important.

j00t said:

hogan and nash were definitely over, no doubt about that. but i don't remember a SINGLE main event in WCW that didn't involve them.

like i said, i love nash. they called him big daddy cool for good reason. but there was no sense of quality over quantity with those guys. and again i get all the reasons WHY that happened, and i don't particularly blame the talents themselves... those contracts NEVER should have been offered like that.

it's like a movie or a tv show or something... the director/showrunner is the one who makes the decisions on how much screentime the actors get because they are the ones who understand the big picture. if you give that power to an actor, then regardless of whether or not it fits, the actor basically can't help but make their own part more important.

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I don't think anyone but Hogan had a contract like how his was. I remember from same shoot interview as the Goldberg streak stuff, Nash mentioned when NWO was first starting out they got to drinking with Hogan one night and they found out how much money he was really making and he said him and Haul were basically like "Whattttttt????" and instantly went to renegotiate their deals to something better.

i'm sure hogan got more initially because he's hogan. dude was a household name for generations. but i do know that nash was one of the main bookers. i don't know when that happened, if it was always that way or, like you said, it didn't happen until later on... just that at the height of WCW, nash was a main booker.

i think nash has a really good sense of the business and he's an intelligent guy. if he wasn't wrestling for the same company he was booking, i think things would have gone differently.

the idea of using a cattle prod on goldberg to keep him strong is a good idea in theory and it's something we've seen time and again in other places. the problem was HOW that whole debacle was handled. it all just came across as cheap and ANOTHER way for hogan and nash to end up on top. it was definitely getting extremely tiresome for everything to just keep revolving around them

Merrith said:

I remember watching some shoot interview with Nash recently talking about it, in his mind booking the match that way was done to "protect" Goldberg in the sense that the only way the streak could be broken and him beaten was with outside help, and something insane like a taser/cattle prod. Nash seriously thought it was good business for Goldberg to lose this way, then have him drop the belt the next night back to Hogan with the Finger Poke of Doom so that Goldberg could fight them all over again.

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The most charitable view of this I can think of is that Hall and Nash had a fairly long feud with the Steiner Brothers in which the Steiners would get a win, a short reign, a screwjob and be back chasing the belts. Hey, we can do the same thing with Goldberg.

But it's still all self-serving bullshit from a super prick. DDP reversing the Jackhammer in to a Diamond Cutter out of nowhere is a billion times better. Nash didn't need to be in the title picture period.

j00t said:

i think nash has a really good sense of the business and he's an intelligent guy. if he wasn't wrestling for the same company he was booking, i think things would have gone differently.

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Two words - vanilla midgets. He couldn't see the real value in Eddie, Benoit, Jericho, Rey and others. Imagine looking down on all the guys that made the first couple hours of Nitro really worth watching.

yeah, it's one of those things that makes sense in a bubble. i mean basically every storyline we see in wrestling nowadays is just a variation of what we've already seen. the problem ISN'T that nash beat goldberg with a taser. the problem WASN'T that nash turned heel and just laid down for hogan. the problem is that every storyline they had all ended up with the same result. hogan, nash and hall were the ones on top

Trying to market it as a real match when it was just an angle was just the cherry on the shit-sundae. The audience was burned out and instead of getting a match they got confirmation that everything was right back to the status quo.

Nash has said a number of times that an actual match with himself and Hogan would have been terrible as they both needed guys that could work around them and he's probably right. That match likely would have been a stinker but that's another reason to keep Nash out of the title picture.

Arbitrary said:

Two words - vanilla midgets. He couldn't see the real value in Eddie, Benoit, Jericho, Rey and others. Imagine looking down on all the guys that made the first couple hours of Nitro really worth watching.

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Have to be honest, though, some of those guys NEEDED to be the "forgotten talent" before they ever really could get over to that level and be main event guys. It was part of the underdog gimmick for them. Haul recognized Jericho's talent even in WCW (although no idea if Nash did). Rey actually got booked pretty well in WCW, they just had a legit cruiserweight division to showcase a lot of those smaller guys. When Rey won the belt from Malenko it was epic.

the cruiserweights in WCW were epic. absolutely amazing matches every week. i think WCW not caring at all about the cruiserweight division is what made them so good. jericho talked about how there was absolutely no oversight for his matches. for greener guys it was probably a death sentence but it's what allowed him to make so many memorable moments. the list of 1000 holds where he started out talking, the cut to commercial and when they came back he's still there talking was brilliant and completely unplanned.

Merrith said:

I mean, Hogan was a main eventer because he was Hulk Hogan. Also his contract I remember had a whole lot of guarantees beyond just base pay where he got certain %'s of PPV's he was on, etc...so made sense to book him in the main events since he was taking home some of the cheddar. Nash much the same way, guy was booked as a monster in WWF, and like it or not fans remember that. Plus he could talk with the best of them back then.

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Hogan also made sure to make appearances on PPV's where he wasn't really booked to do anything, because he still got cash even if he didn't wrestle.

Bunch of WWE guys released. Poor Rusev! For a big guy he moved extremely well.

i don't think i'll actually ever understand why they hated rusev so much at WWE.

Hosix said:

Bunch of WWE guys released. Poor Rusev! For a big guy he moved extremely well.

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I’m not even that invested in wrestling these days and I still almost choked on my food

TheNozz said:

I’m not even that invested in wrestling these days and I still almost choked on my food

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Couple names in there that I'm surprised were still collecting paychecks at all.