Seventeen years.
It’s been seventeen years since the night that WCW was killed, the night when World Championship Wrestling lost all their fans simultaneously as they switched over to the WWF and the Bischoff-run promotion was sent into a downward spiral that they never could get out of… at least, that’s the way the night of January 4th had seemingly went down when it’s being presented by the WWE. The truth is that WCW has several other issues show up down the line in ’99 that spelled their doom, but if you want to look at this night as some sort of a beginning of the end for World Championship Wrestling, I really cannot blame you.
On January 4th, 1999, the newly-crowned WCW World Heavyweight Champion Kevin Nash was set to take on Goldberg in an rematch from their bout at Starrcade ’98. Since Goldberg lost his title due to getting zapped with a “cattle prod” held by Scott Hall at that show, the chance of revenge so quickly after was actually thrilling to hear for me. However in typical WCW fashion, the match never occurred as Miss Elizabeth accused Goldberg on Nitro of stalking her, causing his immediate arrest and removal from the arena by the police for questioning. This led to WCW adding a new main event, created on Nash’s behalf and commissioned by WCW President Ric Flair – Hollywood Hogan vs Kevin Nash for the world title.
From this point, every one kind of knows what occurred but for a quick refresher, here’s the whole “match” in an edited bit from WWE themselves:
Hogan drops Nash with a poke to his chest. Hogan wins title. Nash gets up and celebrates with Hogan. The nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac factions reunite as Lex Luger and Kevin Nash turn heel. Goldberg comes in and gets KILLED AND BURIED due to the combined might of the group that would become known as the nWo Elite. A BRILLIANT swerve that pissed off so many fans and actually led to myself getting into a real-life fist fight the following day at high school due to my decision to proudly wear a nWo black and white shirt – a sign (to me) that this entire thing WORKED.
The sad thing is that WCW never capitalized on this angle they presented to fans. Kevin Nash has gone on record and stated the entire point of the nWo reunion was the give Goldberg a heel factory to tear through, and WCW had to scrap the entire thing due to Goldberg injuring himself – however, that’s a complete lie as there was an 11-month period before his arm injury.
The truth is that Goldberg was kept away from the title for months after the Fingerpoke of Doom main event. He took on Scott Hall at Souled Out in January and got his revenge for Starrcade, but from that point, it’s Goldberg vs Bam Bam Bigelow at SuperBrawl in February, no one at Uncensored in March (but still “feuding” with the nWo), and Kevin Nash (finally) in April at Spring Stampede. Goldberg would then take time afterward off to film Universal Soldier II: The Return and by the time he came back, the entire nWo angle had already fizzled out. It wouldn’t be until December before Goldberg would find himself in a proper singles main event for the WCW title. This lack of a follow up made Goldberg look like a total goof in the whole ordeal and having a twelve-month break between his big championship matches followed by the reveal of the nWo 2000 just reeked of the same-old, same-old staleness of a clueless creative team.
The entire angle seems like such a complete waste now but since WCW had already been losing the ratings war against the WWF at the time of the Fingerpoke of Doom incident, so it’s difficult to claim that Goldberg going after his lost championship immediately would have boosted the sagging viewership. In fact, in an effort to keep fans locked in WCW for the Nash/Hogan main event, Tony Schiavone condescendingly announced that Mick Foley would win the WWF championship that night as RAW had been pre-taped on the 29th and ended up doing something completely embarrassing in hindsight:
That bit of news ended up making close to half a million viewers switch over to World Wrestling Federation in order to see Mama Foley’s Baby Boy win the ultimate prize in professional wrestling. When it was all said and done, the Kevin Nash vs Hulk Hogan main event scored a 4.1 rating, while a previously taped main event where Mick Foley wins the WWF Championship against The Rock scored a 6.2, a ratings record for the WWF.
Major misstep by World Championship Wrestling all around BUT the worst was still yet to come…
Bonus – Pro Wrestlers Shoot on The Fingerpoke of Doom
40-year-old World Championship Wrestling fanatic/collector/hoarder. Safety officer by day, scanner of wrestling magazine by night.
He’s got posters on the wall, his favorite rock group’s KISS.
I remember being in attendance at a house show sometime between the Bam Bam Bigelow SuperBrawl and Kevin Nash Spring Stampede matches. The main event of the evening (and I assume most other house show dates during this period) was a three-way bout with Goldberg, Bam Bam, and Nash (defending the World Championship). The match agenda was for Bam Bam to job to Nash while Goldberg would be a moment too late breaking up the pin, which would allow Nash to remain top dog for TV but keep Goldberg looking credible as WCW would finally creep towards that one-on-one rematch. A great tease, but it’s a shame little ever came of it on the TV storylines.
Kevin Nash and Hogan being too cool for school with Ric Flair going crazy on television — I need to rewatch or go through that early 1999 period again just to track where Goldberg was every week. I do know he had a couple of matches for the title in 4-ways but after his break and return, he was back to the upper midcard fighting Rick Steiner and Sid!
Goldberg could have been a valuable asset for them but everything they built was completely squandered over nothing. Such a waste.
Fun article and a dark day in history!
I did want to mention a couple of points about the ratings though. For some reason that data has rarely been reported accurately — I think because of Alvarez’s quote in the Death of WCW book, which is misleading/inaccurate. I’ll attach the actual head to head ratings to the post here.
The first thing is that Tony’s ‘butts in the seats’ comment actually came right at 10pm — at the start of Nitro’s third hour, opposite the start of Raw’s second. You’ll recall in those days that the first hour of Nitro was unopposed and then RAW went head to head with them for the other two hours. However the Foley/Rock match and Fingerpoke match didn’t actually take place for another hour both leading into the final segments of the shows. Also looking at the ratings, Nitro held at a 5.1 before and after the infamous comment — so certainly much less than then “half a million viewers” stated.
As far as the ratings for the matches — Nitro lost every quarter hour that evening, except for The Fingerpoke actually. Raw and Nitro had their big matches in the last quarter hour of their shows and into the overrun. NItro’s Q4 and overrun did a 4.6 and 6.5 respectively, Raw’s a 5.9 and 5.1. So the Fingerpoke averaged a 5.6 rating and the Foley/Rock match did a 5.5.
If you actually look at the head to head quarter hours for the 6.2 and 4.1 that is quoted, you’ll actually see that was Al Snow vs Road Dogg on Raw and Brian Adams vs DDP on Nitro — so I guess Road Dogg put some butts in the seats on this night.
Anyhow — I love your site, it looks great!
Thanks for the comment – I should have known better than to blindly trust that book! I’ve come across several misleading “facts” as well when I first read it.
Appreciate the compliment as well. Keep an eye on this site as it’s still growing as I’m still tinkering around with what it is or should be.
Thanks! Yeah the book has issues, that unfortunately didn’t all get cleaned up either in the newer second edition.
I think maybe what confused him was not realizing how the hours were staggered (Nitro hours 2/3 head to head, not 1/2 head to head) and just the false memory / assumption that Tony would have made the announcement right as the match was about to go on.
It’s an awesome site and a great memory of my favorite time in wrestling, still having fun digging through all of the content.
This version of the site has only been active since September, but the original site went for two years. It’s not categorized as neatly as this place, but there’s still tons more content there:
wcwworldwide.tumblr.com
Thanks again.