10 Biggest Promotion Killers In Wrestling History

3. Kevin Nash

The death of WCW wasn't a one-man kamikaze mission - it was a gang killing.

One of the men responsible was Kevin Nash. Nash assumed control of the booking pencil in 1998. The promotion, by that point, was bereft of ideas. Supplanted by the rampant WWF, it was thought (optimistically) that Nash, whose cool aura had in part elevated the league beyond the Dungeon of Doom dreck which had mired it in 1995, could use his counter-cultural philosophy to rejuvenate the company.

Red flags were raised almost immediately. Nash didn't just win World War 3's sixty man, three ring battle royal - he decimated the field after taking a prolonged and very noticeable breather. His victory in the match granted him the opportunity to end Goldberg's undefeated streak - and Nash, mad with power, took it.

Wrestling is all about the follow up. As easy as it is to admonish Nash in retrospect, he remained a hugely popular and deceptively mobile act in 1998. There were few other men capable of ending something which could not go on forever - but WCW never followed it up by allowing Goldberg a conclusive, redemptive victory. Nash's heel heat was instead transferred to Hulk Hogan in the infamous January 4 'Fingerpoke of Doom' angle.

The Goldberg character never truly recovered; because he represented the absolute last embers of WCW's fading creative flame, it is not coincidental that the company never truly recovered either.