10 Best Wrestling PPV Cliffhanger Endings
4. Stone Cold Joins The Alliance (Invasion)
While the WCW/ECW/WWE invasion angle's many failings have been covered thousands of times before (and don't need repeating in this column), the titular pay-per-view remains an underrated Sports Entertainment pantomime, with daft b*llocks like Earl Hebner vs. Nick Patrick nestled alongside genuine bangers like the Inaugural Brawl main event.
Said bout pitted The Alliance's biggest and best against WWE's. The implication was that whichever side won would eventually crush the other, and with Paul Heyman vowing to "kill sports entertainment," it felt like an end of the world scenario. Team WWE was spearheaded by a reformed Steve Austin, who turned babyface to save Vince McMahon's strugglers from almost every ECW/WCW wrestler on that week's Raw, sparking one of the loudest pops in WWE history.
It looked, finally, like Vince had his ace. This wasn't the case. Just six days removed from his babyface turn, Austin swerved Team WWE by hitting a Stunner on teammate Kurt Angle, gifting Booker T the decisive pinfall victory. Invasion then closed with 'Stone Cold' celebrating with Shane, Stephanie, and Heyman, and while it's easy to be cynical about the storyline in 2019, it was impossible not to buy into the betrayal as a young viewer 18 years ago.