10 Confusing Wrestling Moments That Nobody Understands

1. Sting Gets Hoganed

One of the greatest wasted opportunities in wrestling history, Sting's buildup to bomb as WCW's biggest babyface star is a sad, sad story.

The NWO had been around for a while, and fans were dying to see the heels get taken out. Meanwhile, Sting had taken on a new gimmick: a black-clad vigilante with a painted face in a long leather coat, lurking in the rafters of Monday Nitro, rappelling down to beat down NWO members with his trademark baseball bat. The fans knew that Sting was going to step up and take Hogan down, it was just a question of when.

Unbelievably, Eric Bischoff managed to hold off on pulling the trigger for a full eighteen months from start to finish. Crowd reactions grew louder and louder, expectation reaching near breaking point. This was going to be something special.

Finally the match everyone had waited for was booked: Hollywood Hulk Hogan versus Sting for the WCW world heavyweight championship at Starrcade 1997 (WCW's equivalent of WrestleMania). It would write itself: the fiery babyface against the wily old veteran, with Sting going over clean.

Instead, what we got was a dull, Nitro-style match, Hogan dominating the challenger with his 1980s offence until the clean pin came out of nowhereon Sting. At that point, temporary referee Bret €˜The Hitman€™ Hart showed up at ringside, claiming a fast count and restarting the match, which Sting then won.

The only problem was that the count hadn't been fast. Hart had restarted the match for no good reason. Ridiculously, no one seems to know what happened. Many speculated that referee Nick Patrick (in the storyline, the NWO's pet referee) had been persuaded to count normally by Hogan in order that he could keep his heat.

Regardless, Sting's starmaking turn simply vanished. He might have won the match, but everyone knew Hogan had won the war. Sting would never recover the momentum he'd lost. He would always be a star, but never on that level again.