At WrestleMania IX, Bret Hart lost the WWF World Championship to Yokozuna due to shenanigans. Hulk Hogan ran out to protest, found himself challenged for the title and went on to win the championship with Harts blessing. The plan was for Hogan to eventually drop the title to Hart, thus making the Hitman a bigtime star. But Hogan never performed the time-honored tradition, and fans never got to see the match. Throughout the early stages of the Monday Night Wars, Hogan and Hart were on top of their respective companies, racking up multiple world title reigns. It was obvious that Hart had supplanted Hogan as the go-to guy in WWF, and with the unfinished business from 1993, it remained a match that fans always wanted to see. All of that changed in late 1997 when Hart jumped to WCW. Almost immediately, visions of dream matches sprung to mind: Hart-Hogan, Hart-Sting, a rekindling of Hart-Flair, etc. But WCW would make fans wait nearly a full year before delivering on the big one. And when they did, they did it in a way that only WCW could and would. The first (and only) televised Hart versus Hogan match took place in September 1998 on Nitro and ended in a screwjob, with Hart faking a knee injury a few minutes in, having Sting replace him, and then return to the match to turn on Sting and side with Hogan. The dream matchup was largely treated as a joke by WCW, an angle to further the nWo feud with Sting. Hart and Hogan would later have a couple house show matches when the Hitman returned to action after Owen Harts death, but nothing ever materialized on Nitro. A month after those September 1999 house show matches, Vince Russo was brought in to WCW and Hogan would soon disappear until 2000. Fans would never get a straight-up televised match or feud between the two, despite being on the same roster for nearly three years. Only in WCW.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
