1. Sting Vs. Hollywood Hogan, Starrcade 1997 - Sting Defeats Hollywood Hogan For WCW World Title
Was this the perfect match? Certainly not. However, it was probably the pinnacle of Sting's career in the 1990s and was the culmination of the Sting storyline that spanned over a year and consisted of him never wrestling a match and never speaking. Hogan and Sting finally met in 1997 at WCW's biggest show. The match started with Hogan on the attack, deflating fans because Sting had spent over a year chasing the cowardly heel Hogan. The matter was further confused when referee Nick Patrick delivered a "fast count" after a Hogan legdrop and award the match to Hogan. In reality, Patrick's count hadn't been fast at all and it looked to all the world like Sting just lost cleanly in the middle of the ring. Rumours would fly afterwards that Hogan had convinced Nick Patrick to count normally to make Sting look bad but those were unconfirmed. Regardless, Bret Hart (fresh off being screwed in the WWF) was a special guest referee earlier in the night and he restarted the match. After the restart, Sting made Hogan submit to the Scorpion Deathlock and reclaimed the world title for World Championship Wrestling. So, even with all its faults, this moment number one. Starrcade drew a buy rate of 1.9, an insanely high number and the best WCW had ever achieved. It launched WCW to the undisputed number one promotion and led Eric Bischoff to create another WCW show (Thunder). Starrcade could arguably be the peak of WCW and Sting was the man standing in the middle of the ring celebrating at the end.