10 Most Important Weeks In The Monday Night War
4. January 4th 1999 - Mick Foley Wins The WWE Championship/The Fingerpoke Of Doom
Both a reminder of wonderful times gone by and a chilling glimpse into the future for WCW, the January 4th live and taped editions of Nitro and Raw respectively signposted exactly how the rest of the war was to go.
It had been some time since Eric Bischoff had bothered to spoil the results of a pre-recorded edition of Monday Night Raw, but telling people to stay put for WCW's live main event rather than bothering with WWE's effort might have worked had the components on either side not been so diametrically opposed.
Bischoff (through commentator Tony Schiavone) might have assumed that Mick Foley wasn't going to put "butts in the seats", but announcing that he was set to win the WWE Championship sent around 600,000 fans to USA Network to catch it themselves. Worse came for those that hadn't bit on the tactical misfire.
Sticking around for the promised main event of Hulk Hogan taking on new WCW World Champion (and ender of Goldberg's streak) Kevin Nash, the Atlanta outfit's loyalest fans were served the infamous "Fingerpoke Of Doom" f*ck finish and a tired retread of the New World Order. Many that saw Foley's win flicked back over just to see how the match turned out, only to be greeted by the show's shambolic conclusion.
With booking that serviced almost nobody new in comparison to the waves being made on Monday Night, it wasn't just 'Easy E's strategy that felt stuck in the suddenly-very-distant past.