10 Reasons 1997 Was The Weirdest Year In Wrestling History

While Sid vs. The Undertaker was a poorly-thought-out and cobbled together main event for WrestleMania (we will get to the how and why later), Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Sting for the WCW title is certainly a no-brainer as the main event of Starrcade 1997. However, when you consider that Sting had last wrestled in the summer of 1996, even something so obvious for a main event earns a few quizzical looks.

Early in the nWo storyline, Eric Bischoff sought to protect Sting and hold off his eventual confrontation with Hulk Hogan until the time was right. As such, Sting pulled away from the nWo/WCW conflict, donned himself with a new look inspired by “The Crow,” and spent the next year and a half literally waiting in the rafters. Occasionally, he would pull out his trusty baseball bat and whack around a few goons, but for the most part, he kept silent throughout 1997 and watched as the Order grew and grew. Eventually, he got his title match in the main event of Starrcade: his first match in well over a year. To think nowadays, fans threw a fit about Goldberg going into WrestleMania 33 as Universal Champion having only wrestled for a combined five minutes since his return. Goldberg’s got nothing on Sting circa 1997, people!

The whole part-timer aura is even more pronounced when you factor in Hogan, who despite being the WCW Champion for practically the entire calendar year (save for Lex Luger’s five day reign in August), had only defended his belt twice on pay-per-view, and those were in January and February. Otherwise, his pay-per-view matches were tags, non-title, or non-existent (Hogan did not work that many dates in his WCW days... despite being the World champion most of the time).

However, it’s hard to deny the success of the buildup. Starrcade 1997 ended up doing WCW’s highest buyrate ever. Of course, what happened during the show itself would explain why they would never reach such heights again.

And we’ll cover that later...