10 Ridiculous Decisions That Killed WCW

7. Burying The Biggest Angle In WCW History

Often talked about as the greatest wasted opportunity in pro wrestling history, Sting€™s build up to bomb as WCW€™s biggest babyface star is a cautionary tale for the ages. The NWO had been around for a while, and the angle had bloated€ instead of a stable of four or five talented men, the faction had swelled to encompass half the roster. Overbooked and overexposed, fans were dying to see the heels taken out. And Sting was the man to do it. Sting had taken on a new persona: a black-clad Crow-lookalike in a long leather coat, lurking in the rafters of Monday Nitro, rappelling down to kick NWO ass with his trademark baseball bat every so often. The fans knew that Sting was going to kick the NWO€™s stale, irritating ass €“ it was just a question of when. Incredibly, 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 championship at Starrcade 1997 (WCW€™s equivalent of Wrestlemania). The story wrote itself: Sting hits the ring like a human hurricane, beats the tar out of Hogan and sees off NWO interference long enough to get the clean pinfall, establishing himself as the biggest babyface star in the business, revitalising the NWO as heels and setting up lucrative storylines for the next calendar year. Instead, what we got was a tired, television-style main event match, Hogan dominating the challenger with his dated, unconvincing offence until he suddenly pinned him clean: 1, 2, 3. Inexplicably, temporary referee Bret €˜The Hitman€™ Hart showed up, claiming a fast count and restarting the match, which Sting then won. The only problem was that the count hadn€™t been fast. It would appear that Hogan had gotten to referee Nick Patrick, persuading him to count normally. What would have been a starmaking moment in WCW for both Hart and Sting became a confusing mess, as it appeared to fans as though babyface Hart had cheated to restart a match that babyface Sting had lost cleanly to heel Hogan. After that demoralising anti-climax, Sting never fully recovered his momentum: he€™d remain a star, but never at the level he€™d reached before Starrcade 1997.