8. MSG Curtain Call 1996
It's not like WWE completely ignores the 1996 Curtain Call hug at MSG these days, but when it happened back then they sure did. At the time, Hunter was supposed to be the winner of the King of the Ring 1996. Instead, he was buried. Why? Because after a house show in New York City in the spring of 1996, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall gave a big hug to Shawn Michaels. Triple H did too. The reason Nash and Hall did it was because they signed with WCW, so they really didn't care about pissing anybody off as they broke kayfabe. In the case of Triple H, management was furious with him about it. They couldn't punish Michaels because he was the WWE Champion. Hunter went on a major losing streak at that point. It's not like he was really winning that much anyway, but they did plan on elevating him and due to the MSG incident that was slowed down quite a bit. As it turned out, the Curtain Call wasn't that bad. Steve Austin won King of the Ring 1996 instead and that's where he delivered his famous "Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass" speech for the first time. Even though he didn't win the 1996 King of the Ring, Hunter did overcome the burying, fought through it and won the 1997 King of the Ring. A couple years after that he became a main eventer.