10 Worst Simultaneous WWE/WCW Heavyweight Champions
4. Kane/Hollywood Hogan (1998)
Another short reign during an incredibly profitable time for both organisations created a curious scenario in which a peak performance Big Red Machine and end-of-the-line Orange one both carried gold at the same time.
It may seem glib to include Kane here - his gimmick was still over, his character still protected and his mystique still in tact - but WWE's hotshot experiment triggered an unexpected upturn in viewers that in turn resulted in both organisations indulging in bad habits with their belts.
Stone Cold Steve Austin's rematch with Kane the night after King Of The Ring 1998 drew a 5.4 rating, dwarfing WCW Nitro's 4.1. It marked the beginning of the end for Hollywood Hogan's latest near-year long reign. Giving away Goldberg's win over the New World Order leader the following week to fire back (Nitro's 4.9 toppled Raw's 4.0), the switches reflected quick hits rather than longer trends and promoted fatalistic Crash TV as the new currency in mainstream North America.
Huge changes occured over short spaces of time during the hedonistic late-90s - here, it took just two weeks for wrestling to completely reimagine how it managed its most important props.