12 Hot Takes On The Week In Wrestling (Jan 6)

7. The Night That Killed WCW, Part II: The Fingerpoke Of Doom

Recently, some people have begun questioning the consensus on the TFoD after all these years. Was it really that big a deal? After all, it was a swerve ending to a big episode of Nitro that got everyone talking. Surely it wasn€™t the horrible mistake that everyone€™s been saying it was? It's been seventeen years, and people tend to forget the context of events after a lot less time than that. Starrcade 1998 had been only eight days earlier, and on that show, Kevin Nash had defeated Goldberg (with an unauthorised assist from Scott Hall and a taser) and beaten his winning streak, a major story point and a major sore point with the crowd. The following night on Nitro, Nash had expressed unhappiness with the way that he'd beaten Goldberg - both men were babyfaces at the time - and offered him a straight rematch for the title the following week on Nitro. That rematch should have taken place on 4th January 1999. On that night, Goldberg was arrested after a complaint to police from Miss Elizabeth about him stalking her, and didn't make it back in time for his title match with Nash (even though the police station was across the road from the arena - which is stupid, but not trainwreck stupid). Nash€™s babyface NWO Wolfpac stable had been feuding with Hulk Hogan€™s rival faction NWO Hollywood for months, and naturally Nash blamed Hogan for Miss Elizabeth's conveniently times accusations. Nash challenged Hogan to a match later on that night as a warm-up before the main event, when he assumed Goldberg would be back to fight for the title. Somehow, by the time Hogan came to accept the challenge from the champion, the match had been amended to Hollywood Hogan wrestling Nash in the main event of that night€™s Nitro€ for the WCW world heavyweight title. I don€™t know how. That€™s WCW for you. So the main event took place, Hogan poked Nash in the chest, and the big man sold it like he€™d been shot, collapsing to be pinned and pass the title back to Hogan. It was a swerve of huge proportions€ and everyone hated it. It crapped on months of feuding between Nash and Hogan. It was a de facto heel turn on Nash€™s part - worse, a heel turn that had clearly occurred some time before, which meant that the babyface Nash they'd rooted for had been a trick all along. The audience - and Goldberg - had been worked, but the timing couldn't have been worse. The audience weren't clapping with delight at the twist in the tale: they were fuming at being treated like idiots. By the way, in researching the FPoD I read someone reporting on it by saying that Hulk Hogan fingered Kevin Nash, and you know what? After I finished cackling, pointing at them and cackling some more, I became convinced that if Bischoff had booked Hogan to engage in sexual shenanigans with Nash as the main event, he still would have put it on Nitro instead of pay-per-view.