1. The Birth Of The nWo
Date: July 6th, 1996 This was a day that changed everything.
Everything. Hulk Hogan turning heel showed the wrestling world that a turn could come out of nowhere and be a shocker. It showed that Hogan still had something left in his tank, when people were thinking he should have retired years earlier. It showed that Hogan had an edge, and that he wasn't just the cheesy corniness that the "Real American" could often display. It showed that the biggest face in the business could become the biggest heel in the business. It showed that a dominant heel stable could still exist in modern wrestling. It showed that fans could still get very emotionally attached to something happening in the ring. It showed that heels could still be massive movers of merchandise. When Hulk dropped the big legdrop on Randy Savage that night, jaws hit the floor all over the business. Hogan hadn't been a heel in nearly a decade-and-a-half, which is an eternity for a pro wrestler to stay on one side of the face/heel fence, so an entire generation of wrestling fans had no clue what he was like as a dastardly character. Children that had grown up as wrestling fans believing in Hulk Hogan and idolizing him were heartbroken. Even those that had been around long enough to remember him as a heel in the AWA were wondering how he would be able to pull off a heel run after spending so many years preaching to kids about believing in themselves, training hard, saying their prayers, and taking their vitamins. You could say that this was the move that saved WCW for a few years. Before the formation of the nWo, Nitro had some wins over Raw in the ratings, but for the most part, Raw had been winning in some close battles. After the formation of the nWo, Nitro wouldn't lose another head-to-head in the ratings war for nearly two years. The nWo was such a huge part of WCW's success at the time. They were such a big part of the product that, when the fans began growing tired of the group's antics, they began growing tired of WCW, as a whole. There wasn't much of anything else for the fans to sink their teeth into, so once the nWo got "old", Raw became the destination for those WCW fans who were looking for something to watch every Monday night. Were it not for huge egos, inept management, and some questionable, at best, decision making, Hogan's heel turn and the formation of the nWo very well could have been the catalyst to all of us watching Nitro every week to this day. There's no way of properly explaining how huge this event truly was.