20 Secret Highlights Of WCW That WWE Won't Tell You About

The first shot fired in the Monday Night War was the defection of Lex Luger to WCW. His mission in WCW was clear: defeat Hulk Hogan for the WCW championship. To a lot of fans, Luger had always been an ersatz Hogan, first in the NWA and then in WWE, so his desire to beat the Hulkster one-on-one made perfect sense. WCW tried to say that Luger was somehow a shady character for wanting to wrestle Hulk Hogan instead of becoming a Junior Hulkamania Scout like Sting and Savage, but Lex stayed firm: he was a wrestler who wanted to be champion, and he'd always been unfavorably compared to Hogan, so he wanted a chance to win the guy's title.

Savage in particular thought this line of reasoning was VERRRRRY SUSPICIOUS YEAH, and the two began feuding. Fascinatingly, the enmity was one-sided: Savage hated Luger, but Luger was super disinterested in wrestling Savage a bunch. He had a clear goal, and it did not involve a stupid series of grudge matches with a paranoiac. In fact, Luger used wrestling trope logic to jump to the end of the feud by insisting that their first match ever be a RETIREMENT MATCH, simply because he knew retirement matches end feuds and he was sick of that one.

Also great: Luger's smarmily evil, Batista-esque heel run that immediately followed this.