How Good Was Kevin Nash Actually?

Kevin Nash had a bunch of incredible moments. Every performance in the run-up to Bash At The Beach 1996 is a masterclass of storytelling. Kev and Scott Hall are magnetic, and these clips hold up as historic moments in wrestling history to this day. 

Nash's big wheelchair reveal, in which he was wheeled to the ring in a leg cast, only to reveal it was a fake leg on the February 18th, 2001 episode of Nitro will be funny for the rest of time. Rey Mysterio has never taken a more memorable bump than when Nash lawn darted him into the side of a production truck during the nWo invading Nitro in their early days. Nash's parody of Arn Anderson during the nWo’s incredible take on The Four Horsemen, in which he famously offered Buff Bagwell’s Curt Hennig “mah spot”, was comedy gold.

Unfortunately, Kevin Nash's worst moments are just as notable. Fans still debate if he should have been the man to beat Goldberg’s streak at Starrcade '98 and whether that moment came too early. Scott Hall’s taser heard around the world to defeat the streak was questionable, but what came next was a travesty.

The “fingerpoke of doom” happened the next night on Nitro. It's a moment that's awful when shown in isolation (as it so often is), but it's so much worse when you consider the circumstances around it. At a time when WCW was under threat from WWE for the first time in ages, The Wolfpac and nWo Hollywood's feud had created plenty of buzz, largely owing to how over Nash had gotten his red and black stable.

Watching Nash flop to the floor like he’d been shot after Hollywood Hulk Hogan pokes him on the chest to hand Hogan the WCW World Heavyweight Title, end the Wolfpac, and reform the tired nWo faction stinks on every level. It's made worse by the fact that the crowd explodes during Nash's entrance for this moment, as he brings out Scott Hall to accompany him to the ring. Goldberg's streak might have been worth giving up if it had led to Hogan and Nash going to war for the WCW Title, with Goldberg hell-bent on revenge and smashing everyone in sight. Instead, fans were given a swerve that only pleased the performers involved.

What’s fascinating about these two infamous incidents is how over Kevin Nash is until the “finger poke of doom” happens. Nash has at least as many supporters as Goldberg during their match at Starrcade, and the reunited Outsiders are as popular as it’s possible to be on the night this tragic moment occurs. This is all correctly pointed at as a moment when fans became disenfranchised by WCW. Why watch another run for the nWo when Stone Cold, The Rock, Mankind, Triple H, and a soon-to-be-Satanic Undertaker were taking things to a new level on the other channel?

Add to this the spot in the year 2000, where Vince Russo promises to “make (Nash) cool again” before dropping a pool of blood that misses the big man by several yards, and Nash is involved in two moments that showed just how far WCW had managed to fall from grace. Kev looks at Russo like something he’s just stepped in, and everybody in this uncomfortable and comedically bad moment seems to know that WCW is in the final inning on their road to ruin.

7/10