The Night Goldberg Lost For The First Time
Bill Goldberg was WCW's biggest star and asset, the demise of which is often linked to his downfall, the date of which was December 28, 1998: the main event of the company's flagship Starrcade show.
The huge Goldberg Vs. Kevin Nash main event was a fun and incredibly heated, big-time match, not the sort one might have expected from the dynamic, worked with some atypical submission exchanges and power move bomb blasts before the finish. The finish, in the TV/B-level PPV mould hardly befitting an event of Starrcade's prestige, saw both Bam Bam Bigelow and Scott Hall (with stun gun) end the hottest commodity WCW had going.
The image of Kevin Nash in retrospect is of a politicking egotist who did this for himself - and while not formally head booker in December, he held enough influence to win that role in February. But Nash was very popular. If not as white hot as Goldberg was in the summer, he was red hot as leader of the nWo Wolfpac. There was an argument for Nash to go over.
Historical reports of the nWo as a certified dead concern, post-Starrcade 1997, were exaggerated somewhat. WCW fans were huge on the Wolfpac, as the merchandise numbers attested; Dave Meltzer wrote in the January 11, 1999 WON that it was the hottest seller in the whole company. There was a clear anti-Goldberg sentiment in the air, too: GOLDBERG SUX! signs were visible in the audience, and he received a reaction not unlike that John Cena would frequently hear years later.
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