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Post by arthuradams2002 on Aug 28, 2009 21:30:13 GMT -5
It seems like many wrestling fans (including us crappers) are quick to criticize the Fingerpoke of Doom by calling it one of the worst angles in WCW and a major downfall as far as storylines went with the rest of that company. It seems like people forget that WWE did the very same thing a year prior with the Triple H/HBK match on the Christmas Raw. Why do you think it got so much heat when WCW did it, but not so much when WWE did it ?
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Post by Porky's Butthole on Aug 28, 2009 21:33:23 GMT -5
Was the HHH/HBK for the WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE? Was it the main event? Did they bury the other show's main event and star? Did HHH/HBK bury one of their hottest stars of all damn time by doing it?
The answers to all of these is 'no'. That's why WCW got so much heat.
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Post by derrtaysouth95 on Aug 28, 2009 21:34:17 GMT -5
Are you talking about the match where HBK took a punch and then layed there while HHH ran the ropes for a bit then pinned him for the European Title?
In WCW the problem was it was a swerve (IIRC) when Nash took the fall to let Hogan get the belt back. That was the problem there. It was a dumb swerve.
The DX bit was DX and could have been seen coming.
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Post by arthuradams2002 on Aug 28, 2009 21:35:56 GMT -5
The Dx match was a European title match and it was the main event on that broadcast. The announcers also hyped it from the start of the show to througout the show.
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goodoldjl
Trap-Jaw
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Posts: 317
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Post by goodoldjl on Aug 28, 2009 21:38:45 GMT -5
The DX bit was actually meant to be funny. I personally think that HHH's over the top performance in that match was some of the funniest stuff he has ever done. The Fingerpoke of Doom was just insulting to the boys and to the fans.
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Post by sunwukong on Aug 28, 2009 21:39:28 GMT -5
I honestly have never believed the hype that it in and of itself was a cause of WCW's downfall. What I do believe is that it was so symptomatic of the company's culture at that point that it becomes an indelible image of everything that was wrong. So, short version- a major demonstration of the reasons the company failed, but not a reason by itself.
Also, it was frankly just a bigger deal than the DX example. It was the company's top title, two of it's top stars, and it basically invalidated several stories that had been building all for the sake of the swerve. It was a bad idea.
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bob
Salacious Crumb
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started the Madness Wars, Proudly the #1 Nana Hater on FAN
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Post by bob on Aug 28, 2009 21:42:21 GMT -5
it was stupid becuase Nash beat the preivous undefeated Goldberg at Starcade....just to drop it to the Orange Goblin the next Nitro....
the DX match is different since it wasn't for a world title and they did it to get one over on Commioner Slaughter who forced them to wrestle each other
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Post by Bob Schlapowitz on Aug 28, 2009 21:45:56 GMT -5
Should be in (W)rest.
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Post by Pooh Carlson on Aug 28, 2009 21:50:46 GMT -5
The way Nash explained it made sense to me. They put the title back on Hogan, and then Goldberg pretty much getting screwed, and then Goldberg has to go through the whole nWo again to get to Hogan. But Goldberg put his hand through a car window so it didn't get to finish.
Also, yeah, DX was hilarious and for the European. Nash/Hogan was for the World and not hilarious.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Aug 28, 2009 22:00:51 GMT -5
The way Nash explained it made sense to me. They put the title back on Hogan, and then Goldberg pretty much getting screwed, and then Goldberg has to go through the whole nWo again to get to Hogan. But Goldberg put his hand through a car window so it didn't get to finish. Also, yeah, DX was hilarious and for the European. Nash/Hogan was for the World and not hilarious. Ya, if the story had played out like it was (supposedly) supposed to it would not be remembered as badly. If the next couple months built to Goldberg dethroning Hogan again, it would have kinda worked but instead everything that followed was crap
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Post by glorydays on Aug 28, 2009 22:02:22 GMT -5
What I find funny is when people say it started the decline in WCW's ratings.
The Fingerpoke episode got a 5.0 rating. The following five weeks were: 5.0, 4.4, 5.0, 4.7, and 5.7. Where was the decline? That seems like standard flucuation for a company going head to head with a red hot WWF at the time.
As far as PPV buys, Superbrawl 1999 (headlined by Hogan and Flair) did a 1.1 buyrate, which was the same as the previous year's Superbrawl, and MUCH better than Souled Out the month before (headlined by Goldberg and Hall).
Why did the Fingerpoke start the decline to WCW? Or better yet, why was it the reason? It was a slap in the face to the fans? Then what was Vince McMahon winning the Royal Rumble that same month? Rewarding the fans? The WWF was red hot. WCW could not keep up. Period. If Goldberg kept the belt or if Nash kept the belt, what difference would it have made?
Now if they did things logically and used the Fingerpoke to eventually lead to a Hogan/Goldberg PPV match (where Bill wins the title back), then it would have been a lot more logical. Instead Hogan dropped the belt to Flair and turned face.
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Aug 28, 2009 22:13:00 GMT -5
Like everyone else said, the DX incident was on a throwaway broadcast for a mid-card title, and quite frankly, it was easy to see it coming.
WCW, on the other hand, booked the returning Hulk Hogan in the main event for the World title, in a sold out Georgia Dome. They even gave it the usual Buffer-announced intros to add to the big time, main event feel. Then...well, we all know. I've heard Nash say in a shoot interview, "People come up to me and say, 'Well, I was so pissed off.' You were supposed to be pissed off, jackass." But this wasn't pissing people off in a kayfabe manner. This was pissing people off in a getting-up-and-turning-off-their-TV manner. I know that's the effect it had on me. The instant that Fingerpoke happened...I knew I was done with WCW. Coming from someone who doesn't look at things through rose-tinted glasses, the nWo was stale as hell by that point in time, and fans were just begging for something new. And what do we get? Oh boy, another nWo reunion! And when I say I was done with that company, it's not like one of these Raw haters nowadays, where the punch line has become "See you next week." I didn't watch Nitro the next week, or the week after that, or ever again. I was done and finished with WCW permanently. After that night, the next piece of WCW-related programming I saw was the simulcast between Raw and Nitro when Vince bought them out 2 years later. And I know many people at the time felt the same way I did. I heard the ratings went up the next week. I honestly didn't care.
I don't think it's the sole reason the company went under, but it was a huge contributing factor, as I remember reading from countless people at the time that they were done with WCW after that. I don't know if they stuck to it, but I certainly did.
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Post by Cry Me a Wiggle on Aug 28, 2009 22:47:47 GMT -5
The way Nash explained it made sense to me. They put the title back on Hogan, and then Goldberg pretty much getting screwed, and then Goldberg has to go through the whole nWo again to get to Hogan. But Goldberg put his hand through a car window so it didn't get to finish. Yeah, but Goldberg didn't put his hand through the car window until a year later. Nash was confusing his "nWo screws over Goldberg" angles. I think the biggest problem, the one that gets overlooked, was that WCW promoted a Nash/Goldberg rematch for the entire week before the show. Then, during the Georgia Dome Nitro, they pulled the Hogan switcharoo which set up the Fingerpoke. That ticked off a lot of people, especially since Hogan hadn't been on TV for two months. The storyline started off well, with Goldberg facing off against Scott Hall at Souled Out, but after that they completely abandoned the idea of him taking out the nWo one by one. What's worse, the heel Wolfpack just kind of faded away, and by May it was more or less gone. The whole storyline was then pointless.
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Post by Can you afford to pay me, Gah on Aug 28, 2009 22:54:37 GMT -5
It seems like many wrestling fans (including us crappers) are quick to criticize the Fingerpoke of Doom by calling it one of the worst angles in WCW and a major downfall as far as storylines went with the rest of that company. It seems like people forget that WWE did the very same thing a year prior with the Triple H/HBK match on the Christmas Raw. Why do you think it got so much heat when WCW did it, but not so much when WWE did it ? Wasn't for the Main Event title.
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Post by ritt works hard fo da chickens on Aug 28, 2009 23:18:39 GMT -5
DX had been built up as fun loving rule breakers who will do things there own way. The title switch there played into the storyline perfectly.
NWO Red & Black were built up as the antithesis to Hogan's NWO. They broke away to start a something new and the fans were actually into the Wolfpack gimmick. There was so much intrigue with the three faction thing going on then they just crapped on it all and it was the same ol' NWO the fans were way passed tired of.
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Post by FedEx227 on Aug 28, 2009 23:35:08 GMT -5
Added in the fact the Fingerpoke pretty much put WCW in rewind. They had a new champion in Nash. Goldberg had just been defeated. You had two rival nWo factions, etc. Then within a matter of a day, Hogan was again the champ and the nWo was basically reformed aka 1996.
To me, it was like 1998 was completely worthless. Everything that led up to it meant nothing because here we are again with the same crap we've seen a thousand times already.
For a lot of us watching at the time, it was more than just a harmless thing, it was as if we had wasted the past year watching WCW, watching Goldberg, watching the Wolfpac for it all to be exactly as it was before.
I turned it off and was never a hardcore WCW fan again. I casually watched it, but it turned me off from the product for sure.
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Post by Andrew is Good on Aug 28, 2009 23:42:34 GMT -5
DX did it to be assholes to everyone. Basically, Sgt. Slaughter was getting fed up with DX's shenanigans, and thought he would get back at them by putting them in a match for the European Title (which Shawn wasn't defending very often, I think he was also WWE Champion at the time). So, they did the f*** job to get some more heat on them. This I think built some more heat for them going towards Royal Rumble against The Undertaker, and Triple H feuding with Owen Hart (I think the Taker/HBK match was announced for the Rumble anyway). It was done to build up heat on the two guys leading into a pay per view.
What was bad with the Nash/Hogan incident, was it was already seen before. The whole NWO thing had gotten beyond stale, and people wanted to see something different, and that would have been Hogan vs Nash for the World Title against each other. Instead, we got the same old same old that had been going on for the past few years, and nothing was going to change.
I actually would have loved to see the Fingerpoke of Doom in TNA. When they had Alex Shelly with Kevin Nash, my hope was Samoa Joe would lose the X-Division Title in a 3 way between himself, Nash and Shelly. Joe was still unbeaten at the time, and running over people, and Nash was doing the X-Division bully deal. So, maybe have them arguing for a few weeks prior to this, and then after they get Joe out of the picture, they face each other in the middle of the ring, looking like they're going to beat each other up. Then, Shelly does the fingerpoke, pins Nash, and they both f*** Joe over, and build up some heat for Alex Shelly, while keeping Joe unpinned. It could also add heat to the fact that people love to watch Shelly in the ring, and having him win the belt by a fingerpoke could get some good heat with him. Plus, again, it would be a continuation of things, to build to the future.
In WCW, they maintained the status quo, when things needed to change. I understand the idea of getting heat and doing a long build, but do it some other way. Do something different. Don't f*** the people over like that. f*** with them in a good way. Maybe somebody f*** the other guy over (I forget who the heel was, maybe Hogan I'm guessing as Nash was with the Wolfpac), win that way, and build new rivalries up, and don't put together everyone and keep getting away from the nwo.
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Jay Peas 42
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Post by Jay Peas 42 on Aug 29, 2009 0:15:34 GMT -5
Taken in a vaccum, the fingerpoke wasn't bad at all. It was very heelish on their part, and a double cross is something a heel would do. However, it was the timing issue. It's WCW, you have to have a Wrestling Match for the main event, so that's one. 2. It was a retread to the nWo, and not new NWO, but Hogan as champ. and 3. The RAW that night was truely a great episode, even if you knew the ending, it was still a great episode. So it's really a symbolic matter.
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Post by Threadkiller [Classic] on Aug 29, 2009 0:59:51 GMT -5
What I find funny is when people say it started the decline in WCW's ratings. The Fingerpoke episode got a 5.0 rating. The following five weeks were: 5.0, 4.4, 5.0, 4.7, and 5.7. Where was the decline? That seems like standard flucuation for a company going head to head with a red hot WWF at the time. As far as PPV buys, Superbrawl 1999 (headlined by Hogan and Flair) did a 1.1 buyrate, which was the same as the previous year's Superbrawl, and MUCH better than Souled Out the month before (headlined by Goldberg and Hall). Why did the Fingerpoke start the decline to WCW? Or better yet, why was it the reason? It was a slap in the face to the fans? Then what was Vince McMahon winning the Royal Rumble that same month? Rewarding the fans? It was just good storytelling. Austin let his hatred of McMahon override his desire to become the number one contender at Mania. You have to remember, this was the first real substantial physical contact they'd ever had with one another, so Austin was FINALLY getting to kick McMahon's ass in a completely uninterrupted, relentless fashion. But he let his rage blind him and instead of just throwing Vince out and winning the thing, he kept beating on him until The Rock came down and provided the distraction Vince needed to win. Austin got his win back the next month, went on to Mania and dethroned Rocky despite McMahon's best attempts to rig the outcome. That's what I consider "overcoming the odds," not like today, where HHH or John Cena or Batista win a handicap match booked by a heel GM. Every heel force in the promotion, it seemed, was against Austin, but with help from people like Mankind (the referee for the WM15 main event), he was able to overcome those shoddy odds. Anyway, the crux of my argument is the fact that Austin wound up giving McMahon the Rumble win because his rage blinded him. Nash wound up giving Hogan the world title because...I dunno. Hogan paid him? He missed being a lackey? I seriously can't fathom, in kayfabe, why someone on as massive a role as Nash was at the time would lay down and basically surrender the world title because, for whatever reason, he found being a lackey/goon/hired muscle preferable to being the WORLD CHAMPION. That's why the storyline was stupid to me. And I was an emotionally dense 14 year-old at the time, and even then I thought that entire angle was balls. Of course, I've never been under the impression that it had anything to do with what killed WCW. It was simply representative of some of the problems that eventually would.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 29, 2009 1:17:40 GMT -5
The most ironic part of the whole controversy is that it aired opposite Mick Foley winning the WWF title, which was every bit as much a swerve out of nowhere, but managed to be executed so well that everyone remembers as a magnificent moment.
On paper, Foley's win was even more of a pointless, shocking swerve than the Hogan/Nash reunion. Everyone knew Austin was winning the belt back at WM 15, and Foley had nothing to do besides kill time trading the belt back and forth with Rock until then. The Fingerpoke, at least, set up a fairly long Hogan title reign and wrapped up the Wolfpac/nWo feud.
But the fans didn't see it that way, because WWF managed to pull off a moment everyone wanted to see but no one ever actually expected to (in large part, because even the most casual of fans realized on some level that it'd be terrible booking): Foley, the goofy, pudgy, punching-bag everyman as WWF champion. Meaningless of not, it was unforgettable.
The Fingerpoke, on the other hand, was endemic of everything WCW had been doing for years, and came right when it was becoming clear that the formula was growing stale: an unexpected heel turn, the heels standing triumphant at the end of virtually every Nitro, and the nWo exactly where it's been for the last two and a half years. The fans had been waiting since 1996 for the payoff to angles and twists exactly like the Fingerpoke, and they had no reason to believe this new twist would be the one to finally lead to a satisfying climax (and it sure didn't).
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