Kevin Nash talks about the Fingerpoke of Doom

[toodarkmark]

I think the fingerpoke leading to the death of WCW is wayyyyyyyy overated. It's very easy to look back in retrospect and tear every little angle apart, but at the time this was way over. It was super heat, and if they had been able to build it up to the eventual Goldberg payoff, it would have been a huge success.

The larger problem were the contracts, the higher ups not wanting wrestling on their television, and too many workers with controls of their characters. Theres not one angle in the history of wrestling that cant be forgotten/changed/lost. Its just stories. Theres not one promotion, including WCW, that has ever been killed by the stories they told. Its more about who they choose to tell the stories.

AWA didnt die because of their angles, it died because every wrestler left. $$$. ECW didnt die because of stories, it was the $$$. WCW didnt die because of the angles it ran, it died because of the people who had the $$$ pulled the plug. WCW in its dying days was still pulling a 2.5, which is what, a point lower then WWE is pulling today. IF Bishoff was able to buy it and find a station to run the program, it couldve in theory been up to a 3.

I agree with thestinger that this made me pop big time when it happened and got me excited. It couldve worked and its negative historical conetation just doesnt mean that much to me.

[I Graduated Warrior University]

thestinger said:

yjc1019 said:

It did get heat, but I think it was the wrong type of heat where people just didn't want to watch anymore.

See the fingerpoke is one of those things everyone is never going to agree on. My brother and I were SO excited to see the nWo reform. Our phone started ringing immediately afterwards, all our friends were calling to ask "Did you see that?"

We all dug out our nWo shirts and wore them the next day. Since everyone I know loved it, I spent years thinking the 'fingerpoke' was a successful angle. It wasn't until last year that I found out people hated it.

You have to realize at the time, WCW had entered a slump, the first decline in quality since the Monday Night Wars began.

Goldberg had won the title, and had been built up SO much, that nobody in the company could beat him. He wasn't even having feuds. At the start of each Nitro, the announcers would hype, "Tonight the World Champion GOLDBERG is wrestling!" They never bothered to say against who.

That's because every week Goldberg was 'wrestling' Jerry Flynn or Rick Fuller. He would come out, spear, Jackhammer and pin. The World Champion had beaten everyone in company clean so he was wrestling jobbers every week. Who the #@$% did Jerry Flynn beat to earn a world title shot?

Then there was the 'war' between the two nWo factions. Well the Black and White was filled with guys like Stevie Ray and Bryan Adams who were just not A-list material. The Wolfpac HAD A-list material, except Sting and Macho Man got badly injured and were out for a long time. That feud was stalled.

The fingerpoke solved everything. We had single heel nWo with six members and a super over baby face as Goldberg to feud with them.

Nash is right: if Goldberg hadn't gotten hurt and had to take a year off, there would have been a year's worth of good tv in nWo vs. Goldberg. It didn't happen so Hogan turned face and the nWo faded away.

ACTUALLY. Can you name any "main event" guys that were put in a main event program with Goldberg at the time? I mean, there was Goldberg vs Hall and Goldberg vs Bret after he dropped the belt, but to say that Goldberg had destroyed everyone in the company and that he was wrestling jobbers because of this is just silly. Goldberg was facing the like of Jerry Flynn and company every week because the "veterans" didn't want to take part in a feud with Goldberg because they didn't want to ultimately "become part of the streak". In other words they were worrying about "losing" a match on TV despite the fact that they're bank accounts were always going to be healthy with Goldberg in the Main Event.

[Hiroshi Hase]

stephsdemonchild said:

thestinger said:

See the fingerpoke is one of those things everyone is never going to agree on. My brother and I were SO excited to see the nWo reform. Our phone started ringing immediately afterwards, all our friends were calling to ask "Did you see that?"

We all dug out our nWo shirts and wore them the next day. Since everyone I know loved it, I spent years thinking the 'fingerpoke' was a successful angle. It wasn't until last year that I found out people hated it.

You have to realize at the time, WCW had entered a slump, the first decline in quality since the Monday Night Wars began.

Goldberg had won the title, and had been built up SO much, that nobody in the company could beat him. He wasn't even having feuds. At the start of each Nitro, the announcers would hype, "Tonight the World Champion GOLDBERG is wrestling!" They never bothered to say against who.

That's because every week Goldberg was 'wrestling' Jerry Flynn or Rick Fuller. He would come out, spear, Jackhammer and pin. The World Champion had beaten everyone in company clean so he was wrestling jobbers every week. Who the #@$% did Jerry Flynn beat to earn a world title shot?

Then there was the 'war' between the two nWo factions. Well the Black and White was filled with guys like Stevie Ray and Bryan Adams who were just not A-list material. The Wolfpac HAD A-list material, except Sting and Macho Man got badly injured and were out for a long time. That feud was stalled.

The fingerpoke solved everything. We had single heel nWo with six members and a super over baby face as Goldberg to feud with them.

Nash is right: if Goldberg hadn't gotten hurt and had to take a year off, there would have been a year's worth of good tv in nWo vs. Goldberg. It didn't happen so Hogan turned face and the nWo faded away.

ACTUALLY. Can you name any "main event" guys that were put in a main event program with Goldberg at the time? I mean, there was Goldberg vs Hall and Goldberg vs Bret after he dropped the belt, but to say that Goldberg had destroyed everyone in the company and that he was wrestling jobbers because of this is just silly. Goldberg was facing the like of Jerry Flynn and company every week because the "veterans" didn't want to take part in a feud with Goldberg because they didn't want to ultimately "become part of the streak". In other words they were worrying about "losing" a match on TV despite the fact that they're bank accounts were always going to be healthy with Goldberg in the Main Event.

Actually when Goldberg won the title, he had several matches with the likes of The Giant, DDP,Sting, Raven,Meng, Bigelow,Hennig, etc. So it wasn't like he was fighting jobbers every week.

[Lenny: Smooth like Keith Stone]

I think another factor of why the fingerpoke was so detrimental to WCW during the Monday Night Wars was because it happened to be the same night as the Mankind title run. I distinctly remember watching both shows that night, and at the end of the night both shows really made an impression on me regarding where I saw both promotions. WCW had reformed the NWO, and was basically about the rehash the same storyline again that they spent the past years doing. On the other hand, Mick Foley won the WWF title for the first time and they were ushering in a brand new era of TV with Foley as the top guy. So WCW was making a statement that they intended to give us more of the same over the coming months, and WWF was telling us that their TV is now going to be centered around a new guy who hadnt gotten a run at the top yet. Not to mention that Foley's popularity was at an all-time high at this point, whereas Hogan, Nash, and even Goldberg were getting stale in the eyes of some.