petef3
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,783
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Post by petef3 on Jan 7, 2019 21:43:28 GMT -5
The Fingerpoke marked the end of my personal involvement with WCW. I only switched over afterward a few times--if Raw was pre-empted, or to see what Russo would do when he was first starting (both times).
That said, on a wider scale, what really killed off WCW wasn't the Fingerpoke, it was the even more nonsensical Hogan-Flair double turn, which made no sense on a conceptual level and even less in terms of execution. That's when you really saw all the relevant business metrics start to plummet.
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Post by ronnie2hotty on Jan 9, 2019 8:18:29 GMT -5
There was so much wrong in the first 4 or 5 months of 1999 that it all just piled on to get worse and worse: The finger poke, the way the NWO was now aligned and it completely increased the tired-formula of NWO shenanegans, the dumb Hogan/Flair double turn, the set and logo change (yes, I consider this a HUGE moment when people started turning away), all the injuries piling up, Kevin Nash's terrible booking, the way Thunder just sucked most of the time (hey look, a really boring C-level show).
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Post by sfvega on Jan 9, 2019 10:18:30 GMT -5
There was so much wrong in the first 4 or 5 months of 1999 that it all just piled on to get worse and worse: The finger poke, the way the NWO was now aligned and it completely increased the tired-formula of NWO shenanegans, the dumb Hogan/Flair double turn, the set and logo change (yes, I consider this a HUGE moment when people started turning away), all the injuries piling up, Kevin Nash's terrible booking, the way Thunder just sucked most of the time (hey look, a really boring C-level show). It really is crazy how there was some shit in 1998, but it seemed like once the calendar changed over to 99, it was all garbage. The writing (if you could call it that) was always pretty bad, the main event which had always been WCW's weakness anyway hit a new low all the time, the guys you thought may move up the card seemed even more misused than ever, they unmasked Rey so Goldberg's mystique wasn't the only one they screwed up seemingly intentionally. Goldberg was relegated to working with gatekeepers and midcarders, and just generally treated like a chump. Flair's return, which seemed in late 98 he could have been a huge deal but he's a chickenshit heel. Nash has been positioned as a lackey. Hall, who seemed like a bulletproof upper card player for the longest, finally just seems like an afterthought. DDP also turns heel for reasons. And Hogan turns face. It just seems like WCW had too many faces at the end of 98 in Goldberg, DDP, Nash, Sting, Luger, Flair, etc etc. So instead of tweaking the numbers, they just picked names like out of a bowl or something. And then things got way worse. That year is always talked about as bad, but it is like the Wayne Gretzky of bad wrestling. Not only is it the most shitty year of wrestling, it's so far above that no other competitors will ever reach it. I agree that the logo change is a hard point that I don't remember watching after. When they put the logo on the mat for Nitro also was an indicator in my re-watchings that things were about to get bad. |
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jan 9, 2019 11:31:35 GMT -5
Not only was this on the same day as Mankind winning the world title, but also NJPW’s January 4th show there was also Naoya Ogawa stiffing Hashimoto and causing that melee in the ring. It cements my belief of 1/4/1999 as the day professional wrestling collectively lost its mind.
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