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WCW Starrcade 1997: 25 years later. The start of the end for WCW.


The Natural

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12 minutes ago, JohnnyJ said:

Here's my anecdotal story about the death of WCW/ppv numbers. The audience at the time was much younger than it is today and ppvs were really expensive. My friend group was divided into three categories, (1.) the few diehards, (2.) the ones who got into it due to the wrestling boom, and (3.) the people who just enjoyed having a get together on a Sunday night. 

We would pool our money together to buy ppvs. The diehards wanted to watch everything. WCW put on a bunch of ppv stinkers and gave away just about everything on free tv (remember that Goldberg as hot as he was was really a tv attraction, not a ppv attraction) The tide had shifted and the boomers moved from WCW to WWF when Austin/Rock got molten hot.  Over a relatively short period of time only the diehards wanted to shell out money to watch WCW ppvs. I was stuck watching screenshots of WCW ppvs in real time on web sites like lordsofpain.net. 

This was not going to be reflected in the ratings because the fun of the monday night wars was switching back and forth. More eyeballs on wrestling meant higher ratings all around. 

By 99 I was in college and the boom was over. There were still WWE people floating around but there wasn't a single casual wrestling fan I knew who would be caught dead watching WCW. It was me alone in a dorm room watching nitros and listening to wcw live. 

 

Wow...a few things in this post just blew my mind. Goldberg was a TV attraction, not a ppv attraction. Ain’t that the truth. Ratings didn’t tell all for the reasons you gave. That’s also the truth. And many boomers had switched to WWF. A personal story of mine is actually about 1 of my Dad’s friends who was a diehard WCW fan (NWA) before there were diehards and casuals. Everybody who was a fan was a diehard. He had an illegal cable or something that got all WCW ppvs free and the first ppv I ever saw was at his house thanks to my Dad arranging it with him. That was Superbrawl 91. I think I’ve told that story before but I’ve never added that once Austin got hot he never watched WCW again. I wish I could ask him if it was because he finally gave up on it after Starrcade. He’d been through the same crap like we all had. The Black Scorpion, GAB 91, The Shockmaster, etc. But he died a WWF diehard. 

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23 hours ago, BloodyChamp said:

I can’t believe that story has survived so long on life support. The story about Sting being out of shape is nothing but something Hogan came up with, that Eric has stuck with over the years because of course his biggest fear is not being Hogan’s 4 in line when he wants something to duck his d*^%. 

Say Sting looking like crap is true...ok...lies are often fabricated from the truth of another matter. Gaslighting, leaving 1 or 2 things off the table. That doesn’t make the lie being told into the truth. It just didn’t matter. Sting had to win. Hogan didn’t want him to and that’s that.

And like I said in the Montreal thread...if I could mash a button and bet on a race around the building between Sting and Hogan that night in 1997 I’m betting all the money in my pocket on Sting. And if anybody wanted to give me a loan I wouldn’t need to be persuaded much to bet on Hogan needing an ambulance halfway through the race. It’s not like that had ever been a standard for being champion anyway. Maybe it should have been, but that’s another discussion. The last champion who was both in shape and physically attractive was actually Sting...7 years ago. Jeeze we’d seen people wearing that belt who looked like they were about to die like Flair when he was sick in 1991, a man suffering from a disease (The Giant), Vader who was...Vader. Now hold on...I love those guys and I’m not judging them. I’m just showing how incredibly stupid that story is that Hogan came up with. And Hogan. Yeah Hogan was also champion on days where he could barely walk to the ring with his knee.

 

I’m with you. The tan thing is kind of laughable when you consider he painted his face and the only thing his gear exposed was his arms and some of his chest and neck. 
 

I think the thing that may be true is Sting’s condition but I think that became more of a convenient truth for Hogan to justify his politics. 

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Well Eric has finally drummed up an explanation for at least 1 of the questions he’s been asked 100 times besides “there was just all these people and all this stuff that you don’t know about so it’s not what you and your Koolaid.” It’s such a load of garbage that he can’t explain it without getting the frog out of his throat though. Only watch if you can tolerate a Cris Collinsworth voice without barfing I guess.

https://youtu.be/MWCXG_uX4og

 

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One more and I’ll stop lol

Starts his answer with ...um

And the answer is that he doesn’t remember, which is back to normal. Then nobody says this but just watch what happens and tell me if I’m crazy or not. Patrick implied Eric or Hogan would straight fire him if he did it wrong. Then adds that Sting has pull of his own, without implying so much that it would be to have him fired. That’s where Eric cuts him off because he didn’t like him merely suggesting anybody had any pull unless it was directly from him or Hogan. No he didn’t say that, no I can’t prove it, but how else can you explain it. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm just now reading this thread and I like the idea of Raven Challenging Sting at SuperBrawl. I wasn't too familiar with Raven prior to coming in with Richards. He was so unique because they kept him and his Flock as far away from NWO the whole run so Scotty lucked out lol.

If Flair didn't have to be on the sidelines the rest of '97 and they added Malenko in the Horsemen by the time Bret came in that would have been fun since Eric wanted Flair to feud with Bret first because you could have used Benoits history with the Hart's to put more of a build to that.

I dug Sting in the Wolfpac as a kid but now as an adult I understand that it was a way for Nash to keep his faction more over than Hogan's. I'm not saying Goldberg would be less over if Sting had stayed to himself but Sting would have been stayed more over by himself. 

 

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Sting having a major tan would have actually gone against his character at that point. The guy spent 15 months hanging out in rafters, avoiding people and not socializing. Could you imagine crow Sting showing up at the beach and laying out in the sun or going to the tanning salon to get a spray tan? What a crock of nonsense.

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22 hours ago, The Natural said:

About fucking time. Fuck Hogan and fuck Bischoff.

Wow...I have to see this. Eric Bischoff burying Hogan actually gave me goosebumps. I thought I’d never see it like I thought I’d never see so many things I’d never see in wrestling again. And when the goosebumps are gone I’m going to mark tf out lol!

So did Nick Patrick really screw up you think? There’s no need to lie about that if he finally let go of the Hogan lie. Of course the quote on Patrick there is still kind of vague. Maybe he did come clean. I’ve said it before that I always thought the whole ending went as planned, just that the plan was really freaking dumb. Eric tried to keep Hogan from losing while also having Sting win clean and they came up with...that. And also good for Nash for chiming in with the truth for once also. He can still kiss mine to for his own little stunt that night but atleast we busted through to the light on Starrcade finally. 

Edited by BloodyChamp
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I am getting closer to this point in my WCW watch, and Hogan acting like he had a ton of momentum in that clip posted above was laughable. Everyone was ready for Sting to get his revenge. He's talking about Sting like Sting wasn't more over than him in that company since Hogan arrived.

 

 

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17 hours ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

I am getting closer to this point in my WCW watch, and Hogan acting like he had a ton of momentum in that clip posted above was laughable. Everyone was ready for Sting to get his revenge. He's talking about Sting like Sting wasn't more over than him in that company since Hogan arrived.

 

 

We can sit here and fantasy book all day long, but the reality is, anything that we come up with doesn't work because of Hogan. Be it creative control (as with what actually happened) or be it due to his pay structure. It was either Guest Booker or You shoot but I saw one with Kevin Nash in the last 5-10 years where he explained he wanted Hogan to be in a Vince-like authority figure role, but it was basically a non-starter because Hogan got a percentage of the TOTAL buyrate/house for any PPV he wrestled on - so there is literally zero scenario where anyone could go 'Alright, so Hogan gets beat, goes home for 2 months while we transition to Bret/Sting, the NWO civil war, and Goldberg...' or 'Hogan gets jumped by Hall and Nash, works an injury angle for 2 months...' He's gotta be there, contractually obligated to take up air, every single Monday/Thursday, period, no matter what. 

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I hadn't heard that tidbit before, but it's not like Hogan wrestled on every ppv anyway. He only worked 7/12 ppvs in 97 and 6/12 in 98 by my quick count. The number goes up if "wrestled" includes promo segments, but still wouldn't be 100%.

Could you imagine Hogan doing a US title run?

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On 2/26/2023 at 10:41 PM, Petey said:

Sting having a major tan would have actually gone against his character at that point. The guy spent 15 months hanging out in rafters, avoiding people and not socializing. Could you imagine crow Sting showing up at the beach and laying out in the sun or going to the tanning salon to get a spray tan? What a crock of nonsense.

Also, when he wasn't in the rafters he was walking around in the rain.

Anyway all of this is moot because 1998 was actually WCW's biggest money year ever so while this sucked it was not actually the beginning of the end.  The finger poke was the actual beginning of the end.

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I actually left out 1 additional thing in response to @JohnnyJ’s post about flimsy ratings numbers. I was done spiritually with WCW after Starrcade 97, but I kept watching Nitro because if I didn’t everybody in the entire world would have asked me what was wrong. A few people might have even thought something that would have made them say “it’s always the quiet ones” was wrong. That’s not only how big of a fan I was, but how big of a fan I was to everybody. Sounds dumb now of course but to a teenager etc etc etc. We don’t choose the best lines to walk straight and narrow but we stick to the 1 we choose. I finally quit in 1999, a few week’s into Vince Russo. 

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20 hours ago, BloodyChamp said:

finally quit in 1999, a few week’s into Vince Russo. 

I'm very slightly younger than you it sounds like, and I came really close to quitting at the end of the prior Sullivan/Taylor/committee booked summer. As insane as it sounds now, I welcomed Russo/Ferrera and actually thought they had a shot (again, we were kids). I'd actually go as far as to say that to most in my school, ECW took over the #2 spot in their eyes once they got on TNN (especially after episode 2 when Raven jumped back). I think I hung on until the end for two reasons ultimately: 1) they went with Bret winning the title at Mayhem, and 2) I still believed enough in the name value of most of the guys there to think they had a shot at turning it around (with the irony being, the shows probably became much better once they started shedding some of those big names - Hogan chief among them - into the final ~6 months of it's existence).

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On 2/28/2023 at 8:17 PM, Go2Sleep said:

I hadn't heard that tidbit before, but it's not like Hogan wrestled on every ppv anyway. He only worked 7/12 ppvs in 97 and 6/12 in 98 by my quick count. The number goes up if "wrestled" includes promo segments, but still wouldn't be 100%.

Could you imagine Hogan doing a US title run?

Imagine if Bret beat Booker for the TV Title at Bash at the Beach 98 and the first Hogan/Bret match was for the TV Title with Jay Leno as the special guest ref at Road Wild 98.

Edited by cwoy2j
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  • 3 months later...

There's not enough talk about how bad the rest of the card is, too.

Guerrero/Malenko is quite good. Nothing else is better than average, and multiple long-running feuds, particularly Steiners/Outsiders, still haven't had a proper blowoff.

Nash obviously wasn't into doing jobs, but even despite that, they had a real chance to book something better to blow everything else off.

IMO, you have Page beat Hennig for the U.S. Championship on Nitro three weeks before Starrcade, then build to one final Savage match at the PPV in which Page retains. Boom, he caps off both of his '97 feuds with wins to end the year.

Flair can beat Hennig in the cage at Starrcade to blow that off, with a finish where he hits Hennig in the head with the cage door in revenge, then gets the submission.

And that leaves Hall, not in a match at Starrcade, to do the job on Bret's debut. That match was a fresh one because it hadn't happened since 1993.

I can't fix everything (Nash being a punk bitch, Luger and Buff being dreadful), but that's a start.

Edited by SirSmUgly
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1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said:

There's not enough talk about how bad the rest of the card is, too.

Guerrero/Malenko is quite good. Nothing else is better than average, and multiple long-running feuds, particularly Steiners/Outsiders, still haven't had a proper blowoff.

Nash obviously wasn't into doing jobs, but even despite that, they had a real chance to book something better to blow everything else off.

IMO, you have Page beat Hennig for the U.S. Championship on Nitro three weeks before Starrcade, then build to one final Savage match at the PPV in which Page retains. Boom, he caps off both of his '97 feuds with wins to end the year.

Flair can beat Hennig in the cage at Starrcade to blow that off, with a fi isg where he hits Hennig in the head with the cage door in revenge, then gets the submission.

And that leaves Hall, not in a match at Starrcade, to do the job on Bret's debut. That match was a fresh one because it hadn't happened since 1993.

I can't fix everything (Nash being a punk bitch, Luger and Buff being dreadful), but that's a start.

Total shit card, but only after something like 18 people backed out of doing business that day and Eric went ahead and made 1 do it. And ROFL at his explanation over the years about making that person an example. Yeah he made Dean Malenko go out and work. That’ll show everybody and they’ll never pull that stunt again. Nash/Giant and Larry/Eric were 2 more matches that people really freaking wanted to see. Meanwhile the rest of it was still ok. Before it all hit the fan Starrcade 97 had a Wrestlemania 5 vibe. There was the main event, a couple other heated matches and the rest of it was just kind of like a party that built the last little building towards it. Then fart noise.

Edited by BloodyChamp
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