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First moment you knew WCW was in "trouble"?

16K views 84 replies 67 participants last post by  yeahbaby! 
#1 ·
I don't mean for this to be an over obvious question... a lot of us who watched some WCW back in the day probably could notice the writing on the wall at some point before, or at least during the year 2000.

My question is simple, what comes to your mind as the first time you were watching WCW and you started to think their days were numbered?
 
#79 ·
LOL I remember when he jumped back to the WWF saying he was going to save it too. I had the same feeling if he was going to get pushed over Austin in 98 lol.

Starrcade 1997.

That was the first sign I thought would lead WCW into trouble.
It was a strange time because the WWF was getting attention from screwing Bret which WCW panicked on ruining their long great build for Hogan and Sting.

when Hogan went back to the red and yellow..
This was going to be my answer off the top. It was HORRIBLY DONE and knew they were desperate with this one. They could have really done it better, but it still was a bad idea since it seemed like WCW was resetting to 1995.

Starrcade 97 and 98. Two of the dumbest, and worst booked main events in wrestling history.


Sting and Goldberg going over clean and sustaining momentum could have changed the fate of the business.
I agree completley, but politics ran rampant there which has caused this era to have creative/bosses control everything to the detriment of having stars grow organically. Sting and Goldberg should have been similar to Austin and Rock for WCW.

When Nash and Hall appeared on Nitro.
This also crossed my mind, but it goes even further. On VISUALS it just seemed like WWF was better the way the whole thing went down which couldn't help WCW or its fans arguments lol.

It was done so good it ended up crushing WWF too because it seemed like all the stars of the WWF were in WCW lol.
 
#4 ·
I was never been able to watch WCW shows in my country and I watch WWE shows since 1994.
But I thought WCW was in serious trouble in 1998/99 because many people blames Nash for ending Goldberg's streak and that fiasco match with Hogan when he basically gave their world title to him.

According to those fans that was when WCW was letally injured, and WWE with Mankind started to have higher ratings.
 
#5 ·
i was too young and naive to know. i knew wcw was no.2 but i still enjoyed it and was unaware of the turmoil it was under.
 
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#6 ·
So many moments looking back marking the decline
Botched Warrior feud
Overloading nWo
Fingerpoke of doom,
maybe before then with the nwo split tbh, you could see it had lost momentum,
then when they started touring to smaller arenas during nwo elite era.
Was obvious it was all over when the nitro set changed to the new wcw logo and you had hogan, sid, nash ddp in the 4 way...it was a mess by then especially as Jericho, Benoit, Guerrero Saturn, Malenko were now in WWF

When russo took over and turned it into wwf attitude era lite it was certainly totally done, WCW was a success because it was an alternative to the WWF/WWE style, sudden;y trying to imitate it and imitate it badly was terrible to see...

SAD TIMES as mid 90s Nitro was incredible
 
#22 ·
Jeff I can understand but Scott and Booker, two guys that have been there forever won every other title and had main event presence about them and were good in the ring and on the mike?
 
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#13 ·
The first really telling sign was the Fingerpoke of Doom, IMO. Goldberg's momentum was already derailed and this just made it worse. Suddenly, the hottest guy in the company was cooled down fast and it was kinda like "well...what the fuck are we still watching for, then?"
 
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#33 ·
Yep, it's the most obvious answer but it'd have to be mine too. I can't honestly say that I thought "this company's going out of business" but this was the one time I actually stayed watching Nitro instead of RAW because the hype and build to the Nash vs Hogan World Title match had me captivated. Being an almost purely WWF fan at the time, this was a big deal and I needed to feel that my 'investment' was worth the tradeoff.

The Fingerpoke of Doom, as intended, made me feel like a fool. I was a sucker for buying into the hype and thinking I was in for a satisfying pay off. I went from thinking "Damn I wish I'd watched in the weeks leading up because this is intense!" to thinking "I'm sorry, RAW, I'll never stray from you again".


And I never did.



Unless you count in 2003 when I didn't watch for eight years.
 
#16 ·
The Radicalz jumping ship. When four of your guys-- one of them being your world champion-- are miserable enough to walk out first chance they get, it's not a good sign.

Incidentally, I didn't remember if Benoit was the current champ or had just recently been champ, so I checked with Dr. Wikipedia, and what the fuck, is this real??:







The title was vacated EIGHT TIMES in the span of a year?????? And look at the reign lengths in the right column. Really? This fucking happened? And someone just let it?? How the fucking FUCK did this company live past 2000?
 
#17 ·
tbh I wasn't "smarten up" back then as I was still young, so I didn't have a clue

I enjoyed WCW up to a certain point where WWF started blazing, me and my friends used to record either RAW or Nitro on VCR and watched the other show live. I don't know when but at a somewhere we stopped with nitro and just watched raw

all I remember was that Flair had no business holding the world championship in 1999, especially when you had Goldberg, Sting, Steiner, Nash and Hall and the rest of the cool roster they had. Flair was really stale in that time and I had zero interest in seeing him with that sweet gold belt
 
#18 ·
I honestly always thought Starrcade 97 was the first of many big mistakes WCW would make. The way they botched the Hogan and Sting feud was criminal. What was supposed to be a fast three count looked about as normal as any other count. So when Hart came out to restart the match it just didn't make sense.
 
#19 ·
Kinda knew the writing was on the wall back in 2000. Watching Raw and the crowds were ELECTRIC for everything while in WCW the crowd was dead for mostly everything outside the top guys. On top of that, they countered the hot Rock/Triple H feud with Hogan/Flair in 2000. Yeah. And everyone jumping ship from WCW to WWE was a pretty big clue too.
 
#26 ·
To be honest, as a 14 year old kid, I never got that moment.

I wasn't knowledgeable enough to recognize a bad product, despite there being things I didn't like but that's always been the case with wrestling for me. I didn't have the internet at the time, so the backstage problems were foreign to me.

Hell, I didn't truly realize they were in trouble until the second to last Nitro when Bischoff called in and said the following week might be the last show. Caught me off guard because I hadn't recalled him being around in around 8 months.

Now, I will say I felt things took a turn for the worse after the "reboot" in April of 2000 but even then, with what I endured with WCW in previous years, I didn't know it was near death.
 
#27 ·
Re: First moment you knew WCW was in "trouble"?

I don't see how it survived past 1995, to be honest. That 'Dungeon of Doom' shit made Mabel vs. Diesel look like Andre vs. Hogan.

But I was never a big viewer of WCW. I would tune in before Raw came on and flip over during commercial breaks. The Wolfpac (music, shirt and angle) was the point that I lost what little interest I had. I was 10 years old and thought it was all laugh-out-loud stupid.
 
#28 ·
When Hogan beat Savage for the title the night after Spring Stampede '98. I know business was still doing very well and the numbers were going up, but considering what the WWF had on the other channel was far superior, I knew Hogan wouldn't be able to ride that wave for much longer. By the end of the year, he had a much harder time moving the needle and so did WCW as a whole.
 
#29 ·
I have to also agree with someone saying around 2000 when Jeff Jarrett was the top dog. Although his run there was meh..i kinda felt something going on. Plus you could also get the vibe by seeing how much less people were in attendance as well as top starts. It was sad to see my favorite wrestling org die :/
 
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