I mean I’ve seen stronger tans, but come on.
ANATOMY OF A DISASTER: HULK HOGAN vs. STING AT STARRCADE:
-I’ve reviewed a lot of shitty matches for this column, but not a lot where you could make a strong case that they doomed the very company they were supposed to raise to the stratosphere. But here I’m gonna finally take a look at the much-requested main event of Starrcade 1997, and watch WCW step on its own dick in spectacular fashion.
THE STAGE: WCW Starrcade (Dec. 28th 1997)
THE PERFORMERS:
Hulk Hogan: The biggest star in history at the time, having undergone a revolutionary heel turn as the leader of the nWo- a bad-ass “Cool Heel” stable who sold tons of merchandise and drew fan acclaim despite being dirty cheaters. Hogan, at least, depicted himself as a cowardly, whiny heel, but still cut self-indulgent 20 minute promos about how he was a “Wrestling GOD!” with the whole nWo surrounding him. But he at least cowered and sniveled against deadly opponents, always treating Sting like he was an epic adversary he was afraid to fight. Hogan at this point had a complete stranglehold on the WCW Heavyweight Title, holding it for more than 500 days (with a 5-day Lex Luger reign in the middle).
Sting: WCW’s attempt at their own “Hulk Hogan” in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sting was still a huge star, even after being a “Hogan Buddy” when the Hulkster himself came to WCW. But after Hogan’s heel turn, WCW’s guys began to doubt if Sting was on their side- hurt by the mistrust, Sting retreated into the rafters, dressing like Eric Draven in The Crow (then only a 3-year old movie, though the comic was older) and became a mute bad-ass. This made him as over as he’d ever been, as he’d silently stalk to the ring (or descend from the rafters on a harness) and murder a dude, then walk away.
Nick Patrick: An evil heel referee, having joined the nWo itself, and been at the heart of numerous unfair wins. Because Reasons, he was never properly fired as a ref. Eric Bischoff still being Executive Vice-President was usually the reason for stuff like this.
Bret Hart: Bret was fresh off the Montreal Screwjob and was the most talked about guy in wrestling at the time. But of course he couldn’t be on WCW programming for a while and they decided to run some program where the nWo proclaimed him a member without him being present, and Bret was only at Starrcade as a guest referee for Eric Bischoff vs. Larry Zbyszko.
So the story was that the nWo had been running roughshod over WCW for more than a year, and WCW was fed up with it. They’d made the Steiner Brothers, The Giant and Lex Luger look like hapless doofuses the entire while, usually ending Nitros with massive beatdowns on multiple WCW guys, who would be stomped, spraypainted, etc. The only guy (other than DDP, an upper-midcarder) to ever consistently win out against them was Sting, who would stalk down in his “Crow” gear and murder a guy with his Scorpion Death Drop (inverted ddt), hit them with a bat or what have you, looking like this immense silent bad-ass the entire time. He almost never looked weak or got fooled. At one point the entire nWo cowered due to a vulture he sent to ringside, breaking their “unflappable cool heel” energy. And he was INCREDIBLY over. He was unquestionably the top guy, treated like the one who could beat the nWo and “save” tradition for WCW, and more.
Starrcade up until this point had been a bit of a disappointment. Heels dominated the early going of the show, with the nWo picking up a win over a Steiners/Ray Traylor team (again recurring nWo victims lost), and both Konnan and KEVIN NASH of all people had been no-shows, Kevin fearing a “heart attack” after taking too many pot brownies and not doing the expected job to the Giant, thus ruining one of the biggest matches on the card. This is widely accepted as Nash just not wanting to do the job, and even if he’s not lying it’s wildly unprofessional. BUT at least “Diamond” Dallas Page had beaten Curt Hennig and Larry Z had beaten Bischoff, with Bret establishing himself as not siding with the nWo.
A very important fact: this is the most important match in WCW history. At this point, it was the culmination of the ENTIRE “nWo” feud (which is 100% the reason why WCW started winning the war against the WWF and became profitable), the cap-off for Hogan’s reign, and the beginning of the Sting Era and a way to set off any number of storylines. And more to the point (and this is important), the WWF was gaining steam. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin had hit huge with “Austin 3:16” and had been the mega-babyface of 1997 and ratings were popping and about to get huge with Mike Tyson showing up and having a pullapart fight with Austin on RAW within a month and change, and Austin is expected to be the new star going forward. Now would be an unimaginably bad time to shit the bed in your biggest match on your biggest show ever.
WCW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE:
“HOLLYWOOD” HULK HOGAN vs. STING:
* Sting, at least, gets the mother of all entrances, with a child narrating his introduction with a weird lightshow animating itself with fake lightning. Like, fantastic ring intro right there. He looks almost sad/morose, which fits the whole “Crow” dynamic. Nick Patrick, affiliated with the nWo, is somehow allowed to be the referee.
Hogan tries to diss Sting to start, and gets slapped for it, pouting and posing for a minute- he tries to throw a cheap-shot out of a break and gets decked, then whines again. And then he suckers Sting in with a test of strength and boots him, beating him down and shouting “come on, hero!” and that’s all the heat Sting gets on him! No “giant raging babyface ass-whupping” or anything! HOGAN KNOWS HOW THIS WORKS! Hogan at least misses some elbows and gets dropkicked to the floor, but this just leads to another huge stallfest, and a headlocks sets up an International, won by Sting with TWO dropkicks, sending Hogan over the top in a slow & safe bump. Hogan stalls AGAIN, smirks and plays this off like nothing, but gets caught in a headlock and moans about it as we’re in the “long headlock” portion of this match already. Hogan loses another International but catches Sting with a clothesline and leaves him laying while Hogan boasts. But Hogan hits a vertical suplex and Sting immediately rolls to his feet and crotch-chops (a “Kliq” thing the nWo did but DX popularized) at him and kicks his ass, which is FINALLY how the match was supposed to be… and then Hogan cuts him off with an eye-rake. Oh geez.
Sting gets dumped and slammed around outside, and Hogan hits him with a BAT and this is apparently totes legal because Patrick doesn’t even admonish him (TONY WAS RIGHT! You CAN just shoot a guy outside the ring!)- Sting reverses a whip into the guardrail but FLIES in with a Stinger Splash and misses badly to leave Hogan back in command. Hogan crotches him on the railing, hits an inverted atomic drop, and grinds him out in the ring, then casually hits the Big Boot, does theatrics for ten freakin’ seconds, then drops the Legdrop FOR THE COMPLETE THREE-COUNT ELEVEN MINUTES IN, as the crowd freaks out. But Bret Hart arrives, stopping the timekeeper from ringing the bell, shouting into the mic “it happened before, and it’s not gonna happen again!”. Bret goes “That was a FAST count!” and pantomimes exactly what Patrick’s count SHOULD have been, then decks him as Patrick does the best sell of the whole match, Bret taking over since he’s a legal referee that night.
Hogan tries to run off with the belt but Bret drags him back and throws him into the ring, where Sting does his old “rev-up and roar” taunt (right about here watching live I was like “wait… he’s acting just like Surfer Sting? He wrestles the exact same?”), then Stinger Splashes him. He tries to whip Hogan to the other side but Hogan stops him as Buff Bagwell & Scott Norton hit the ring for the nWo and get decked by the Stinger. NOW Hogan allows the other Splash and Hogan faceplants so that Sting has to roll him around, THEN turn him back over for the Scorpion Deathlock, and Hogan shakes his head and Bret calls for the bell at (12:53), making Sting the new WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Out comes Luger and the Giant, who hug Sting! And… is that Joe Gomez? Mortis (hilariously wearing regular clothes, plus his mask), Wrath, Ernest Miller, Rage (I think) and everyone else fills the ring as we’re out, Sting surrounded by luminaries like John Nord & Horshu.
Oh man, was this ever the wrong match. Every babyface vs. sniveling heel main in wrestling history pretty much establishes that the face beats down the heel to start, then the heel fights dirty or counters something to come back, THEN you go to other stuff, but instead Hogan keeps the pace super-slow at first and instead of selling fear, just starts controlling really quickly and constantly slows the momentum, usually blowing off Sting as no big deal. Of course one issue is that nearly EVERY Hogan match of this era was the “Shitty Hogan Main” where it’s all slowly-paced for the aging star, full of boasting and braying, and containing little actual wrestling. With a lot of young, hot names rising in the ranks of the business his stuff was looking increasingly archaic, as nearly every PPV was topped by an awful Hogan match below **.
Further problems: Hogan almost never once cowers or acts scared of Sting (you can see maybe 2 instances of it all match and only for seconds). He doesn’t cut off comebacks as much as I was fearing he would (like his match against Warrior the next year)- he does a couple of times, but primarily it’s just “Hogan does boring offense”, then he pins Sting 100% clearly and we get a bewildering finish where Bret claims to have seen something the audience absolutely did not see, leading to a quick match restart where Sting just hits three moves and wins, punching two of the nWo’s lowest-tier members once in the head apiece to stop them. THEY DIDN’T EVEN SEND HALL OR SAVAGE! Honestly one of the best ideas most people think of is the nWo tries to interfere and THAT’S the moment where the WCW locker room pours out and sends them off- finally capping off 1.5 years of nWo beatdowns with WCW finally uniting as one. I mean, that’s the obvious story and anyone could have come up with it.
Rating: * (just a bunch of weak stuff and stalling- Hogan looked lazy and Sting looked sleepy and poor save for three good Stinger Splashes)
JUST what you want the Apter mags to be saying after your biggest shows.
The Fallout: So on the Nitro immediately following this, Hogan & Bischoff called bullshits on the finish and demanded a rematch (probably at attempt to pop a huge TV rating)- Sting AGAIN took a goddamn pinfall thanks to Patrick, but the actual ref Randy Anderson restarted the match and Hogan gave up to the Scorpion Deathlock again while the cameras were off (OF COURSE). Then the WCW Title was held up (thus ruining the historical impact of Starrcade) for the next Pay Per View where Sting finally gets it uncontested, and within a couple of months Sting loses the belt AGAIN and doesn’t hold it again for the rest of 1998, in the interim joining nWo Wolfpac and being a secondary guy to Kevin Nash. Watching live (and reading recaps by Tommy Hall and others), Sting was very, very clearly de-pushed and had all his heat drained out of him until it was unthinkable that he would be Champion again. He gets two more mini-reigns in WCW’s dying years and that’s it.
Nick Patrick famously was like “gee I was in a lotta finishes I don’t know!” about the slow fast-count for 20 years after the match, but as soon as he retired he felt free to just drop that someone told him to do a fast-count, then “someone else” showed up and told him to do it “nice and slow”, and he claims he couldn’t find Bischoff or anyone else in charge the night of the show to tell him what to do. Which sounds COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS if this were any company other than WCW.
Bret Hart:My debut at Starrcade ’97 in December had been anything but brilliant. Eric told me my storyline was going to be about how I saved WCW by helping Sting win back the title from Hogan, which called for me to confront the referee after he made a fast count on Sting. In true WCW fashion, the referee forgot what he was supposed to do for real and made a normal count, but that didn’t stop me from knocking him out cold and declaring myself the new referee. Sting resumed the match and beat Hogan seconds later. If I thought things were going to get better for me from there on in, I was sadly mistaken.
Eric Bischoff in interviews has talked about how Sting “showed up without a tan” or somesuch garbage, like he hadn’t been taking care of himself, and fans rightfully pissed all over that as sounding ridiculous (never mind that Sting had been at Nitros with Bischoff for months beforehand and would have been seen). This is likely, however, a smokescreen for “Sting was f’d up on drugs a lot and that’s why we weren’t sure about him” (Sting frequently admits to being a drug-addled wreck at this point in his life). And yeah, that’s fair… but then WHY IS HE THE MAIN BABYFACE AT YOUR BIGGEST MATCH EVER? Like they hadn’t been able to check up on him for the dozens of shows they were both at?
Never mind that booking a shitty finish on purpose to screw him up as the cap-off to an 18-month story arc doesn’t actually exonerate Bischoff at all, but makes him look like an even bigger moron. But that’s a lot of Bischoff shoot explanations: “No, it didn’t happen the way Meltzer said it did, but here’s my brand-new explanation for it which also makes me look like a giant idiot who didn’t have a handle on his own job”.
Mitigating Factors: … Sting was probably messed up on drugs. And had ring rust. Maybe couldn’t have been as agile as before. And Hogan was an aging veteran. And hey, they wanted to insert Bret right into the main event stuff!
Overall: It’s impossible to overstate just how disastrous this match was for WCW as a whole, and for Sting’s career. At the worst possible time (the WWF and the rise of Austin happening on the other channel), they absolutely shit the bed and gave the worst match imaginable for what they should have been trying to accomplish, wrecking an 18-month story. This associated WCW’s name with “failure” more than anything else could, and pretty well created the “Because WCW” meme on the spot. There’d been bad stuff before, but THIS? On the same show where Kevin Nash sneaks out of doing a job?
There’s a lot of Fantasy Booking and “what should have happened” regarding this show, and I almost want to throw my hat in, but honestly it’s silly. Like, my mother, who hates wrestling with a passion, could have been told a summation of the feud in one minute and produced a finer finish to this match that what was offered. Literally anything else would have been better short of a clean Hogan victory to end the show- if you’re WCW, you made your conquering babyface hero look weak, you confused the fans, you made Bret look like an idiot and a liar, and you left everything up in arms. Like, you wanna do a rematch and pop an equivalent rating? Fine. So just have Hogan enact a rematch clause or something! Even running a “Hogan gets his cheating used against him” finish is dumb because this is supposed to be your big “WrestleMania moment”. One thing often overlooked with the “fast count” spot is WHY THE FUCK THERE WAS EVEN A FAST COUNT IN THE FIRST PLACE? Like why even book it so that Sting eats any kind of a pin at all?
The match is the ultimate “Hogan is Selfish” example and stained his career for good, as it was blatantly obvious to everyone watching that he’d pulled a power-play to save some face, scoring a clean pin over his nemesis of 18 months. He never once looks truly afraid or like he’s going to lose to his foe until the very end, too. It messed up Bret Hart’s debut, and then the resulting aftermath killed Sting’s heat as well. Hogan was back in the Main Event picture quickly and the nWo Hollywood vs. Wolfpac feud soon dominated the company, and Hogan had to be unseated AGAIN, this time by Bill Goldberg (at least that one wasn’t ruined- they were probably wise to put it on Nitro so we didn’t get “Selfish PPV Hogan” again refusing to play ball). And right when the WWF was about to be its strongest, WCW dropped the ball in the most embarrassing way they could. The sheer crushing disappointment of Starrcade, WCW’s most important show ever, wrecking an 18-month long story? It’d be hard to hurt your brand name more than that. In a business that’s all about appearances, WCW just immolated theirs.