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| The Fingerpoke of Doom was ridiculous, but to say it was the catalyst for WCW going under is a bit overboard. There were a lot of reasons much of WCW's programming sucked during it's final years, but the single biggest catalyst for WCW failing was Stone Cold Steve Austin. Especially since Nitro only had one head-to-head ratings victory after September 98 when the Austin-McMahon feud was in full-swing with the "Bedpan McMahon" Incident, "Mr. Socko", "Bang 3:16", The Beer Truck, and so forth. WCW just couldn't answer that. None of WCW's writers had any idea how to construct the storyline that was badass, funny, alluring, and climactic, all at the same time.
And if there's any reason WCW lost the ratings battle the night the Fingerpoke Incident occured, it was because the same night, they gave away the results on Raw where Foley won the WWE Championship and it backfired histerically. So really, not many people even watched the Fingerpoke. And if there is still any doubt that Austin was the reason WCW started to decline, just listen to Austin's pop towards the end of that Foley match. MY.GOD. |
Notice that I said "a catalyst", not "the catalyst". Of course one incident wasn't behind the entire downfall of the WCW. It was just another symptom of the man things that were wrong with the promotion by that point. But that sequence summed up so much of what WCW was doing wrong - giving away a PPV-caliber match on TV (before the switch), a ridiculous storyline, a bait-and-switch, a swerve, a continuation of the heels always winning, a moment many fans truly hated, and it significantly devalued the world title. That is a whole lot to manage in just one segment.
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| I honestly never understood what people hate about that. All that it means that on that night, the challenger was better then the champ. I can imagine your argument about how it makes the title look less valuable, but when I thought like that, I lost interest in wrestling =\. |
Its not just about the title not having value when it tossed about, but that it doesn't do anything for your champion. A world championship in wrestling is supposed to signify a worker as being the very best, just like being a champion in any given sport... Although wrestling is a work, the same idea is attached to the idea of champion. This is how the WWE always made the world title (or titles) seem. Its how other promotions make the titles out to be. But there seems to be no effort towards that anymore in the E. Titles are pretty much meaningless.