[61][62] Nash oversold the poke in the chest by forcefully falling to the mat and allowing Hogan to pin him for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
The show was broadcast every Saturday evening, from 6:05 PM EST to 8:05 PM EST.[3]. In fact, he had been in line to get the WWF Championship (he had had several previous title matches), and worked a WWF house show the night before. "Montreal...had taken his toll on him," Bischoff stated in his autobiography. Also, Rhodes was responsible for elevating up-and-coming wrestlers such as Sting, Ricky Steamboat, Magnum T.A., the Road Warriors (Hawk and Animal), and Nikita Koloff, among others, to superstardom. [41] Dusty Rhodes later claimed that a 2x4 was placed on the bottom of the wall, which had not been there on a successful rehearsal, which caused Ottman to trip and stumble.
Ratings showed that hundreds of thousands of viewers more or less immediately changed the channel to watch the historic event on Raw.
Storyline elements included racist graffiti targeted at the Nation of Domination (a stable loosely based on the Nation of Islam), drinking beer on camera by Stone Cold Steve Austin, and emphasizing the sexuality of valets Sunny, Sable, and Marlena. Hart alleged that referee Nick Patrick had performed a fast count on Sting and wanted to "make things right". The Exhibition (or CNE) is home to a huge state fair-type event every August and has tons of buildings, but this particular venue was used to show livestock year round, so it had an odor to it. Later that year, with WWF's WrestleMania IV around the corner, Crockett decided to use McMahon's own tactics against him, developing his own PPV-caliber event and airing it for free on TBS opposite WrestleMania. Many believed the way the match ended damaged the aura of invincibility that had been built up around Goldberg for the past year-and-a-half. [4], In 1994, Jim Crockett Jr.'s non-compete agreement with Turner, to whom he had sold in 1988, expired and he decided to start promoting with the NWA again. [21], Raw Is War was dominating Nitro to the point where WCW was making "quick fixes" to stem the tide, including hiring rapper Master P, bringing in Megadeth, Chad Brock, and Kiss for concerts, and conducting a contest to find a new member of the Nitro Girls (all of which flopped in the ratings).
Benoit, along with his similarly frustrated friends Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn among several others, voiced their grievances to Busch, who initially told them he would take Sullivan off Nitro and Thunder where they wouldn't have to work under him, only to turn around and tell them they were all being sent home except Benoit. Ole Anderson was part of the group as an advisor, but made only one appearance on A Flair for the Gold.
Once Bischoff was relieved of his duties in 1999, Vince Russo, a former senior storyline writer for the WWF, came aboard as lead writer of all of WCW's storylines. The NWA repeated the practice again the following year, with a Clash coinciding with WWF's WrestleMania V. Although the main event of the Clash saw NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ricky Steamboat defeat Flair in a best-of-three-falls match that lasted for almost an hour, ratings and attendance for the event fell well below expectations compared to WrestleMania V. Thus, the practice of conflicting major events would cease for six years. All five of WCW’s major championships were defended that evening, allowing the company to go out with a huge bang. He threw down the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, stating that he did not want to be champion of a "dead promotion".
[32] WCW claimed that WCW International still recognized the belt as a legitimate World Championship. [105] The DVD looked back at the roots of WCW during the days of GCW and Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, to the glory days of Monday Nitro and the nWo, and to its demise and sale to WWE.