[1999-01-04-WCW-Nitro] Interview: Hulk Hogan

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Six weeks after leaving, Hogan is back. He claims he was planning a formal goodbye tonight and was also going to announce his VP running mate, but Nash had to call him out and now his plans are ruined. He says if Flair is going to force him into a match, he guesses he owes his fans one last retirement match where he plans to retire as WCW World Champion. He puts over the Wolfpac stronger than he ever did as a formidable opponent in 1998, which should have given it away.

 

This ends with the legendary announcement from Tony Schiavone that Mick Foley is going to win the WWF title tonight. "Yeah, that'll put butts in seats."

[Tim Evans]

This was WCW at it's most egotistical. I remember Hogan running for president. Then they announce Foley's winning the title. Such a stupid move by WCW.

[soup23]

Hogan saying this is his retirement match did get people to care somewhat about the match but he hadn't been gone long enough for us to really desire to see Hogan back.

[Zenjo]

I can remember from the time how disgusted I was about the WWF title spoiler. Nothing else WCW did managed to shed viewers quite this quickly. Amazingly this would not be the low point of the Nitro.

[PeteF3]

"When there's positive momentum, there's positive momentum. But when there's negative momentum, there's REALLY negative momentum!" Shoot comments that aren't supposed to be shoot comments, etc. etc. etc. The rest of Hogan's promo is mostly drowned out by Goldberg chants. Even after the Starrcade bullshit, he wasn't unredeemable.

 

"If you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not." Bischoff tries a tack from a few years ago but has Schiavone act as his mouthpiece this time. What Eric didn't seem to realize was:

 

a.) The WWF had been back to taping every other Raw for a full year at this point, to no effect on the ratings week-to-week.

b.) Spoiling things was daring when it was unprecedented--it's not anymore.

c.) The previous spoilers were over things that were either fairly inconsequential (like who won the Raw Bowl) or saying that something did *not* happen (the big guy lost to three superkicks instead of winning the IC title). Here, they gave away a pivotal event.

d.) I'm fairly sure the fledgling wwf.com had Mankind's title win as a front page story after the taping. Not only did they anticipate spoilers getting out there, they were counting on it. Dave reported on Mankind's title win even before it was taped, very likely by a source who wanted it out there--all precisely to counterprogram against the loaded Dome show on the other channel.

 

WCW played right into the WWF's hands.