Hogan - justified in WCW or not?

[thebrainfollower]

I want to get other's thoughts on this, because I'm having a spirited debate with goc where he seems to argue that Hogan was in the right to bury both Sting and Goldberg in 1998. The argument seems to be that Hogan was the best, most spirited, caring, hard worker in the main event scene that year in 1998 and therefore should have kept the title. If I am going too far in overstating your view goc, I am sorry and feel free to correct me.

 

Speaking as someone who gave up on WCW that year out of legit hate (as opposed to heat) for Hogan I cannot disagree more. But I want other's thoughts on this and in general was his political style justified in his WCW run?

[goc]

I want to get other's thoughts on this, because I'm having a spirited debate with goc where he seems to argue that Hogan was in the right to bury both Sting and Goldberg in 1998. The argument seems to be that Hogan was the best, most spirited, caring, hard worker in the main event scene that year in 1998 and therefore should have kept the title. If I am going too far in overstating your view goc, I am sorry and feel free to correct me.

 

Speaking as someone who gave up on WCW that year out of legit hate (as opposed to heat) for Hogan I cannot disagree more. But I want other's thoughts on this and in general was his political style justified in his WCW run?

Yea you're really twisting my words here to the point I'm not even sure what posts you're reading so I'm just going to stop even clicking on this thread because wtf.

[thebrainfollower]

okay that seemed to be your point. So if you ARE saying that Hogan's politics were justified in Sting's case but not in Goldberg's okay, I can see that argument. I do think the point about how Hogan reacted to both and was he justified is interesting though,.

[jdw]

From the bolding, I think he means that Hogan didn't bury Goldberg in 1998. He put him over for the title. Nash and others buried Goldberg at Starcade.

 

I'm trying to remember, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the talk at the time was that Hogan agreed to put over Goldberg with the understanding he'd get the win back. Someone would have to check the WON's.

 

As a side note, folks should go look at the booking/results of Starcade 1998 if they want a headache. Didn't Nash have the book at this point? Good lord what a trainwreck.

[thebrainfollower]

That was indeed the Observer claim at the time. But if Hogan had creative control why would this be needed? Hogan could demand the title back any day he wanted and they'd have to give it to him.

 

Here's the thing. We all know that from the second Goldberg won the title he became an afterthought while Hogan-Warrior dominated for the next few months. Then Hogan took a break, Nash got the book and what happened happened.

 

Now Nash's claim (and I am not buying this either because to be skeptical of Hogan while going along with whatever Nash says makes little sense) is that Hogan used creative control to demand the title back but without actually beating Goldberg, because he wanted to look better with the boys. Nash follows this up by saying that beating Goldberg did nothing for him (there I do think he's right) and it only benefited Hogan and that was who it was supposed to benefit. Nash finished by saying that creative didn't matter because Hogan had veto power over basically everything in WCW.

 

I do get that I took him the wrong way JDW. It was me seeing a word in another post that wasn't there. I still say Hogan had more to do with Goldberg's burial than Nash did, though neither were out to help anyone except themselves.

[jdw]

Before they got to Warrior, it was the Hogan-DDP Celebrities Matches:

 

Bash at the Beach 98 - San Diego, CA - Cox Arena - July 12, 1998

* WCW World Champion Bill Goldberg pinned Curt Hennig at 3:51 with the spear and Jackhammer after kicking out of the Hennig Plex; Goldberg's record: 112-0

* Hulk Hogan & Dennis Rodman (w/ the Disciple) defeated Diamond Dallas Page & Karl Malone at 23:45 when Hogan pinned Page

 

Road Wild 98 - Sturgis, SD - Sturgis Rally & Race - August 8, 1998

* WCW World Champion Bill Goldberg won a 9-man battle at 7:57 (Giant, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Konnan, Curt Hennig, Sting, Scott Norton, Lex Luger)
* Diamond Dallas Page & Jay Leno (w/ Kevin Eubanks) defeated Hulk Hogan (w/ the Disciple) & Eric Bischoff (w/ Elizabeth) at 14:32

 

The Celeb matches did record buys, if I recall correctly. They also were likely locked into them, and there was the Eric egofuck payoff as well.

 

They didn't have a lot lined up for Goldberg because who wanted to be sacrificed at that alter. It should have been Nash and Hall, probably Hall first. But Nash, Hall and Hogan were all in bed with Eric. It was easy for everyone to duck it.

 

I think we all agree they could have done better. Hogan was as usual smart: he moved himself away from Goldberg, got his own programs, and they did well. The Warrior one didn't do great, but you could see the thinking there: Hogan vs Piper and Hogan vs Savage did strong nostalgia money. Hogan-Warrior happened once, with no heel. Hogan worked his own programs, they did business, and Goldberg was left to his own programs that weren't super interesting.

 

I wouldn't say Hogan was faultless. But it probably was more like Caesar: a lot of stabs, Nash got the killer one, and Hogan played people generally well... perhaps up until the finger point, which wasn't smart to go along with.

[Hawkeye12]

I never bought the "Hogan only put him over to get the win over him", largely because if that WAS the case it would've happened. Never heard Nash mention it either and you would think he would know. And then recently I watched a shoot with Kevin Sullivan, and he said he had an idea for a whole angle where Hogan would end up coming back and getting the first victory over Goldberg. Hogan would lock himself in seclusion studying the Goldberg match, and they'd show training vignettes with Hulk going back to his Japan "shooter" roots, while being mocked by his NWO brothers for his obsession behind his back, and then Hogan wins the rematch when Goldberg misses the spear in the corner and knocks himself out. Then they'd have the rubber match and both come out of it babyfaces together against the NWO (like Rock at WMX8). It was a pretty well detailed long term angle, and he said he pitched it to Hogan and he was open to doing it. But Bischoff and others didn't like it so it never gained any traction. If they didn't even have Hogan beat Goldberg with a pretty great angle like he presented, I can't imagine Hogan beating Goldberg was ever something that was supposed to happen. I do think they'd have rematched on the NBC special in February 1999 based on the Fingerpoke, but unfortunately that didn't happen when the NBA strike ended. Same with Raven and Roddy Piper that was dropped about a week after it started on the Nitro vignette when they knew the show wasn't going to happen.

[thebrainfollower]

I think Nash claims that the poke was Hogan's idea as well, not his.

[Hawkeye12]

Considering they used a Karl Malone aisleway run in (complete with diamond cutter IIRC) during the Goldberg title win at the Georgia Dome, ensuring Bill's win got mentioned when they showed said highlight on every sports show, and then had him do a run in post Road Wild main event to destroy Hogan and Bischoff and to get in all the pictures with Leno that appeared on all the mainstream shows and in newspapers (even wearing his title belt the entire time!), I haven't a clue where he was buried or had his legs cut out under him. In fact, I'd argue they made sure to put him over to the largest audiences outside of Nitro that they possible could as quickly as they possibly could. It was strapping a rocket to the guy and putting him into the mainstream from the very night he won the belt until he was on the cover of magazines within months! I'm not sure how so many smart wrestling minds over the years have ignored that stuff but it never gets brought up. They couldn't have bent over backwards any more to help him achieve his superstardom and "make" him.

[thebrainfollower]

They could have given him a single storyline. That might have helped.

[Childs]

Considering they used a Karl Malone aisleway run in (complete with diamond cutter IIRC) during the Goldberg title win at the Georgia Dome, ensuring Bill's win got mentioned when they showed said highlight on every sports show, and then had him do a run in post Road Wild main event to destroy Hogan and Bischoff and to get in all the pictures with Leno that appeared on all the mainstream shows and in newspapers (even wearing his title belt the entire time!), I haven't a clue where he was buried or had his legs cut out under him. In fact, I'd argue they made sure to put him over to the largest audiences outside of Nitro that they possible could as quickly as they possibly could. It was strapping a rocket to the guy and putting him into the mainstream from the very night he won the belt until he was on the cover of magazines within months! I'm not sure how so many smart wrestling minds over the years have ignored that stuff but it never gets brought up. They couldn't have bent over backwards any more to help him achieve his superstardom and "make" him.

They didn't exactly cut his legs out, but they did a poor job of following up his Dome win. The guy was their hottest star and he had exactly one significant match, against DDP, between his title win and his title loss. And even that wasn't treated as the main event. So yes, they tried to make him look like a big star in the summer, but then he just dangled. This was a fairly striking thing as I rewatched all of it on the '98 yearbook.

[Loss]

Hogan should have had a reduced role by the end of 1998. But I don't think that comes down to him. I think it comes down to Eric Bischoff being unable to see past him.

 

The way Hogan's contract was structured, it didn't make sense for him to be anything but the undisputed #1 guy. He was by far the highest paid guy. He had full creative control. He even got 25% of PPV revenue. I believe I've read before that in his best year in WCW he made somewhere in the $6-8 million range. And the truth is that up until 1999, he earned every penny he made.

 

Hogan signed a new deal in early 1998 for all the same perks he always had. And ultimately, I think that's one thing that did them in. He could still draw in 1998, but the warning signs were there and he was also overexposed. A look at the Torches at the time show that he knew this as well as anyone but WCW paid him so much money per appearance that he couldn't help but go with it.

 

A lot of times, while frustrating to those of us who followed things closely, Hogan's selfishness either didn't hurt business or actually helped it because what was good for Hogan was good for WCW. When that stopped being the case in 1999, he was a handicap. They could have blown off the NWO completely at the end of 1997 and started putting him in a strong position just below the top picture in 1998 and that would have probably made him valuable longer and also at least postponed the decline a little longer, sure, but it wasn't detrimental right away. It took a long time for these things to catch up.

[fakeplastictrees]

Hogan playing the John Cena circa 2015 role in WCW 99 would have been really good. No one is saying that Hogan should have gone opening matches on Thunder, but WCW could have still built important and fresh stuff around him outside of the WHC, Nash, Goldberg, Sting, Flair, etc.

[Jingus]

I never bought the "Hogan only put him over to get the win over him", largely because if that WAS the case it would've happened.

The way Hogan's creative control was said to be structured, he couldn't simply insist to be the one to end the Streak and have it handed to him without any choice on the booker's part. Hogan had veto power over everything inside of his own personal storylines, but he didn't have carte blanche to demand just anything in the world that he wanted. "I want to be the one who beats this undefeated champion" wasn't within the jurisdiction of his creative control's power. Thus, he had to make the deal with the bosses in order to get his win back. But by the time the Fingerpoke happened, Hogan had clearly changed his mind (and I think was already contemplating turning babyface again, which started happening just weeks later).

 

I haven't a clue where he was buried or had his legs cut out under him.

Goldberg might've been in the post-Road-Wild photos with Leno... but he wasn't the one actually appearing on the Tonight Show; that honor went to Hogan/Bischoff/DDP. Like others pointed out, Goldberg barely had any actual angles or built-up opponents during his entire tenure as champion. Half of his televised title defenses were against total jabronis; I mean seriously, "Scott Putski: World Championship title contender!".

 

Even more damningly: where the hell was Goldberg on the PPVs during his title reign? At Bash at the Beach and Road Wild, he was stuck in meaningless midcard matches while Hogan played with celebrities in the main. At Fall Brawl and World War 3, Goldberg didn't even wrestle a match. This leaves Halloween Havoc (where he was treated as the B-plot in a buildup focused on Hogan/Warrior, and the match was cut off by time restraints and went dark on many cable providers) and Starrcade (where Bill was pinned, losing the championship, his Streak, and his special aura all within the span of a single three-count). That is NOT doing everything you can do in order to get a guy over. Compare that to the WWF, which made damn sure to keep Stone Cold in the main event of every show (with the SurSer98's tournament-final main event being the only exception, and they were using that to build up Rock as the new #2 guy).

[Hobbes]

I was recently researching the Hogan/Goldberg World title change for a podcast with Matt Feuerstein, so I actually have a quote handy from the Death of WCW about the booking of this. Now, I realize that Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds aren't exactly Woodward and Bernstein, but the book was endorsed by Meltzer, so I'm assuming the following story has been vetted:

 

The Bash show was actually not even a focal point for Eric, as his eyes were on the big Nitro coming up at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. By early June they’d sold over 20,000 tickets and were closing in on a $1 million gate. As the date drew nearer, Hogan the wily veteran came up with a plan. Aware that all the Turner bigwigs would be at the show, he offered to take Goldberg on in a non-title, non-televised match in which Goldberg would get the win and send the folks home happy. All the company execs, seeing the huge house, would obviously assume that Hogan drew it, and his standing as WCW’s top dog would be cemented.

As the show approached, however, the decision was made to change the Hogan-Goldberg match to a televised title match. This was due almost entirely to the fact that Nitro had been losing the ratings war, and Bischoff was obsessed with beating McMahon, even if only for one week. With Hogan taking on Goldberg, there was absolutely no way he could lose the night

Make no mistake about it: July 6 should have been a pivotal day in wrestling history. It was on that day that Bill Goldberg—less than one year into his professional career—beat Hulk Hogan clean in the middle of the ring to win the WCW World Heavyweight championship. Internally, the sense was that this was the beginning of a new era for the company, and that Goldberg could be the answer to Steve Austin as a super draw. The ovation he received when he won the belt was among the loudest anyone had ever heard. The TV rating spoke volumes as well, as the quarter-hour for the title change set a cable wrestling record: a 6.91 with 5,054,000 homes tuning in, helping Nitro win the night 4.93 to 4.0. And Bischoff no doubt smiled widely on Tuesday morning when the ratings came in.

But something was lost in that ratings win: money, and lots of it. The first-ever Goldberg-Hogan match, which could have drawn millions of dollars on pay-per-view, was aired free on Nitro instead, owing almost entirely to the fact that Raw had kicked their ass the week before. Instead of showing patience, as he had with the Sting-Hogan bout, Bischoff allowed very lucrative business to be pushed aside because he wanted to brag that Nitro had won a week in a ratings war that he cared about more than any of the fans watching at home did. The title change, also a last-minute decision, effectively put the kibosh on several storylines that Hogan had been involved in that could have led to lucrative matches with Bret Hart and Kevin Nash.

There was actually worse news than that, too. WCW drew 41,412 fans—the biggest crowd in its history—to the Georgia Dome to see the match. At the time, it was the fourth-largest crowd ever to watch a wrestling show in the U.S. You’d think that WCW would brag about this, and likely even add to the figure, as it had always been common practice in the business to slightly exaggerate attendance numbers. Instead, however, they inexplicably subtracted 1,500 fans, announcing 39,919. Yes, WCW became the first promotion in wrestling history to claim a less impressive number than what they actually drew. It gets even worse than that. When they first announced Hogan versus Goldberg locally, they only sold about 2,000 extra tickets. Realistically, the company was still hot enough at this point that very few, if any, of the wrestlers could actually be considered ticket-sellers. Instead, the name “WCW” itself sold tickets, usually on the very first day, before a card was ever announced. The mainstream wasn’t aware of this, however, so Hogan decided to manipulate it so that it would appear that he did, indeed, sell tickets pretty much on his own. Therefore, he suggested the idea of doing the match live on TV and switching the title. After all, if the match was televised, it would look like he drew the house, whereas if it wasn’t, someone else would get credit for the new company record. And that would be completely unacceptable.

Hogan had one major demand: that when “the time was right” to beat Goldberg, he would be the guy to do it. Because he agreed to drop the belt with a clean pinfall loss in the first place, there weren’t any problems with this scenario.

***

Nitro had settled into a pattern of finishing a point or so behind Raw every week. As you can imagine, Bischoff was not pleased and decided that changes needed to be made, and fast.

Unfortunately, these changes had nothing to do with fixing the atrocious shows the company was presenting. No, a completely different plan was in the works: the “time was right,” he believed, to beat Goldberg.

Actually, that had been the plan for a long time: Hogan would drop the strap to Goldberg at the Georgia Dome; then he’d win it back at Starrcade. But somewhere along the way, there was a change in plans. Perhaps you’re thinking that the change in plans was for Hogan not to beat Goldberg after all. Perhaps you’re thinking that Goldberg was such a good ratings draw, house show draw, and merchandise seller that it would have been foolish to take the belt from him and put it back on Hogan, whose drawing power had waned over the past several months.You would be wrong.

The change of plans was to have Goldberg drop the title not to horrible wrestler Hogan, but to horrible wrestler Kevin Nash. Nash had just been named new head booker for the promotion, and once this happened everything backstage went into disarray. It went into disarray for fake reasons, however—not real reasons. Confused?

Basically, Nash, Hogan, and Bischoff came up with a scenario to work all the boys. No, not to work the fans in an effort to make money, but to work the boys in, well, an effort to make them not so miserable. You see, pretty much everyone on the undercard hated Hogan. They saw him as a guy who was past his prime and needed to step aside to make room for new stars. Nash, however, was such a great politician that everyone liked him. In fact, no matter what he did, you’d be hard-pressed to find a person backstage who didn’t think he was a really cool guy. So the plan was to give Nash the booking position, and Hogan, “outraged with his loss of power,” would pretend to quit. He’d disappear for a while, Nash would make everyone happy, and morale would improve. Of course, the long-term plan was to eventually bring Hogan back and put the belt on him again.

Also, Hogan needed time off to film Muppets in Space.

 

 

[jdw]

I think Nash claims that the poke was Hogan's idea as well, not his.

 

Nash is up there with Russo as the classic "unreliable narrator" of the era, so everything he says is grain of salt material.

 

The idea doesn't fit much into Hogan's typical thinking at the time. He was getting his belt back, after jobbing it cleanly. He played smart backstage games to box promoters and promotions into decisions. He typically didn't go with batshit crazy ideas when it came to winning his belts back.

 

It actually fits more into Nash and Eric's "thinking too much" mentality. Nash had the most to benefit from by not having a real match, taking the legdrop, eating the pin, and coming across in a feud with Hogan where he would have had a tough time coming out looking cool or strong.

[Slasher]

Although there were good indicators suggesting they had something big in Bill Goldberg, I do think the Nitro match is something that stands out more in "hindsight" than something that was clear in "foresight". I do sincerely believe that they were never planning to push Goldberg any more higher than they did at the time. I think it was always supposed to be Hulk and celebrities at the top with Goldberg toiling in the midcard. I think that Goldberg was planned as an US champion level guy in that period. If they really thought that Goldberg was ready to run with the ball, I think they would have put him in DDP's spot as the babyface challenger in the Hogan and cwlebrities angles. Of course it doesn't mean the WCW bookers were any less stupid for any of this.

[Hawkeye12]

Although there were good indicators suggesting they had something big in Bill Goldberg, I do think the Nitro match is something that stands out more in "hindsight" than something that was clear in "foresight". I do sincerely believe that they were never planning to push Goldberg any more higher than they did at the time. I think it was always supposed to be Hulk and celebrities at the top with Goldberg toiling in the midcard. I think that Goldberg was planned as an US champion level guy in that period. If they really thought that Goldberg was ready to run with the ball, I think they would have put him in DDP's spot as the babyface challenger in the Hogan and cwlebrities angles. Of course it doesn't mean the WCW bookers were any less stupid for any of this.

Actually when DDP had first talked to Malone and took the idea to Bischoff, Eric wanted to do Hogan/Rodman vs. Savage/Malone. But since DDP put the match together, both outside the ring and then training the NBA guys, he did eventually get his deserved spot in the matches. And Savage was injured the month before, so worked out that way anyhow. Goldberg was supposed to team with Kevin Greene against Hennig and the Giant at Bash at the Beach also in his own celebrity tie in, before they switched them to singles matches when he won the belt and spread out Hennig and the Giant as challengers instead.

[Slasher]

Interesting but I don't think that weakens my argument that Goldberg was never intended to be the top babyface, at the moment, regardless of him winning the belt or not.

[dawho5]

There's no way Nash and Hogan were going to let Goldberg be anything but a midcard guy squashing "vanilla midgets" and leaving them alone. They knew he was something big and the only way they were going anywhere near Goldberg was to kill his heat.

[The Chief]

Goldberg never got another run with the WCW title. Just stop and think about that for a second. It's fucking mind boggling.

[Loss]

I think that's a victim of every person who took the creative reigns for WCW wanting to "relaunch" and build to a title win, but none of them could keep power long enough to pay off a chase.

[Slasher]

I think that's a victim of every person who took the creative reigns for WCW wanting to "relaunch" and build to a title win, but none of them could keep power long enough to pay off a chase.

Didn't Bischoff intend, after buying WCW with Fusient, for a Steiner/Goldberg match concluding with Goldberg going over and building Sean O'Haire up for a big Starrcade match? That would have given Goldberg a solid 6-8 months as champion. Then of course it fell through and Vince bought out WCW.

[Laz]

It's kinda pathetic that the best post-loss stuff with Goldberg might actually have been Russo forcing him to re-do the streak.