15 pro wrestling bookings that went horribly wrong

13. “The Fingerpoke of Doom”; WCW Monday Nitro 1999

As a WCW fanatic still to this day, there’s nothing that upsets me more about the company’s run than the Jan. 4, 1999 episode of WCW Monday Nitro.

The show, which was the company’s first TV episode after the events of Starrcade 1998 that saw Kevin Nash end the undefeated streak of Goldberg to win the WCW Championship (more on this in a second) with the help of Scott Hall in the show’s main event, would go down in infamy.

There’s a couple things that went into why this was truly the beginning of the end for WCW:

• Goldberg’s streak ending at the hands of Kevin Nash, who basically had all of the control on the result, was the dumbest thing imaginable. Goldberg was the hottest thing in wrestling and his 173-match winning streak was just kicked the curb like it didn’t help launch WCW ahead of WWF in the ratings.

• Goldberg being accused of stalking the late Miss Elizabeth (in storyline) was pathetic booking from WCW for many reasons and they all should be obvious.

• The nWo and the nWo Wolfpac basically became one whole faction again and it was dumb, despite the Lex Luger heel turn.

• Although they fooled everyone … a fingerpoke? Are you freakin’ serious?

WCW really never recovered after this moment, which saw WCW Commissioner Ric Flair (yes, this was a thing) book a match for Kevin Nash (nWo Wolfpac) to defend the title against Hulk Hogan (nWo Hollywood).

The match had two moves: a poke from Hogan on Nash and then Hogan covering Nash to pick up the 1-2-3 and the title. They fooled us all and it was stupid.