[1997-12-29-WCW-Nitro] Hulk Hogan vs Sting

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

WCW running a rematch of this the next day like it's nothing is weird. Hogan getting all the offense again is weird too. Heat is much stronger than the night before and the match is actually much better too (still not good, but much better). The match goes off the air before the finish and the year ends with a whimper. We'll cover that when the 1998 Yearbook comes out.

[Kevin Ridge]

Sting starts off with more fire but right away gets his ass kicked by Hogan. Too much Hogan again in control. Sting is just another WCW guy after all the build. How the hell could they just go off the air in mid match? Bad, bad finish to things.

[soup23]

Match was fun with a spirited sprint and nice strikes and fire from both guys. Booking again is really perplexing with both guys having this huge rematch on Nitro just one night after the big PPV. Sad that 1997 ends with me really scratching my head a bit at a decent amount of the things WCW has been doing throughout the year. 1997 was a hell of a ride regardless.

[El-P]

The biggest match in the history of pro-wrestling. Again. Because we kinda fucked up the previous one. But no finish shown on TV. Sting looks like nothing special coming to the ring, just another guy. Yet this match is much better and more heated than the previous night in an otherwise underwhelming post Starrcade Nitro. The company was on fire at the beginning of the year, and now, they are clearly without a direction. It's been fun while it lasted.

[PeteF3]

"With the finish from the previous night messed up and thus really unable to ever be shown on television, it was decided after the dust settled to change directions once again. A rematch was held on Nitro the next night in Baltimore, with the gimmick being that the finish wouldn't be shown on television. So on Nitro the next night, about six minutes into the rematch, the show abruptly went off the air. Naturally there were more complaints about this the next day at Turner Broadcasting than anything WCW has ever pulled in history.

 

...

 

"This actually would be the earliest the show had gone off the air in recent memory despite having nothing but the Nitro replay to follow on TNT and it being billed as the biggest match in Nitro history." --12/29/97 Wrestling Observer newsletter

 

I agree this was much better worked than the previous night, with more urgency and a hotter crowd. Still, there are issues. Like, huge, gaping, giant issues. Hogan is on offense most of the way again, randomly cutting off Sting at points seemingly just because (in fact, even though Hogan could be an incredibly effective working heel, cut-offs were never his strong point). Hogan's selling seems off here--I don't quite want to say he's in that Shawn Michaels "sarcastic selling" mode, but I'm not sure it's far off. It's weirdly over-the-top but not in a fun way, just in a "bad acting" way whether by design or not. The We're Out of Time finish is not only so ridiculously cheap it makes a standard D-X finish look like something out of RINGS, it's almost incompetently executed. Why not at least give us a warning that the show is in danger of going off the air before the match ends, the way Jim Ross would scream about on NWA or UWF TV? Schiavone pays about half a second of lip service to "staying with this as long as we can" early on, but when Hogan yanks Randy Anderson in front of the Stinger Splash, all of a sudden the copyright notice goes up on the screen and we're out, with no advance notice.

 

The moment the listings for the '97 Yearbook were posted, I remarked that this was the most perfect ending of the set possible--WCW shooting themselves in the foot on TV, in the most horrific manner possible. It would still take a few months for the tide to turn in the war, but the moment they had a chance to step on the WWF's jugular, we're watching a promotion totally drop the ball. There's not a better set-up for 1998 than that.

[Zero]

I'm sure after the trainwreck of a finish at Starrcade, they're looking to fix that by giving Sting a nice clean win to secure the clear victory over Hogan and the NWO. Wait? they cut if off before the finish? I'm sure everything went good after! Stinger clean win they'll show to a great rating next monday.... sure.