Long time reader, first time emailer. I never kept up with the week-to-week happenings with WCW, and was curious when and how Hulk Hogan turned face and went back to the red-and-yellow during the Spring/Summer of '99. Was there some long-rumored news about it, or was it typical WCW just doing something at the last minute to get a rating win? Since we're on the subject of WCW from that time period, who's bright idea was it to turn Sting heel?
That's quite the large font you've got going there. Kudos.
It was definitely long-rumored, in the sense of "Rumors are WCW is so desperate that they're going to put Hogan back in the red and yellow and expect it to pop a rating". Which it did not. But yes, the actual timing was basically WCW in ratings freefall and flailing for something.
The Sting heel turn was the decision of the booking committee that ran the company between Nash getting fired and Russo getting hired. That particular show (Fall Brawl 99) didn't even have a main event until the Nitro before the show, and previously they had been building it up as "Top Secret" in advertisements. Understandably, the whole period of time was a disaster on all fronts. I guess ultimately you'd blame Bill Behrens, but I don't know if the heel turn was his actual idea or if he just approved whatever stupid nonsense that guys like Terry Taylor pitched him.
Holy Shit Scott, are you blind?
ReplyDeleteI remember the episode when Hogan went back to the red n yellow, Nick grabbed the tights out of Hulks gym bag and said "what about these." Than the cheesiness followed...
ReplyDeleteThat would be my bad. I guess my yahoo mail decided to change my settings to super-large text for the visually impaired and I didn't think twice to switch it back.
ReplyDeleteI liked the Sting heel turn. I didn't want to boo him, or want him to be the bad guy, but I liked the idea of Sting, after all these years of being a simple idiot, finally having enough of it and beating the piss out of someone with a bat before they can do it to him.
ReplyDeletePlus there's all that "Hulk Hogan tried to destroy this company for 2 years and turned the fans against me, but I finally came back to stop him and now you're cheering him like it never happened?" logic behind it.
Yeah, I always thought the Sting heel turn was a good enough idea that could have been done well but just wasn't because, ya know, WCW.
ReplyDeleteThe "fuck this babyface Hogan bullshit" angle in particular would have made for a good angle, and could have launched a whole "looking out for number one" persona for a monster heel character in Sting. Could have kept Bret away from Goldberg too!
Wayyyy too late in the game for heel Sting.
ReplyDeleteYeah, why would Hogan even have them anyway? Did he never change his bag since the heel turn? LOL
ReplyDeleteI dunno, that was right about the time I gave up on WCW altogether, and I'm pretty sure I would have been into a heel Sting. You'd have him just cheat, beat everyone up, basically do whatever he had to to hold on to the belt until sometime between Slamboree/Bash at the Beach when Goldberg knocks him off. Not like they came up with anything better.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem would have been getting him over as the bad ass heel. You'd basically need him to totally destroy Hogan after Fall Brawl, and there's no way in hell that was ever going to happen, especially if Hogan wasn't going to be the one to ultimately go over Sting (which no one wanted to see, obviously).
THAT could have worked. I was 11 or 12 years old and remember thinking how dumb it was that Hogan was back in the red and yellow and people were cheering for him. It was like the prior 3 years didn't happen. That's when I started to get "smart" to the business I guess.
ReplyDeleteI don't even count the Sting heel turn. Hogan turning back into a face was sort of caused by fans starting to cheer him again during the feud with Flair.
ReplyDeleteI dont remember Stings heel turn at all, and I was a consistent WcW viewer at the time. Must have been awesomr
ReplyDelete"Years of being a simple idiot...". So well put, I hate when promotions book faces as idiots, or always getting outsmarted by heels. This was one of the major flaws that never let me get behind Sting
ReplyDeleteYea, but in his defense my gym bag still has my old jock from highschool baseball still in it after ten years lol jk.
ReplyDeleteThat's because they were doing a doofy double turn with Flair becoming the evil boss for some reason.
ReplyDeleteHeel Sting was still the same trusting man lol
ReplyDeleteIt lasted for only a few weeks and wasnt entertaining at all so i can see how it could be forgotten.
ReplyDeleteSting and RVD are the two biggest guys whom I never got their appeal. Sting was an average talker and average worker. There was never anything really interesting him besides the Hogan angle. Surfer Sting was before my time so maybe he had something there and just carried over his fan base? Yea, its subjective but I never got it.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't help that the build up to it was a typical WCW swervey-swerve either.
ReplyDeleteI liked the sting heel turn because he got a huge face pop when he nailed hogan with the bat. It showed how dumb wcw was
ReplyDeleteSuch a badly booked few years from that perspective, this Sting turn, the fucking Flair turns, goldberg, etc...
ReplyDeleteAnd Austin got a huge face pop when he beat The Rock at WM17, even as he was toasting beers with Vince. That was just the nature of the time, to an extent.
ReplyDeleteThat was in Texas though, which definitely affected the crowd reaction to Austin's turn.
ReplyDeleteProbably to an extent. But I'm pretty sure you could have done that anywhere and the crowd would have been no more than 50% booing. Austin was just that over as a face, there was just no way him winning the belt was going do draw massive heel heat. Same thing with Sting: short of screwing over Goldberg at the height of the streak, he was going to get a pop for winning the title no matter what. The important part was the subsequent booking.
ReplyDeleteI think WCW from the FoD through the Sting heel non-turn might be the most comically awful booked promotion I've ever watched in real time. Just so fucking bad from top to bottom, and did absolutely nothing right.
ReplyDeleteIve always been curious on the reaction Austins turn would have gotten In another state. I think there would have been a few more boos but dont think it would have been a decisive heel reaction
ReplyDeletesting's turn was precipitated by luger returning from injury and messing around with hogan and acting like he and sting were best buds again, while sting downlplayed it and said he wasnt with luger at all. at the ppv, luger hit the ring with a baseball bat and sting was able to take it away from him. as hogan stood there telling sting to give luger a taste of his own medicine, sting instead nailed hogan with the bat, won the tile, and celebrated with luger.
ReplyDeletethe next night on nitro flair (as pres, i think) asked them to explain themselves, and they said that they learned it from flair during their time as horsemen, and they then proceeded to atack flair
stings heel turn lasted through halloween havoc, where he attacked a ref during his match with goldberg that was most definitely positively without a doubt as verified by the announcers as being for not for the belt. he was stripped of the title, setting up the tourney that bret eventually won, and sort of officially turned face again at the nov ppv (mayhem) when he did the "mutual show of respect" thing with bret after bret went over him. he then proceeded feud with luger and a returning miss elizabeth (who might have already returned by that point). luger had a cool entrance with cool lights and music and was was trying to get over only as 'the total package" and not lex leuger , but that didnt last
I don't think it would have gotten anything but a big pop because:
ReplyDelete1. Austin was just straight up the most popular guy in wrestling at the time and Rock was clearly second to him.
2. The booking aspect of it was unique, because Austin did heel-like things pretty much all through his run on the top, so there wasn't anything really shocking in that respect. They tried to put Vince in there for that reason, I guess, but this wasn't even the first time McMahon had seemingly been on Austin's side, and they could have just as easily been setting up a "Vince turns face and joins with Austin to fight off Shane and WCW" angle for all anyone knew in the moment.
Same here, he was always too corny for me, at least Hogan would cheat here and there. Sting's whole career reminds me of Shawn's "golly shucks I just want to wrestle" character from the Iron Man match.
ReplyDeleteYeah I don't think it would've worked much better anywhere else either. The WCW fanbase *wanted* to boo Hogan, so his turn was embraced, no one wanted to boo Austin no matter how hard he tried.
ReplyDeleteYea, maybe. I remember they had been booking Vince as such a whiny heel in the build to WM, im sure to try and get Austin that extra heel rub. I give them fucking credit though, ballsy ballsy move.
ReplyDeleteFor Austin to get booed, his turn would have had to come by joining WCW or something. But the popular guy everyone wanted to see win turning heel to win the belt wasn't going to get a massive heel reaction live during the Attitude Era.
ReplyDeleteSurfer Sting was fun because he was basically a life-size cartoon character. His promos didn't make much sense but they had energy, so I guess he was like Warrior in that sense. He was also an above-average worker up until probably 1996. He could definitely go before he stopped caring.
ReplyDeleteI never really got the appeal of Sting either. I understand that he was pretty reliable, decent worker and had a good body (especially for the time) but I never bought him as a major player at any time up until the Crow angle where he got over by not wrestling at all and once he started wrestling again the mystique died. I always saw him as halfway between the "real" characters and the freaks like Ultimate Warrior and I didn't like him as much as either. As a kid I actually thought he was kind of a Warrior ripoff and was turned off by that.
ReplyDeleteIt's because you missed Surfer Sting. Dude was a great pure babyface. I wish Sting would have kept the look he had at Bound for Glory (06?) in TNA, where it was kind of half Crow/half old-school Sting.
ReplyDeleteYou must've missed Russo's TNA run, parts of 2009 WWE, spring 2011 WWE, spring 2012 WWE, probably fall 2013 WWE...
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly, he got quite a few boos against guys like Angle and RVD. Not a universally negative reaction, but not face pops either.
ReplyDeleteYup its cuz you missed early 90's surfer sting. Perfect gimmick for 9 to 13 year old kids demos. Plus looking back he had lots of good matches. He had a lot of good will to work with when he started (probably unsuccessfully) tweaking his gimmick. Plus looking bad IMO surfer sting had some epic matches. But if your a 5th graderwatching wcw sSaturday night in the very early 90's your gonna love sting.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree. Austin's fanbase seems to be more loyal than The Rock's but I think you're forgetting/underestimating The Rock's popularity.
ReplyDeleteWhen that match took place (2001) the two were more or less equal stars, and in no way was Rocky a "clear" second. If anything, I'd say that 2001 was the beginning of Rocky's star rising higher than Stone Cold's what with his move into Hollywood and Austin's unsuccessful heel run (as well as his shitty feuds and matches post-Invasion).
I think Austin would've gotten some cheers no matter where he was, sure, but I think if they'd done the turn anywhere other than Texas, a majority of the crowd would be anti-Austin. That's just speculation of course, and we'll never know for sure.
Sting/Vader matches were a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteThere was no reason, other than they saw how good having an evil boss was working on Raw.
ReplyDeleteTurning Austin heel was as dumb as turning Sting heel or turning Hogan face.
ReplyDeleteI was just recently watching Nitros from 99 and the impetus for the Hogan face turn seem to start at Superbrawl where David Flair turned on Ric. The following night, Ric was absent and Hogan cut a promo rubbing it in and wondering if Flair was off somewhere crying.
ReplyDeleteThe next week on Nitro, Ric came out and cut a total comedy promo completely no-selling and downplaying that his own son had turned on him. Hogan and Nash were backstage and basically said to each other 'Well, Flair doesn't seem to care about us turning his own son against him, what are we going to do now?' admitting that they were only using David to get at Flair and it didn't work.
The next week, Flair and Anderson had a sit-down conversation where Arn wanted Flair to open up and admit that he was hurting about the betrayal, and Flair again blew it off and said 'I don't care, David can do whatever he wants, I'm just focused on being World Champion again!' Later on, Hogan cut an awesome pre-taped babyface promo explaining how people may hate him, but everything he's done is for business reasons and to take care of his family whereas Flair has now proven that he doesn't care about his family or anything except wrestling and being World Champion. Thus Flair is a much worse human-being than he had even been in the last few years in the nWo. He never outright said 'Okay, cheer me now and boo Flair,' but that's essentially what his promo was implying.
Then they had the match at Uncensored with Hogan wrestling as a total babyface and Flair using Charles Robinson and Arn to help him win the title. The next night on Nitro, Flair began his crazed power-hungry lunatic persona where he started insulting the fans and booking himself in favorable situations. As the weeks went on, Hogan continued cutting babyface promos (Nitro was held in Canada one week where of course Hogan was cheered wildly). That led to Spring Stampede where Hogan was injured by the freshly heel-turned DDP, took a few months off, came back to end Savage's 24 hour title reign and then the week before returning to the Yellow and Red, he explained on commentary that he had cleaned up his act, repented his sins and was embracing the prayers, training and vitamins again.
So there wasn't an exact moment where Hogan turned babyface, it was just a slow gradual process over 3 or so months. Which looking back, was actually a really well thought out storyline.
As much as people blame Nash for killing WCW, it's either Hulk Hogan himself or WCW's reliance on him that did it. WCW finally became the #1 promotion on the strength of an original angle that tapped into society's rebellious side well before Steve Austin did the same thing, and it all comes back to Hulk Hogan leg dropping people in his yellow underwear like it's 1989.
ReplyDeleteEVERYTHING in WCW had to go through Hulk Hogan. EVERYTHING eventually involved Hulk Hogan, EVERYTHING needed Hulk Hogan's approval, the entire direction of the company could be changed at a moments notice if Hulk Hogan said so.
They should have had some fun with it and did an angle where Sting gets screwed over by everyone he trusts. His wife is cheating on him, his mechanic is over-charging him, he buys a house that starts to fall into a sink-hole, he gets into a fender bender and takes the other guy's word that he'll call with his insurance information.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting "what if" ever to me is what would have happened if Hogan turned down the 3rd man opportunity. Does he position himself as the top face and go over the entire nwo in a year, thus killing the entire angle. The fact that one dude could have single handedly killed the hottest wrestling angle ever, just befuddle me. The ensuing power struggle between the hottest act, Hall and nash, vs hogan would have been fascinating.
ReplyDeleteYoure correct though, never put the words "complete creative control" in a wrestling contract.
If Sting ever goes to the WWE they should have him debut in his Crow gear but come out to the"Man Called Sting" theme.
ReplyDeleteI think the talent/name value of 1999 WCW is what sets it over the top.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I remember about the Sting heel run was that he upgraded his entrance music to that badass Metallica song that he used towards the end of WCW's existence. Also remember how his buddy Lex Luger changed his name to just The Total Package yet the announcers kept calling him Lex Luger anyway thus killing the effect.
ReplyDeleteSo, what you're saying is, is that Hogan was Big Poochie before Big Poochie wasn't cool?
ReplyDeleteSurfer Sting was fucking cool. He had this giant, sincere grin on his face at that time that, in hindsight, that you knew he was having a blast out there. He could bring it. Wasn't ever really a fan of Crow/Brooding/deroided/spandex overall wearing Sting
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