• Home
  • Movies
  • Music
  • TV
  • Video Games
  • Wrestling
  • Topics
  • Latest Comments on Cult of Whatever
Search
Cult of Whatever logo
  • Movies
    Featured
    • The Living Daylights: Timothy Dalton as James Bond

      The Living Daylights is still awesome, thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 28, 2022
      Movie Blogs
    Recent
    • Lethal Weapon: Danny Glover and Mel Gibson as Roger Murtaugh and Martin Riggs

      Lethal Weapon is still awesome thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 9, 2022
    • Nope: Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya

      REVIEW: “NOPE” wants to be more than it is, which is just good enough

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 22, 2022
    • Brave: Kelly Macdonald voices Princess Merida

      Ten years later, BRAVE remains Pixar’s most underrated film

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 21, 2022
    • A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Heather Langenkamp as Nancy

      A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is still awesome, thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 20, 2022
    • Where The Crawdads Sing: Daisy Edgar Jones and David Strathairn

      REVIEW: Where the Crawdads Sing deftly blends genres to good effect

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 19, 2022
    • Thor Love and Thunder: Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth as The Mighty Thor and Thor

      REVIEW: THOR – LOVE AND THUNDER is an adventure of mirth and sadness alike

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 9, 2022
  • Music
    Random
    • Over Rhine Snow Angels Album Cover

      YOUR official Christmas 2019 LISTENING Guide

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 17, 2019
      Music Blogs
    Recent
    • The Beatles: Get Back

      What GET BACK reveals about the Beatles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 15, 2021
    • Simon And Garfunkel at Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam1982

      The Boxer is a song about being conned

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 4, 2021
    • Lady Gaga: Chromatica Album Cover

      Lady Gaga’s discography is totally out of order

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 3, 2021
    • Michael Jackson Thriller Album Cover

      Thirty years ago music fans said “Nevermind” to Michael Jackson

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 21, 2021
    • Queen II Album Cover

      On Queen’s The Miracle, and the importance of track ordering

      By Matthew Martin
      | February 16, 2021
    • Linda Paul Mccartney 1976

      50 years ago, McCartney dropped “Lennon” and went solo…

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 5, 2020
  • TV
    Featured
    • Nancy Drew S03e01: Kennedy McMann as Nancy

      Nancy Drew S03E01 Review: The Warning of the Frozen Heart - Uh-oh!

      By Salome G
      | October 10, 2021
      TV Blogs
    Recent
    • American Horror Stories S02e04 Cody Fern and Seth Gabel as Thomas and Walter

      American Horror Stories S02E04 Review: Milkmaids – Very ambitious

      By Salome G
      | August 14, 2022
    • Roswell New Mexico S04e09: Allie Myers and Jeanine Mason as Shiri Appleby and Liz Ortecho

      Roswell, New Mexico S04E09 Review: Wild Wild West- Okay…

      By Salome G
      | August 11, 2022
    • Evil S03e09: Party Time

      Evil S03E09 Review: The Demon of Money – Dark moments…

      By Salome G
      | August 8, 2022
    • American Horror Stories S02e03: Bella Thorne as Marci

      American Horror Stories S02E03 Review: Drive – Unsettling experiences

      By Salome G
      | August 8, 2022
    • The Orville S03: Penny Johnson Jerald and Mark Jackson as Dr. Claire Finn and Isaac

      The Orville season three finale review: Don’t say goodbye

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 8, 2022
    • Roswell New Mexico S04e08: Michael Vlamis as Michael Guerin

      Roswell, New Mexico S04E08 Review: Missing My Baby – The truth hurts

      By Salome G
      | August 3, 2022
  • Video Games
    Featured
    • Arkham Knight

      Batman: Arkham Knight - A fitting end to a trilogy

      By Tom Farr
      | July 18, 2015
      Video Game Reviews
    Recent
    • Nintendo Switch Logo

      Looking ahead to the Switch 2: Predictions and Wants

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 15, 2022
    • Legend Of Zelda

      Can a Legend of Zelda movie work?

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 6, 2022
    • Super Mario 64

      Which system had the better launch: A battle of four Nintendo consoles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 1, 2021
    • Luigi's Mansion

      Happy twentieth to Nintendo’s underrated gem, the Gamecube

      By Matthew Martin
      | November 18, 2021
    • Metroid Dread

      Metroid Dread – Post Game analysis and sequel needs

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 29, 2021
    • Mario Headphones

      The SNES Turns 30: A look at some of the system’s best soundtracks

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 22, 2021
  • Wrestling
    Featured
    • Wwe Payback 2017 Poster 2

      Your SO OF COURSE preview of WWE Payback 2017

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 30, 2017
      WWE Blogs
    Recent
    • AEW Dark: Ricky Starks (22/09/20)

      The future of the AEW World Championship

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 14, 2022
    • AEW Forbidden Door 2022: Claudio Castagnoli

      ROH Death Before Dishonor 2022 kickstarted a new era with a bang

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 25, 2022
    • Vince Mcmahon Stone Cold Podcast

      Vince McMahon is out as WWE chief. First reactions here…

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 22, 2022
    • AEW Double or Nothing 2022: CM Punk vs Adam Page

      REVIEW: AEW Double or Nothing 2022 delivered an up-and-down show

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 30, 2022
    • MJF on AEW Dynamite 17th November 2021

      Getting AEW to the next level…

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 29, 2022
    • Raw 210501: Triple H and Stephanie McMahon

      May 21, 2001 – A (forgotten) date that will live in WWE infamy

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 20, 2022
  • Topics
    • site logo
    Latest
    • Looking ahead to the Switch 2: Predictions and Wants
    • American Horror Stories S02E04 Review: Milkmaids - Very ambitious
    • The future of the AEW World Championship
    • Roswell, New Mexico S04E09 Review: Wild Wild West- Okay...
    • Lethal Weapon is still awesome thirty-five years later
    • Evil S03E09 Review: The Demon of Money - Dark moments...

    The Curse of the Royal Rumble IV: How Kevin Nash ruined everything

    By John Hancock
    | January 25, 2015
    WWE Blogs

    Well, that was fun while it lasted.

    For the last several years, we’ve documented the ways in which the 14th entrant to each Royal Rumble is cursed. Then came 2014. And then came Kevin Nash. And then he didn’t do much else.

    Was that the curse in action? Is it now so powerful that it simply wrote Kevin Nash’s entire wrestling career out of existence? No. It’s much worse than that. When talking about the number 14, we’ve failed to mention there is an even greater, even more powerful, even more destructive curse in professional wrestling, and it’s name… is Kevin Nash.

    Kevin Nash Curse 3

    The number 14 didn’t destroy Kevin Nash, Kevin Nash destroyed the number 14, and, in commemoration, we’ll use this opportunity to take a look back on everything else the curse of Kevin Nash has irreparably ruined.

    The Curtain Call: The Entire Point of Pro-Wrestling

    The year is 1996 and, for all intents and purposes, kayfabe still basically exists. We’re out of the area of angry old ladies in the front row and un-patriotic heels getting shot, but we’re also still pre-Vince Russo. In short, people were aware the Wizard of Oz probably wasn’t a real wizard, but they hadn’t entirely figured out he was just some old guy in a back room either.

    Then, speaking of Oz, Kevin Nash arrived.

    By the spring on 1996, Nash and Hall were already destined for WCW, the first seeds of what would eventually become the NWO (more on that later), whilst their good friends and fellow psychopaths Triple H and Shawn Michaels were going to be remaining in the WWF. At a non-televised WWE event in New York City, Triple H, as a heel, wrestled Scott Hall, as a babyface, whilst, later on the card, babyface Shawn Michaels wrestled against heel Kevin Nash. So far so good, and the it was time to end the show; the curtain call.

    As soon as the Michaels vs. Nash match ended, Scott Hall entered the ring and hugged Michaels goodbye. It was off script, but, whatever, a babyface saying goodbye to a babyface isn’t much of an issue. Then, however, Triple H came out, and hugged Hall, the man he’d just wrestled earlier that night, and his supposed enemy. Then the icing on the cake; Kevin Nash joined in. Two babyfaces, two heels, two on-going feuds, all hugging each other, in public, at an official event, in the middle of a WWF ring, in Madison Square Garden.

    As could probably have been expected, WWE management wasn’t exactly pleased. At the time, the company had a rule banning babyfaces and heels from interacting socially in public, out of the fear that it would expose the business as “fake” and damage the effectiveness of feuds and storylines. Things went from bad to worse when Vince McMahon was informed that a pair of fans had managed to sneak camcorders into the otherwise un-televised event, and what became known variously as “the curtain call” or “the MSG incident” had not only been recorded, but was now being shown to the public (eventually, this tape was bought by the WWF itself and is part of their extensive video library).

    With Michaels as one of the WWF’s biggest draws, it was up to Triple H to receive the brunt of the punishment, which including a change of plans that eventually resulted in Steve Austin’s career-making victory in the 1996 King of the Ring tournament (Triple H was originally planned to be the tournament winner, but was written out of his victory as punishment for the MSG incident).

    Hall and Nash, however, went entirely without punishment, as they almost immediately left the WWF for arch-rivals WCW, bringing the curse of Kevin Nash with them.

    Goldberg: WCW’s Only Ever Genuine Achievement

    Fast forward two years to 1998, specifically December 27th, 1998, in Washington D.C. at the Starrcade WCW pay-per-view. After eleven minutes and twenty seconds, Kevin Nash has just won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship to end the show. Little could anyone have know at the time, but WCW would never recover.

    To understand exactly why, we need to go back just over one year, to September 1997, and the televised debut of Bill Goldberg. If WCW every truly created anything, it was Bill Goldberg. Hogan, Luger, Savage, Piper, even the NWO were WWF inventions, Sting and Flair owed their careers to the NWA, but Goldberg was WCW through and through. Originally from Atlanta, trained from scratch in WCW’s own training facility, and having never wrestled anywhere else, Goldberg was WCW’s poster boy, it’s Steve Austin, it’s saviour, and the only real glimmer of hope that WCW could possibly outlive the careers of it’s ever-ageing roster of main event talent, all of whom were stars from the early 90s, if not the 1980s, who had been in the exact same position for years without a hint of evolution, change or freshness.

    But, in Goldberg, WCW had something young, exciting and self-made, and the company rallied behind their new star who was pushed into an eventually ridiculous and almost entirely made-up 173 match winning streak that lasted from September 22, 1997 until, you guessed it, December 27th, 1998.

    As part of his winning streak, Goldberg had won the US Title in April, and then the World Heavyweight Title, from none other than Hulk Hogan, in July. At the same time, however, behind the scenes, WCW’s rather liberal contract negotiation policy was coming back to haunt them. As a way of snatching up disgruntled WWF talent, the company had offered several rather ludicrously generous amounts of personal power and autonomy to stars like Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall and, of course, Kevin Nash. This had already manifested itself in bizarre incidents like putting pressure on referees to change the endings of matches without telling anyone else involved, including the writers and booking team (like the notorious and infuriating finish to, ironically, Starrcade 1997).

    The exact power structure of WCW is a hazy one, like concentration camp guards all claiming to have only been following orders. Exactly when Kevin Nash’s backstage power in WCW reached it’s peak will probably never be confirmed, but, many will point to Starrcade 1998 as perhaps it’s most public display. As far as the facts go, it’s generally accepted that Kevin Nash did everything in his power to make sure he was the man who first defeated Bill Goldberg. Exactly why he did that is up for debate. According to Nash himself, much of Goldberg’s hype and popularity was a farce created by WCW using fake audience dubs and piped in chants, and Kevin Nash was just as, if not more, popular, particularly in the north-eastern territories most commonly associated with the WWF. Others, including former WCW booker Kevin Sullivan, believe it was simply a way of stroking Nash’s ego and assuring himself a bigger part in wrestlings history books. The third, and perhaps most cynical (and, thus, most likely) scenario, is that the destruction of Goldberg by an older, established guy like Kevin Nash was designed specifically to stop his rising popularity and, as such, stop any threat of him destabilising Nash’s world of guaranteed contracts and creative control. If WCW started creating stars of it’s own, like the WWF was at the time, why would they need to keep giving old WWF veterans like Nash and his friends so much power and money to stick around?

    Thankfully for (and because of) Kevin Nash, that question was never answered. Bill Goldberg was defeated, Kevin Nash was champion, the streak was over, and WCW had two and a half years left to live.

    But the curse wasn’t done just yet.

    WCW: Competitiveness in the Pro-Wrestling Industry

    What’s better than having the ability to influence the writing team? Being the writing team.

    Around February 1999, WCW made one of the most bizarre decisions it ever made (which is a competitive field for a company like WCW) and made Kevin Nash the head of their creative team. The previous head, Eric Bischoff, who had officially booked Nash’s title victory at Starrcade, effectively walked out on the company to go to Europe with his family, leaving Nash in full control.

    Unfortunately, Nash’s time in charge is particularly vague in terms of what he did and didn’t do, mostly because Nash’s promotion did nothing to clear up the murkiness of exactly who was in charge of what in WCW. Roughly speaking, Nash lasted from Bischoff’s departure in February 1999, to Vince Russo’s arrival in October 1999. These dates, whilst unconfirmed, would suggest that Nash was responsible for at least okay-ing a performance by the band KISS on an August episode of Nitro which was, according to Dean Malenko, the least-watched episode of WCW Nitro ever.

    Nash’s tenure as booker also involved the coining of the notorious term “vanilla midgets”, Nash’s label for wrestlers he considered to be too small and too boring to ever succeed. Among the vanilla midgets were the likes of Eddie Guerrero, Lance Storm, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Raven and Chris Jericho, with the latter two both eventually leaving WCW under Nash’s leadership, and immediately joining the WWF.

    But perhaps Kevin Nash’s most well known and controversial nail in WCW’s coffin came, amazingly, before he was “given the book” by Eric Bischoff.

    All together now; The Fingerpoke of Doom.

    The story’s so well known that it’s barely worth repeating, but, just as catch-up crash-course, on the January 4th, 1999 episode of WCW Nitro, in Atlanta, Georgia, babyface Kevin Nash defended the WCW World Heavyweight Championship against heel Hulk Hogan, with each man representing rival splinter groups of what had once been the NWO. When the match started, Hogan poked Nash in the chest, Nash threw himself onto his back, Hogan made the pin, Hogan and Nash hugged and laughed, the NWO reformed, and, in one finger poke, the Monday Night Wars were over. WCW had lost.

    In his book “WrestleCrap”, RD Reynolds cited the finger poke of doom as the beginning of WCW’s decline into oblivion in the minds of fans. In his book “The Death of WCW”, Bryan Alvarez called in the most important single event that eventually lead to WCW’s collapse. WWE themselves called in the most “scandalous title change of all time”. Even the New York Daily News called it the “beginning of the end of WCW”.

    As ever with WCW, people have been quick to jump ship. Kevin Nash has always protested his influence, accusing others, including Bill Goldberg, of spreading the rumour that he was involved the planning the match. On the other side, however, Goldberg, Reynolds and Alvarez have accused the match of being almost entirely the work of Nash and Hogan as part of an ongoing “plot” which had begun with Nash winning the title in December to place both of them back at the top of the WCW main event hierarchy in the fans eyes.

    Whoever’s fault it was, the ball was rolling, the decline was unstoppable. WCW was dead. The curse of Kevin Nash, however, wasn’t…

    Next Page
    1 2

    Share this article:

    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit

    Tags

    Kevin NashWrestling IllustrationsWWE CartoonsWWE Royal Rumblewwe royal rumble 2014

    COMMENTS

    Please read our Commenting Policy before you join in with the discussion.

    Note: If you have email notifications enabled, please check your email spam folders to ensure emails are not missed.

    Subscribe
    Connect withD
    I allow to create an account
    When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
    DisagreeAgree
    Notify of
    guest

    Connect withD
    I allow to create an account
    When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
    DisagreeAgree
    guest

    1 Comment
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    Henry Higgins III
    Henry Higgins III
    7 years ago

    That was a good read, but I would like to say that Raven didn’t leave WCW and go to WWE, he left and went back to ECW, where he was a surprise return. On that night, he and Tommy Dreamer won the tag titles from The Dudley Boys (ironically on their last night in the promotion). He had a no-compete clause stating he couldn’t go straight to WWE, so went to ECW in August 1999 and left again in April 2000, before appearing at WWE’s Unforgiven PPV in September 2000. Also, Raven left when Eric Bischoff went into the locker… Read more »

    0
    Reply

    You might also like

    • The Curse of the WWE Royal Rumble

      By John Hancock
      | January 27, 2012
    • The Curse of the WWE Royal Rumble Revisited: 2012 Edition

      By John Hancock
      | January 14, 2013
    • The Curse of the WWE Royal Rumble Revisited: 2013 Edition

      By John Hancock
      | January 22, 2014

    FIND THE TOPICS YOU WANT...

    Wrestling Topics

    Recommended for you

    • The future of the AEW World Championship

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 14, 2022
    • ROH Death Before Dishonor 2022 kickstarted a new era with a bang

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 25, 2022
    • Vince McMahon is out as WWE chief. First reactions here…

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 22, 2022
    • Getting AEW to the next level…

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 29, 2022
    • Your WAY TOO EARLY predictions for WWE WrestleMania 39!

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 20, 2022
    • What we want from an AEW video game

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 31, 2021
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Affiliate Disclosure
    • Cookie Policy and Settings
    • Terms of Use
    • Photo Credits
    • RSS
    All Cult of Whatever articles, logos, illustrations and graphics are copyright CultOfWhatever.com. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. © 2021 CultOfWhatever. All Rights Reserved.
    • facebook
    • twitter
    wpDiscuz