Goldberg vs. Kevin Nash (Nov 1998 – Jan 1999)

Background

Goldberg had held the WCW World Heavyweight Championship since beating Hollywood Hogan at the Georgia Dome on July 6, 1998, defending it through the summer and fall while his undefeated streak, cited by WCW as well past 100 consecutive wins by that point, kept climbing.[1] Kevin Nash, one half of the original nWo alongside Scott Hall and Hogan, had spent 1998 working through the group's internal fractures and had, by the fall, taken a seat on WCW's booking committee, one of a rotating group of wrestlers and executives shaping the company's creative direction under Eric Bischoff.[6][7]

By his own later account, Goldberg was aware his push and his streak had started to lose steam by late 1998. "I think the streak was losing some momentum, and who am I as a professional wrestler to give my opinion? I'm not a booker," he said years afterward. "I'm just the guy who takes the story and tries to act it out in front of the crowd."[5] Eric Bischoff's creative team had reportedly been planning to end the run for a couple of months before Starrcade, looking for a credible, physically large opponent to do it.[5]

Build-up

The path to the title match ran through a battle royal. At World War 3 on November 22, 1998 at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Kevin Nash won the sixty-man World War 3 match in 23:28, last eliminating Lex Luger, earning himself the championship opportunity against Goldberg at Starrcade the following month.[2] Nash's presence on WCW's booking committee at the time of that win, and at the time of the match that followed, became the center of a dispute that outlasted the storyline itself.[6][7]

Goldberg wrote in his 2000 book, I'm Next: The Strange Journey of America's Unlikely Superhero, that Nash was responsible for booking the outcome of their own match, effectively writing himself into the title.[6] Nash has since disputed the timeline directly, saying in an interview on Steve Austin's Broken Skull Sessions that Goldberg had the sequence of events wrong and that his committee role had nothing to do with how the Starrcade finish was decided.[6] Independent reporting has also placed Nash's start as WCW's head booker as late as February 1999, after Starrcade had already happened, while other accounts, including Dave Meltzer's reporting at the time, put his booking influence as active from around World War 3 that November.[7]

Nash has offered his own explanation for why WCW moved on the streak when it did, one about audience reaction rather than internal politics. "Like if we'd go to the northeast they were booing Bill," he said. "It wasn't like all of a sudden, it was like, 'We have to beat Bill.' It's like 'Bill's starting to be the Yankees.'"[8] Whatever combination of reasons applied, WCW built Starrcade around the idea that a streak this dominant needed a definitive, physically credible opponent to end it, and it built the finish around interference rather than a clean fall.[5]

The Matches

Starrcade took place on December 27, 1998, Goldberg's own 32nd birthday, at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. in front of 16,066 fans.[3] The match was contested under No Disqualification rules, and it ran 11:20 before the finish.[3]

Goldberg had to fight through interference well before the finish arrived. Disco Inferno ran in first and got speared out of the ring; Bam Bam Bigelow followed and got the same treatment.[4] Then a man in an "Event Staff" shirt walked out with no reaction from the announce team suggesting anything unusual, revealed himself as Scott Hall, and shocked Goldberg with a stun gun at ringside.[3][4]

With Goldberg down, Nash hit his Jackknife Powerbomb and pinned him for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, ending the streak WCW had spent fifteen months building at a cited 173-1 and closing out Goldberg's reign at 174 days.[3][5] Goldberg has since said he made peace with the finish over time even though his instinct at the moment was frustration: "I look back on it, and I've been [upset] at my answers a number of times. That's childish. The fact is that Kevin Nash was the perfect guy to do it at the time."[5]

Aftermath

The title change was supposed to reset WCW's top of the card heading into 1999. Instead, the promotion undercut its own finish almost immediately. Goldberg was scheduled for a rematch on the January 4, 1999 Nitro, but the storyline had him kayfabe-arrested for "aggravated stalking" of Miss Elizabeth, removing him from the card entirely.[1] With Goldberg gone, Nash offered the title shot to Hollywood Hogan instead.[1]

Hogan won it back with what became known as the Fingerpoke of Doom: rather than throw a real punch, Hogan lightly poked Nash in the chest, and Nash dropped for the pin, handing Hogan the title in a finish so anticlimactic it became more notorious than the Starrcade match it followed.[1][7] The same night, WWF's Raw was live while WCW's Nitro had been taped, and WCW commentator Tony Schiavone announced on air that Mick Foley was about to win the WWF Championship on the competing broadcast, a moment widely credited with driving viewers to switch over and watch it happen live.[7]

Goldberg's title reign and streak, the single hottest story WCW had produced in years, had been spent on a title change that was reversed in barely a week, with almost nothing built off the Nash win before it was undone.[1][7]

Behind the Scenes

The central dispute behind the Starrcade finish is about authorship as much as outcome. Goldberg's book placed the blame for the finish, and the streak's ending, on Nash's dual role as opponent and committee member, a claim that reads as a wrestler questioning whether a peer had used a backstage position to write himself a win.[6] Nash's rebuttal, made years later in a sit-down interview rather than a press statement, disputes not just the accusation but the timeline it rests on, and outside reporting on exactly when Nash's booking authority began has never fully settled the question either way.[6][7]

Both men's accounts agree on the broader creative reasoning, even if they disagree on who controlled it: the streak had become a liability as much as an asset by late 1998, drawing boos in some markets as the crowd tired of an unbeatable act, and WCW's creative side, whoever specifically was steering it, had been discussing an ending for a couple of months before Starrcade.[5][8]

The Fingerpoke of Doom compounded the finish's credibility problem almost immediately. Handing the title to Hogan nine days later, off a finish that took less effort than a handshake, read to much of the audience as evidence that the Nash win itself had never been about elevating a new star, undermining Nash's own account that ending Goldberg's streak had been a considered creative decision rather than a self-serving one.[7]

Legacy

Goldberg's streak, whatever its precise win count, remains one of the most heavily referenced pushes in wrestling history, and its ending at Starrcade is remembered less for the match itself than for the stun gun spot and the authorship argument that followed it for two decades in shoot interviews and books.[5][6] The Fingerpoke of Doom that immediately followed is widely cited by historians as a turning point in WCW's decline relative to the WWF, a moment where the company visibly prioritized an internal Hogan-Nash storyline over the new star it had just spent fifteen months building.[7]

Goldberg went on to feud with Bret Hart the following year in a program that ended his in-ring career for good after a legitimate kick injury, and later moved to the WWF and WWE for further world title runs. Nash's tenure formally leading WCW's creative direction began, by most accounts, in the months just after this angle and lasted only a few months before he stepped back from the role.[6][7]

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. Fingerpoke of Doom — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerpoke_of_Doom
2. World War 3 (1998) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_3_(1998)
3. Starrcade (1998) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starrcade_(1998)
4. "WCW Starrcade 1998 results, retro live blog: Goldberg vs. Kevin Nash" — Cageside Seats. https://www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/2015/11/28/9808056/wcw-starrcade-1998-results-retro-live-blog-goldberg-vs-kevin-nash
5. "Why Goldberg's Streak Ended: The Secret Reason Revealed" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/goldbergs-streak-wcw/
6. "Kevin Nash says claim about him in Goldberg's book is untrue" — Sportskeeda. https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/news-kevin-nash-says-claim-goldberg-s-book-untrue
7. "Looking Back At Kevin Nash's Time As Booker of WCW" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/wcw-looking-back-at-kevin-nash-time-as-booker/
8. "Kevin Nash Claims WCW Ended Goldberg's Streak Because Fans Began To Turn On Him" — Cultaholic. https://cultaholic.com/posts/kevin-nash-claims-wcw-ended-goldberg-s-streak-because-fans-began-to-turn-on-him

Further Listening

• Kliq This podcast — Kevin Nash's account of the crowd reaction that led to ending Goldberg's streak
• Steve Austin's Broken Skull Sessions with Kevin Nash — Nash's direct response to Goldberg's booking claim
• Bill Goldberg's I'm Next: The Strange Journey of America's Unlikely Superhero — Goldberg's own account of the Starrcade finish and its authorship
• 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff — WCW-side context on the Fingerpoke of Doom and the creative reasoning behind ending the streak