There's so much more you could have included with the Fingerpoke of Doom. The plan was to reunite the NWO and have Goldberg feud with them. The only problem was that the next week they ran a spot where Goldberg busted the window of a limo with his arm, which resulted in Goldberg injuring his arm really bad. He was out for close to a year, and the whole angle was scrapped. So the ended Goldberg streak, then did the horrible Fingerpoke of Doom all for nothing.

Damn, how could I have ever forgotten the Fingerpoke of Doom? That's quality WOATing right there. Quality writeup as well.

Yeah, I could have gone further into the writeup but kind of truncated the fallout stuff since I had promised a pick soon and didn't want to hold things up.

Fingerpoke was my #1, and I wasn't really expecting it to get to 3. Arquette not far behind for me. If Fingerpoke had gone at 2 then I was going elsewhere for #4 even though my "elsewhere" may slide for several more picks yet.

Sorry, got a little busy at work. LKJ took the last of my top 3, so that made it even tougher. Should have something up within the next half hour.

Okay, I'll take something that checks off a lot of boxes. Forcing someone to unwillingly go with an uncomfortable storyline; making fun of depression and substance abuse; pissing on the history of one of the greatest tag teams in wrestling history.

I choose Drunk Hawk.

This was in late 1998. Real life Hawk was suffering through some depression-related substance abuse issues and showing up to events wasted. So naturally WWE decides to run with this on their programming, by having Hawk portray a drunk who ****s up his promos and would talk about killing himself. How fun.

Eventually Animal would choose a new LOD partner, Puke (known later as Droz). The most memorable part of the angle was when Hawk appeared on top of the Titantron in the middle of a match and starts rambling. Animal tries to get him to come down, acting all serious and calling him “Mike” (Hawk’s real first name) while Droz climbs up. After Hawk screams that he wants nothing to do with Droz, Droz semi-pushes Hawk backwards off the Titantron. The announcers play this off like someone died.



The very next segment would feature Sable, and pervert Lawler starts going crazy.

Hawk would quickly come back (I think it wasn’t even two weeks later) and say that Droz was the one giving him the drugs. Animal and Hawk would soon be gone from WWE.

Hawk died in 2003 at the age of 46.

Great pick, thought it might fall to me at 9 for some reason.

It could have reasonably fallen that far.

I think the first three were correct (in some order) and then there was a pretty big gap. I seriously considered about a half dozen others. A few might even get back to me.

Yeah, that wasn't my alternate to Fingerpoke but it's a worthy top 5 pick.

Nice pick. Will post my pick shortly, think it might be a facemelter based on comments so far.

So far, there have been some really, really, really bad angles taken; the sort of things that it boggles the mind that a) someone actually came up with the idea, and b) no one stopped them before they went on air. I'm taking a storyline that 100% should have taken place, and probably should have been the greatest storyline in wrestling history, but it was the execution of the angle rather than the concept which makes it my number 1 pick.

Not a facemelter. I almost picked that myself.

Dammit. I really, really wanted that. That was on par with the top 3 for me.

The night that ECW was added to the mix both saved the angle and then killed it dead again when Stephanie was introduced as "owner" of ECW.

writing up

Ready whenever

Damn had a pick in mind and forgot it lol

There are a whole bunch of different things I want to take here, but I can't pass this one up.

You forgot to mention the grown-ass man in a hand costume appearing years later at RAW 1000.

Oh yes, that is also a think that happened. I'll add it

an example of something that started out really really really bad and only got so so so much worse

That was one of the three I was gonna take if hand was taken before me . Just all around wtf

Please allow me to explain why The Fingerpoke of Doom not only didn't deserve to be drafted #3 overall, it didn't deserve to be drafted at all. It wasn't one of the WOAT. It was effective, clever, and did exactly what it was intended to do. Most people just missed the point.

You have to remember that at the time, the nWo was presented in kayfabe as a rival organization to WCW. Members of the nWo were not members of WCW. They were a group attempting a hostile takeover. (Initially is was strongly implied that they were sent by Vince, but that aspect obviously had to be ditched pretty quickly.)

Therefore, they did not care about the prestige of holding any WCW belt. The only reason they sought after titles was that it gave the group leverage and power over WCW. A close analogy is the show Survivor. There have been several instances in that show where someone from a dominant alliance will give up his or her shot at individual immunity if it also hurts the chances of someone from outside their alliance whom they don't want to win. From the alliance's point of view, it doesn't matter who gets individual immunity, so long as it isn't one particular person.

So it was with the nWo and the WCW World Title. Kevin Nash didn't care a single bit about being champion, so he laid down and gave the belt to Hogan. It was a cute call back to the time Andre tried to give the WWF title to Ted DiBiase, but Jack Tunney vacated the title because he just gave it away without being pinned or submitted. The fact that it pissed off WCW fans who were expecting some nWo on nWo violence and a crack in their front just made the swerve even better. They were heels, and the Fingerpoke of Doom was a great heel move. It put even more heat on Hogan, and putting heat on a heel, so that it is sweeter when the face finally triumphs, is the entire point of wrestling angles.

The Problem was that the final face triumph never came. The nWo never tasted any lasting signature defeat. But that would lead into some moments that are actually worthy of being drafted as among the WOAT so I'll just stop here and say I loved the Fingerpoke of Doom at the time, and still do to this day.

My personal board has just taken three consecutive head shots.

SRM, didnt snitsky punt a toy baby into the crowd during this angle?

Without that Lita/Kane/Snitsky cluster****, we wouldn't have this gif though:

Give me 5-10 narrowing down my choices