Ask 411 Wrestling: Did Eric Bischoff Ever Take Blame for the Fingerpoke of Doom?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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A Different Ryan is back and better than ever:

Bookers are notorious for, among other things, not taking the blame when something goes wrong or turns out bad. On that note, did Eric Bischoff, in any interview (or on his own podcast), ever taken the blame for the “finger poke of doom” (aka Nash laying down for Hogan in late ’98) leading to WCW’s downfall?

Kind of.

To my knowledge, he’s never come out and said “This was one of the worst ideas in professional wrestling history” or anything to that effect. However, in both his autobiography and in a July 2022 episode of 83 Weeks he said around that time WCW creative wasn’t as good as it once was, that things were starting to go downhill, and that the Fingerpoke was part of that trend but not the huge, singular, company-killing event that some people have portrayed it as being.

So, he’s danced around saying that it sucked while also saying that those who believe it killed the company are wrong.

Dragon Sleepah continues to have a better name than you?

My question this week: Is Foley the only wrestler to have three different personas active within a year? In 1998 he won the tag titles at Mania as Cactus Jack, faced Austin for the World Title as Dude Love, and of course faced Taker in Hell in Cell. Also do you think we will ever see a wrestler have many active personas again? Closest I thought was the late Bray Wyatt/Fiend.

He’s definitely not the only wrestler to have three personas active in one year. There was name that immediately came to my mind when I read the question:

Keiji Muto. Of course, just about everybody reading this will know that he was also the Great Muta. However, there was a also a third persona of Muto/Muta known as Kokushi Muso. Kokushi was based on and often tagged with wrestler Jinsei Shinzaki when Shinzaki was wrestling under his Hakushi persona. (Yes, the guy from the mid-90s WWF.) Both Kokushi and Hakushi were meant to be Buddhist monk characters of sorts.

Keiji Muto, Great Muta, and Kokushi Muso all had matches in 2002, 2003, and 2009, with 2009 being the last year that Kokushi ever appeared in the ring.

There was also an obscure angle that rumored soon-to-be-WWE Hall of Famer Barry Darsow was doing on WCW c-shows like Worldwide and Saturday Night in 1999 which saw him cycling between old gimmicks of his, including reviving Krusher Kruschev, The Blacktop Bully, and Mr. Hole in One. Unfortunately, intellectual property law kept Demolition Smash and Repo Man from making appearances.

Is it possible that somebody else could do this? Yeah, sure it is. You’ve already got guys running around with two personas (Paul Wight/Captain Insano, Finn Balor/The Demon) so one of them adding a third or somebody else coming up with a trifecta would not be a huge stretch.

Masked Fan asks about more of his ilk:

Has there ever been a masked referee?

Yes.

Probably the most noteworthy masked referee in recent memory is one Nick Patrick, who wore a hood when he first joined the nWo and refereed the faction’s matches – in addition to refereeing their bouts without a mask but then only making heel calls for which he had plausible deniability. Of course, eventually he was unmasked and just started openly favoring Hollywood Hogan and crew.

There have also been some regular masked refs on the indies. In the late 2000s, there was a masked ref on lucha shows in Baja California who was known as Mr. X. Women’s lucha libre promotion LLF featured El Panda, a ref who, as the name implies, wore a panda mask. On the other side of the border, California indy Hoodslam for the time featured senior official El Sparko, who did his thing in a striped mask that matched his striped shirt.

Tyler from Winnipeg is so pretty, just like that man from New York City:

I’m actually a big fan of Marc Mero, any time you enjoyed his work?

Yeah, I was actually a pretty big fan of Mero as Johnny B. Badd back in 1995 and early 1996, the last year or so before he left WCW for the WWF. At the time I had very little exposure to high flying wrestling, and he was doing flashy spots like top rope huricanranas and tope con hilos that very few people were doing on national television.

Uzoma is haunted by the ghosts of Diva Searches past:

Were Joy Giovanni and Amy Weber going to amount to something more had their time in the WWE continued?

It’s hard to say. They didn’t seem to have much potential in their limited time in the company, but if you look at the same point in the careers of Maria Kanellis or the Bella Twins, they didn’t seem like they would amount to much, either, and they all became relatively entertaining parts of the WWE roster. Had they stuck around, there was a chance.

I’m not sure what Brad is doing here:

Want to make long time wrestling fans feel old? Consider this: The rebranding of WWF to WWE happened in 2002, which doesn’t seem too long ago. But now the company has spent the same number of years as the WWE as it did the WWF, and obviously will surpass it!

1953-1963 CWC (10 years)
1963-1979 WWWF (16 years)
1979-2002 WWF (23 years)
2002-2025 WWE (23 years)

. . . is this a question?

Seriously, though, this is all accurate, and it just goes to show you that, when it comes to time, the days go slow but the years go fast.

Night Wolf the Wise has an exclusive deal to ask his questions only to me:

1. Over the past several years, we have seen talent signed to WWE. Some of those talents runs start out great, then they are regulated to crappy storylines, stuck in catering and eventually released. They get resigned later on only for the same thing to happen. ( AOP, Good brothers, etc). What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think this has this been a frequent occurrence?

You’re right, over the past several years we have seen talent signed to WWE. In fact, I can’t think of a time when they weren’t signing talent.

Regarding the recent spate of talent that was signed, released, and then signed again, I don’t think that will be anything we see on a regular basis. There have been some unique circumstances in the past five years or so which have that lead to the situation. First, there were the COIVD-19 pandemic, which resulted in a lot of wrestlers getting cut when they otherwise might not have been, and several of those were re-signed later on down the road. Second, there was the change in management from Vince McMahon to TKO and Triple H, which lead to Trips bringing back some of his boys who fell out of favor with and were released by the prior administration.

Unfortunately for guys like AOP, they didn’t work out on their second run either, finding themselves cut again.

Unless we see more back and forth on who is in power within WWE, I doubt we’ll see these yo-yo signings of the past several years.

2. I’ve noticed AEW and WWE both have the same problem of trying to manage their roster, signing new talents, then some of the talent they have get pushed to the side. Their rosters are way too bloated. How many wrestlers do think each company should have?

42. Each roster should have 42 guys on it.

Seriously, though, I’ve received some variation on this question several times over the years, and I don’t know that there is a great answer to it.

Some people seem to think that, if a wrestling company is going to employ a wrestler, that wrestler has to be featured on TV in some way otherwise that wrestler is being “wasted.” That’s not reality, though. You need more wrestlers than what you are featuring on television, because you need bodies for dark matches, you need bodies for house shows, you need younger guys you are developing, and you need somewhat of a “bench” in case your featured performers are injured or otherwise become unavailable. Plus, there are legitimately situations in which, as a matter of business, it makes sense to sign somebody just so the opposition can’t have them.

I’m really not offended by how the two major promotions are managing their rosters these days.

3. With the lack of other major wrestling promotions, how long do you think we will continue to see AEW and WWE sign a lot of talent. Not use talent, release them and then that talent ends up with the other company.

I think we’ll see it for as long as the two companies are in operation at their present level. There’s very little difference between this and the patterns that we saw when WCW was around as the main competitor for the WWF.

But whose side is Bret on?

I always heard from Eric Bischoff interviews they if he couldn’t convince Hogan to be the third man for the nWo invasion that it was gonna be Sting. I wouldn’t think that would make sense since Sting was always WCW loyal from a storyline standpoint. But with that being said do you think the nWo would of been as big as it was with Sting? I also think Hogan saw the riding on the wall because it was said that people was get tired of Hogan.

No way the nWo would be half as big as it was with Sting as the third man. I think that it still could have been a huge storyline for the existing WCW fanbase, but there is no way that it could have had the crossover appeal that it did to casual fans with anybody other than Hogan. The nWo didn’t start a boom period just because they had a cool logo and innovative stylized black-and-white promos. The nWo started a boom period because Hulk Hogan had turned heel for the first time since Hulkamania started running wild, and people HAD to tune in to see what that was all about. Sting didn’t have that sort of mainstream appeal.

Xavier is throwing me off a bit:

What would you say is the best and worst acquisition for the WWE to AEW?

I think you accidentally used the wrong preposition, and it’s got me confused as to what exactly you’re trying to ask, but I think what you’re going for is who would be the best and worst people for WWE to pick up off of AEW’s roster.

Even though AEW’s booking has cooled him off quite a bit compared to where he was many months ago, I would say that the best talent WWE could pick up from Tony Khan is still MJF. The guy’s ability to speak is money, and I have a hard time believing he wouldn’t be an instant main eventer if you put the WWE promotional machine behind him.

It’s hard to say what the worst acquisition would be because I think there are many wrestlers on the AEW roster who would be bad pickups because they’re unknowns that don’t bring anything to the table. I guess I’ll say that the worst possible signing would be getting one of the Young Bucks but not the other, because they’re a package deal and one does not have near as much value without his brother.

Uzoma knee-knee-kneeds me to answer this question:

Is it true that Shawn Michaels’ ring gear that he debuted in his acclaimed WrestleMania encounter with Kurt Angle and wore for the rest of his career was to conceal that he was required to wear a knee brace in his matches?

Yup, that’s it. Michaels had a long history of knee problems, including a torn meniscus the year before the Angle match, and by 2005 it was time for him to brace up.

Bryan focuses in:

Does the WWE (or any other fed) use “movie” cameras at their televised events or PPV? Not the ones for the broadcast, it’s hard for me to put into words but there’s a real difference between TV/video and “film” like what you see in a movie, like film has to develop and it looks more distinct. Do they ever use more “professional” stuff for documentaries and what not?

They use high definition television cameras.

Night Wolf the Wise is breaking ranks:

It’s been about two months since Jacob Fatu debuted in the WWE as a member of the Bloodline. He very quickly overshadowed Solo Sikola, Tama Tanga, and Tanga Loa. He’s proven why he’s the breakout star of the group. There are definitely bigger things on the horizon for Jacob Fatu. Which got me thinking about something. How many times in wrestling has a wrestler debuted part of a stable and quickly outshone other members of the stable?

I can’t say as though it’s happened before.

If I’m wrong, I’m sure Amsonite will tell me.

Christopher H. is carved out of granite:

Who is on your Mt. Rushmore of wrestling executives in the U.S.?

Vince McMahon: Lousy human being, legendary wrestling promoter. He made the modern industry what it is.

Jim Crockett: There’s a reason that he was the last man standing against the WWF machine, and he was respected enough to have been the NWA President for more time than just about any other person.

Verne Gagne: He amassed perhaps the single largest territory in the United States in terms of geography covered while also being the promotion’s top star.

Bill Watts: In addition to having many successes at the box office, Watts is responsible for booking what is regarded as one of the best weekly television wrestling shows for an extended period of time.

Lev will finish us off:

I was watching a review for TNA Against All Odds and I see their champion, Moose, also uses the spear as his finish. It got me wondering how many people use the spear as their primary finishing move in the top 3 Nth American companies – WWE, AEW, TNA?

Is it the most overused finishing move in wrestling today?

Or would it be something like a cutter or DDT or moonsault which have much more variations?

Yeah, it’s the spear, almost without a doubt. A few years ago, it might have been the superkick, but I feel as though that one’s cooled down a bit.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.