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Professional wrestling attendance records are all the talk at the moment due to AEW’s potentially record-breaking All In show, which is set to take over Wembley Stadium. Based on current ticket sales, they are completely steamrolling WCW’s highest ever attendance record of 41,412. Of course, WCW would team up with NJPW for several big shows such as Collision in Korea and Starrcade in the Tokyo Dome, but when it comes to solely a WCW event, their highest ever was 1998 for an episode of Monday Nitro. Given how PPVs are often considered more special events, it is surprising to see that it was simply just a weekly episode of TV which gained this record, but that in itself is a reason as to why WCW botched this whole thing from a business perspective.
WCW Booked Hulk Hogan Vs. Goldberg For Their Biggest Ever Nitro Show
1998 was a make or break year for WCW (which would ultimately land on ‘break’) but for a portion of the year they were still arguably in with a shout of being the defined number one professional wrestling company on the planet with the Monday Night Wars in full swing. A statement was set to be made on July 6 when WCW ran the Georgia Dome - not for the first time in 1998 - for an episode of their flagship weekly show. A huge blockbuster main event was set up for the show, with the WCW World Heavyweight Champion “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan going up against the undefeated streak of Goldberg.
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Whilst it was hugely important getting ratings at the time, this was undoubtedly a PPV-worthy clash. However, a lot of short-term booking was done within the Attitude Era to jam-pack weekly shows with the biggest stars to win the ratings war each and every Monday, and this often left PPVs lacking - particularly on the WCW side of things. Not that WCW should have ignored weekly TV, but there needed to be a balance between TV and PPV, and if things were more carefully planned out and PPVs were a big success, then the wars could have well been very different.
WCW’s Largest Monday Nitro Was A Mixed Bag
When looking at the July 6 edition of Nitro in the Georgia Dome, it wasn’t an overly special show aside from the big main event, with the cagematch.net rating displaying just how average a show it was. Sure, it was a good episode, but not worthy of such a large crowd. The show-long thread of Goldberg defending the WCW United States Championship against Scott Hall and then going on to the main event to overcome and defeat the biggest star of the last two decades to become World Heavyweight Champion too was stunning, and the crowd reaction was one of the most electric of all time. However, the rest of the card wasn’t all that interesting.
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On paper, matches such as Booker T vs. Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho vs. Ultimo Dragon, Juventud Guerrera vs. Psychosis, and Diamond Dallas Page vs. Jim Niedhart all sounded good, but when they all lasted for under three minutes, it is easy to see why this card was forgettable. There were other stars on the show too such as Sting, Lex Luger, and The Giant, but they were all involved in matches that lasted just a couple of minutes. It was squash match galore with no stories being progressed, and you’d think for such a huge show, WCW would try and make it as good as possible. However, outside of the big memorable main event, they clearly put zero effort in.
WCW Should Have Saved Goldberg Vs. Hulk Hogan For A PPV
WCW really missed a trick here by giving away a major main event in Hogan vs. Goldberg on weekly TV, as it is clear that the sole intention for this was winning the ratings war. It should have instead been put on PPV, as it would have no doubt made a ton of money due to how much of a draw it was. When looking at how WCW progressed over the next year and more, it is obvious that their tactics failed to work. Instead of focusing on making their product the best it could be, it was all about beating WWE, and this led to logic often going out of the window. WCW would never pull in a crowd of this size again, and barely even tried to do so too, as they couldn’t even fill smaller arenas as the years pushed on. The late days of WCW are sometimes ugly to witness due to this.
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Whereas WWE’s PPVs felt must-see, WCW didn’t seem to have this same mindset, as the number of classic PPV shows that they have compared to WWE around this era is much lower. If they instead pushed for bigger numbers with matches like Hogan vs. Goldberg on PPV, then perhaps their attendance figures would have been much higher overall, and they would have been able to fill even larger venues.
