WWE Raw September 16th, 2002/WWE SmackDown! September 19th, 2002 Watch Along

[Sky]

The top faces were slow and still drug-addled Hardy, slow and still drug-addled RVD, Abyss, and Jeff fucking Jarrett

 

[Chris]

Sting as a heel vs Goldberg coulda been really cool

 

[Ricky Smarks]

Yeah, I've been thinking about what WCW could have done with Sting and Goldberg in 1999, and hit me a feud would be a hit that year. Goldberg needed something new to do and he needed to retain the momentum he had in 1998, but there wasn't a strong heel for him and Sting's babyface run was failing which is why they did turn him heel that year, but on Hogan so it fell flat.

 

[Chris]

Sting's '99 heel stuff is honestly very similar to the TNA '10 stuff...even with Hogan involved

 

[Ricky Smarks]

My favorite part of the pre-Immortal is Nash was also right about Immortal and instead of saying I told you so, he turns down Hogan's offer to join and make millions, Nash says this time the money isn't worth is and that's literally how TNA writes him off the show after a solid 6 years with them. He next shows up in the Royal Rumble for WWE.

 

[Sky]

My favourite part is that Hogan and Flair had been feuding all year and Fortune was full of wrestlers the fans wanted to cheer, so instead they flushed a lot of money down the toilet and aligned Hogan and Flair. This, plus the disappearance of Mr. Anderson (concussion), the Pope (got buried), Sting (left), Nash (left), RVD (got baited into a feud with the rest of the rapidly-disappearing EV2.0 group) and Samoa Joe (briefly feuded with Jarrett, got injured, then came back as a heel) meant they ran out of faces who could work the main event

 

[Sky]

And so they had to turn MATT MORGAN face

 

[Sky]

The 7-foot talent vacuum himself

 

[Chris]

I even like Matt Morgan but I think that was a terrible time to push him into the main event lmao

 

[Ricky Smarks]

I was fine with it because Jeff Hardy's heel turn was my favorite thing in years and it meant Jeff got to embarrass the giant goof on PPV.