Kevin Nash Reveals Why Fingerpoke of Doom Really Happened

Kevin Nash is finally setting the record straight about one of wrestling’s most controversial moments: the Fingerpoke of Doom. And according to him, it wasn’t a screw-up—it was strategy.

During a live Q&A at River City Wrestling Con, Nash broke down what really happened backstage before the infamous January 4, 1999 episode of WCW Nitro, where Hulk Hogan poked him in the chest and Nash took a bump to hand over the WCW World Title. Nash said the original idea was to have a normal match before the finish—but that made zero sense to him.

“They want to have a six-to-eight-minute match, and then I’ll take the fall. Because everybody knows in real life that if you were going to let somebody slide over you, you’d let them punch you in the face for a good eight minutes before you do that.”

So Nash pitched a simpler—and much more shocking—approach. And despite the long-term fallout and fan backlash, Nash stood by the decision:

“I said, if we’re going to do this, I said, why would I let him punch me? Why would I go out there and just let him punch me in the face? I said, you’ll get a better response if he touches me and I go down.”

“To this day they say the Fingerpoke of Doom was... if you watch the crowd, it’s the only reason it’s such a brutal thing in wrestling—because there wasn’t a soul in that building that called it. We got them all.”

Critics have long blamed the moment for killing Goldberg’s momentum and accelerating WCW’s downfall—but Nash wasn’t having it. He fired back at the conspiracy theories that claim he sabotaged his own push.

“I booked me beating Goldberg, and then six days later I booked me to do the Fingerpoke of Doom? Instead of being the champion that beat Goldberg, which was a babyface and got to sell merchandise for nine months?”

“Or turn around the next week and give it to somebody else that has creative control and he’s the only one that does.”

Nash’s version flips the narrative fans have argued over for 25 years. The Fingerpoke of Doom wasn’t lazy booking—it was designed to catch everyone off guard. And according to Big Sexy, it worked.

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