1989 was WCW's greatest year except for the prime two years 1996-1997 with the nWo running wild. However as we went to the new decade, 1990 would be a complete 180 in terms of success and really bizarre storylines. 1989 featured four 5-star matches and 1990 would have nothing close to that whatsoever.
The one bright spot of the new decade was the "Man Called Sting" as Sting finally was on top of the company, supplanting Ric Flair. Sting and Flair started 1990 as allies after they joined forces to help each other out in 1989.
Arn Anderson returned to WCW following a year stint in the WWF in late 1989 and along with his "brother" Ole Anderson reformed the Four Horsemen. It was obviously Flair was in the group and they decided to ask none other than Sting to be the fourth Horsemen. Sting accepted and he was now a member of the Four Horsemen. For the first time ever, the Four Horsemen were a group of faces.
As expected, Sting's time in the Four Horsemen as well as the Four Horsemen being a bunch of good guys did not last long. Sting was given an NWA World Heavyweight Championship match against Flair as he was the number one contender.
At Clash of the Champions X on February 6, 1990, the Horsemen told Sting to forfeit his title match against Flair. Sting refused and the rest of the Horsemen attacked Sting and kicked him out of the group as they turned back into heels.
Later that night, the Horsemen were in a Steel Cage match and Sting ran down to enter the match. He climbed the cage, but suffered a legitimate knee injury while climbing the cage. He was attacked by the rest of the Horsemen, who took credit for injuring Sting. Sting would be out of action for about six months. He would still make his presence on TV walking around on crutches until he was healthy.
A couple of weeks later at WrestleWar, Flair defended his World Title against Lex Luger. Sting came out during the match on crutches and supported Luger. Ole Anderson attacked Sting as Luger was about to beat Flair to win the World Title.
Luger would leave the ring and help Sting, costing him the title but creating a bond that was really strong between him and Sting. WCW wanted Luger to beat Flair for the World Title, but Flair declined as he already promised the belt to Sting when he returned from injury.
The Four Horsemen really grew to be strong once again as they added the nearly 7 ft Sid Vicious and a returning Barry Windham to team with Flair and Arn Anderson. Ole Anderson took more of a backseat as the manager as he was also becoming the head booker backstage.
That move made by Executive Vice President Jim Herd turned out to be a disaster. Herd had problems with Ric Flair and replaced Flair with Ole as the booker. Ole was a lousy booker dating back to his ways in Georgia Championship Wrestling. Ole was not one to change with the times.
Even one of the few things Herd did well in his time in WCW, stocking the roster with young talent with guys such as Brian Pillman and Tom Zenk, Ole decided to not to push them as he had Pillman, Zenk, and even Mick Foley as Cactus Jack become glorified jobbers in an attempt to get them to leave in favor of his guys, older established veterans who had cheaper non-guaranteed contracts but were not the foundation on which to grow a company.
At the Capital Combat PPV on May 19, 1990, there was the first of many strange and bizarre angles in 1990 being played out. The Four Horsemen locked Sting in a cage. All of a sudden, Robo Cop came out and helped Sting as Robo Cop was there to promote his upcoming movie; Robo Cop 2.
When Sting was healthy, he challenged Ric Flair for the World Title at The Great American Bash on July 7, 1990 from Baltimore. Sting came to the ring wearing very patriotic red, white, and blue ring attire and face paint. Sting had El Gigante, Junkyard Dog, Paul Orndorff, and The Steiner Brothers at ringside to prevent the Four Horsemen from interfering.
A back-and-forth match saw Sting no selling (just like Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior do) Flair's trademark chops as Sting would do the usual gorilla press slam as well as the "Flair flip" in the corner. Sting tried a running knee to Flair in the corner, but Flair moved out of the way and Sting's injured knee hit the turnbuckle.
Flair tried to go for the Figure Four Leg Lock, but Sting rolled him up into a small package for the win as Sting became the NWA World Heavyweight Champion for the first time in his career. Sting was on top of the wrestling world as Flair had passed the torch over to Sting.
After The Great American Bash, Sting would still feud with Flair and the Four Horsemen, but there would be someone else, someone from "Sting's past" that knew him from the time Sting came into the wrestling business. That man was "The Black Scorpion." Many felt it was Jim Hellwig, The Ultimate Warrior who was a teammate of Sting when the two broke into pro wrestling in 1985.
Who was the Black Scorpion? Good question! Who the hell knows?! It was a masked man who wore all black but no one knew who was going to play him, not even Ole Anderson and he was the guy who created this angle. Ole had to basically become the Black Scorpion as he wore the costume and had his voice distorted in interviews so no one knew it was him.
Sting attempted several times to unmask the Scorpion, but either he had another mask on or another Scorpion came out and said he was the real Black Scorpion. The Scorpion even did magic tricks as this was seriously a terrible angle.
Sting defeated the Scorpion at Starrcade '90 in December and finally unmasked him only to reveal it was Ric Flair in a total burial job despite Flair manning up and bailing out both Ole and Jim Herd. That was really bad.
Another disappointing angle took place at Halloween Havoc in October when Sting defended his World Title against Sid Vicious. The two fought backstage as Sid came back with "Sting" and pinned him to win the match.
The real Sting came back as the imposter Sting was actually Horsemen member Barry Windham as many couldn't tell that the fake Sting was actually a few inches taller than the real Sting (this would not be the last time WCW had a fake Sting). The real Sting defeated Sid to retain the title.
Ole Anderson did a lousy job and was fired at the end of the year as head booker. He was replaced by a committee that featured announcers Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone and wrestlers Kevin Sullivan and Ric Flair.
Although Jim Herd did not really wreak havoc, that would be more next year, he still set his footprint on what would be an awful next couple of years. Herd did come up with the ever infamous "Ding Dongs" a tag team of two masked goof balls named "Ding" and "Dong" who carried bells to the ring with them. That might have been just about the worst gimmick ever.
After its most successful year in 1989, WCW reportedly lost $6.5 million in 1990. That's a lot of money to lose today, especially back in 1990 as that's almost $12 million in 2016 dollars.
Ratings dropped drastically and house show attendance fell to record lows in 1990. Ole ran two separate house shows with one group featuring his older guys and the other with youngsters he wanted to bury and the ones with the younger guys drew more than the other.
During the year, several high profile wrestlers were not happy with the direction Jim Herd and Ole Anderson were taking WCW. The Road Warriors Paul Orndorff, Stan Lane of The Midnight Express and his manager Jim Cornette, Stan Hansen, The Nasty Boys and some guy Mark Callous left WCW. Callous was actually Mark Calaway and you know him as The Undertaker in the WWF.
The AWA was on the verge of shutting down as it remained inactive since the fall of 1990. WCW signed AWA World Heavyweight Champion Larry Zbyszko in December as AWA owner Verne Gagne stripped Zbyszko of the title as he is the last AWA World Champion. The AWA closed its doors in May 1991 and Verne Gagne would be inducted into the inaugural WCW Hall of Fame class in 1993.
Sting and Ric Flair did everything in their power to bail out the horrible decisions WCW made in 1990 and it was not enough. Flair would not get rewarded kindly for all that he has done for the company in his career.
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