Kevin Nash recently revisited one of the most infamous moments in WCW history while speaking at a live Q and A during River City Wrestling Con. The former WCW World Champion was asked about the Fingerpoke of Doom angle, a booking decision that has been debated by fans for decades.

At the time, Kevin Nash was reigning as WCW World Champion after ending the legendary undefeated streak of Bill Goldberg. That reign abruptly came to an end on the January 4 1999 edition of WCW Monday Nitro, when Nash famously dropped the title to Hollywood Hulk Hogan after a simple finger poke.

Looking back on how the idea came together, Nash made it clear he was never fully on board with the original plan.

“I think it was one of those situations where you get a bunch of guys in a room and they come up with an idea that’s kind of really bad.

And because what they want to do is 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 I said, ‘if we’re going to do this, 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.’”

The Fingerpoke of Doom has long been cited as a turning point for WCW during the Monday Night Wars, symbolizing the kind of creative decisions that alienated viewers and handed momentum back to WWE. Nash’s comments suggest that even those involved understood the risks at the time, but were ultimately unable to steer the angle in a more logical direction.

Kevin Nash continued his reflection by pushing back on the long held belief that the Fingerpoke of Doom was instantly obvious to the live audience. According to Nash, the reaction in the building is often misunderstood, and he argued that the angle worked in the moment precisely because no one saw it coming.

“And to this day, they say the Fingerpoke of Doom if you watch the crowd it’s the only reason it’s such a brutal thing in wrestling. There wasn’t a soul in that building that called it.

We got them all. We got every one of them. And that was their problem.

And then my favorite thing is that I booked it. 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 which one would you guys rather do. Sell merchandise as the hottest guy in the territory, 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 comments underline a frustration he has expressed before, pointing to the missed business opportunity that followed his win over Goldberg and suggesting that politics and creative control ultimately outweighed long term planning. From his perspective, the backlash that followed was less about the live reaction and more about what WCW chose to do next.