Fingerpoke of Doom

The Fingerpoke of Doom is a nickname for an infamous incident in American professional wrestling that happened on January 4, 1999 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, during a live broadcast of WCW Monday Nitro, the flagship show of World Championship Wrestling. The incident occurred during the main event of Nitro, featuring WCW World Heavyweight Champion Kevin Nash, who was the leader of the Wolfpac faction of the New World Order, and Hollywood Hogan, the leader of the Hollywood faction of the New World Order, whom Nash and his group had been feuding with since April 1998 when the original faction split up, and who had "retired" from wrestling. The Wolfpac faction were fan favorites, while the Hollywood faction were villains (as was the original nWo).

The match saw Hogan poke Nash in the chest with his index finger, prompting Nash to fall to the mat and allow Hogan to pin him; the victory marked the reunion of both nWo factions into one villainous group. During the same broadcast, WCW announcer Tony Schiavone gave away the results of rival program WWF Raw, revealing that wrestler Mick Foley was set to win that federation's championship belt. Although this revelation was meant to deter Nitro viewers from switching to Raw, it instead reportedly prompted 600,000 fans to change channels in order to see Foley's victory, with most viewers only tuning back into Nitro when there were five minutes left in the broadcast. The incident was named The Fingerpoke of Doom both for Nash's overselling the finger poke, and for the negative ramifications the incident had for the company as a whole, with some wrestling journalists crediting it as the beginning of WCW's ultimate downfall and loss of the Monday Night Wars.