First, it sounds like you're missing the point. It's not bad because they made him get completely screwed over to lose the title and the streak. It's the actual cattle prod specifically. Using a cattle prod in a wrestling match, under any circumstances, is moronic. There's a reason it was never used before or since. It's not a wrestling weapon. Hit him in the head with a sledgehammer, or hit him in the head with a chair a dozen times, and nobody thinks twice about it. It completely ruins the illusion. At least you can pretend a chair shot is real, and it looks like he kinda hurts even if it's not full force...you know the cattle prod is doing absolutely nothing to the guy. It's just like when Vince's limo exploded. There's a line between wrestling fake and insulting fake that wrestling companies should never cross, and WCW crossed that line with the cattle prod. That's why it was such an idiotic booking decision. And this is just personal preference, but IMO your biggest show of the year (like WrestleMania, or in this case Starrcade) should always have a cleaning ending to the main event, preferably with the face winning. That's supposed to be the pinnacle of your year, you shouldn't be using it to set up future matches.
As for your second point, that's exactly how it should have happened. Turning them heel is a great way to deal with a stale face, and it would've set them up perfectly to have a top face beat him cleanly for the title - if not a young guy like you described, then Sting would've been perfect. It's a tried and true storyline in wrestling, and it could've played out beautifully in that situation.
The first paragraph here kind of contradicts itsself. In theory, the first part is true...but the second part is the reason why it's not. It didn't make Kev and Nall hated, in fact it made them loved, because Goldberg was so stale and fans were sick of his streak. And the thing about Nash not booking doesn't really matter, since he still had as much pull as anybody. That'd be like saying Triple H wasn't booking when he was in Evolution. It's just nitpicking really.
And if you're replying to the earlier post about how Goldberg should've lost clean, a dominant monster HEEL absolutely MUST lose clean - and in the post, it mentioned that he should've been turned heel before he lost. It can end careers, but it all depends on how you book them after the loss. One loss will never end anything.
You're right about the crowd reaction - they loved seeing Nash beat Goldberg. Just imagine how they would've reacted if it was a face beating him cleanly. The Finger Poke of Doom was clearly worse(I mean, that's the single worst decision of any kind in the history of scripted entertainment - pro wrestling or otherwise), but they really go hand in hand since they happend 8 days apart and were part of the same storyline arc. And don't forget, at the beginning of the FPOD episode of Nitro, they gave away the result of Raw where Mankind won the title. It was those three incidents that ultimately lead to WCW going bankrupt.
There's a lot wrong with this mess of a thread, but the topic is a good one.
The cattle prod wasn't bad at all, for a while we saw all sorts of taser kinds of attacks. Never done before or since? Goldbergs next PPV was a ladder match with Scott Hall with a cattle prod hanging above the ring.
It wasn't a moronic idea at all. Did you watch it? It sounded pretty damned good, and was sold sufficiently well, especially in comparison to HHH's sledge.
I really didn't have much of a problem with Goldberg's streak ending the way it did. Hell I still remember where I was when Goldberg's streak ended. That's a good thing. It means that was a memorable event in pro-wrestling for me.
Goldberg turning heel would have been pretty tough to pull off. At best he was a neutral party (sorry, I hate the word tweener). He was a monster power wrestler, and not some social whiner reject like most of the WWF at that same point in time. You could have him clam up, stop talking, even less than he was already, and start cheating, but ultimately the fans loved Goldberg and that would keep him from ever really getting over as a heel.
The only reason Nash got cheered for beating Goldberg was because Nash was on a big hotstreak of his own and was gaining big momentum. At that point in time this was booked sounding like the match of the century, and these two were by far my favorite two guys in pro-wrestling. That's how it was for most WCW fans too. It had nothing to do with Goldberg's streak being stale, or that people didn't like Goldberg. Goldberg was as big a star as Steve Austin at this point in time.
How SHOULD Goldberg's streak have ended? It was good the way it was, the problem came from the dumbass swerve of the fingerpoke of doom. Nash should have become a WCW guy, because that's where people thought he was going, and had him team up with Scott Hall as a WCW guy to take down nWo once and for all.
I think a losing streak for Goldberg would have been the next best thing for him to go on. Have him lose to Nash in his rematch for the title perhaps because of an other run-in by Hall, have him lose to Hall, have him feud with Hall for a while with Hall coming out on top, then put him up against Bret Hart and have Bret Hart take him down another notch.
Losing streaks are tough to endure, but if Bill Goldberg was booked for longer matches where he could have shown he was a competent power wrestler, and shown that he was human, and getting frustrated, then have someone like Big Pappa Pump start mocking him for his losing streak, and how he was never really that good, not a power house like the genetic freak, and have Goldberg finally go over against Steiner, it could have been a much needed credibility booster for Goldberg.
People could then start getting back on the Goldberg bandwagon and see him get hot again and challenge whoever, perhaps DDP for the world title with DDP as the title holder, and Goldberg booked as a guy with something to prove, that he's not a flash in the pan wrestler but actually the real deal. His next reign as WCW champion would have been the one that people would look at as proving his legitimacy.
The thing about Goldberg is that he WAS green, but he was ALSO exceedingly talented in terms of getting over with fans. If things had gone down differently in terms of booking, no one would be arguing that Goldberg was a s**ty wrestler and nothing more than a flash in the pan product of the system.
But maybe that's just my opinion.
