Referee Nick Patrick On When He Felt WCW Was Going Downhill

Referee Nick Patrick was one of the helpless staff that had to essentially re-arrange deck chairs on the sinking ship that was late-era WCW. In a new "Insight" interview, Patrick explained that there was no specific moment that he felt the company began its downward spiral.

"It wasn't a particular TV. It was a time frame," Patrick stated, noting that the slide started to become apparent once the decisions of Vince Russo began to take effect. According to Patrick, he'd grown up in the business, and didn't like the way Russo spoke about it.

"It's my life, it's not a hobby to me," Patrick continued, "but the particular era, a few months in, maybe six months into Russo coming, I feel 'Man, if we go down this road, we ain't coming back up,' and it was right."

Patrick was unwilling to lay blame on any one event, such as the Fingerpoke of Doom or the Sting vs. Hollywood Hogan Starrcade finish. It was a lot of things. "It was a combination of things," Patrick said adamantly. "It was all those things. One of those individual things by itself couldn't have made that drastic of a move but all of them culminating together ... is why it went down. Especially that Starrcade. That was 25 years ago and they still talk about it."

Patrick stayed with WCW until the company was purchased by WWE, and then refereed for WWE for a number of years, even wrestling in a match at WWF Invasion against WWF referee Earl Hebner.