January 4 of 1999 was the watershed moment in the Monday Night Wars between WCW’s Nitro, headlined by Goldberg and the New World Order of Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Hollywood Hulk Hogan, and the WWF’s Monday Night Raw, going through the glory days of the Attitude Era with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, The Rock and the Undertaker, which had gained momentum over the Ted Turner-owned WCW throughout 1998, having lost every ratings battle between May 13 1996 and April 13 1998.

Of course, January 4’s live broadcast of Nitro in Atlanta was best remembered for 2 moments – First, with one of the great backfires in the history of television, WCW commentator Tony Schiavone was ordered by producer Eric Bischoff to reveal the result of the taped Raw Is War episode, which was filmed on December 29.

“Fans, as Hollywood Hogan walks away and you look at this 40,000 plus on hand, if you’re even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not, because we understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here one time as Cactus Jack, is going to win their world title. Ha! That’s gonna put some butts in the seats. Heh!”

After that announcement, some 600,000 viewers switched over from TNT to Raw on the USA Network to witness one of the greatest moments in 31 years of Monday Night Raw – The highly popular Mick Foley, aka Mankind, who took some of the biggest bumps ever seen, among them losing an ear and getting thrown off the Hell in a Cell, finally won the WWF title by defeating The Rock in a sea of chaos, as DX and the Corporation brawled, Stone Cold Steve Austin appeared out of nowhere to one of the loudest pops ever heard, brained The Rock, pulled Mankind on top of The Rock, and three seconds later the arena went nuts.

A perfect moment – Mankind, The Rock, Stone Cold, D-Generation X, and the evil mastermind Vince McMahon all involved.

Of course, the other part of that Monday night was Hollywood Hogan, appearing as though he was going to clobber Kevin Nash, delivering the Fingerpoke of Doom to the champion to win back the WCW Heavyweight Championship, reuniting the nWO, right as Goldberg, who was arrested mid-show, got out of jail:

Many years on, The Fingerpoke of Doom has become the symbolic moment that WCW lost the Monday Night Wars for good (Although the real reasons are more deep rooted than that), as Raw, which had won every ratings duel since November 2 of 1998, went on to win the ratings that night 5.7 to Nitro’s 5.0 thanks to Foley putting butts on seats, and from that point on Nitro would only score a 5.0 rating a further 3 times, while Raw peaked at a 9.5 rating on June 28, 1999, and by 2000 was doubling the ratings of Nitro.

The Monday Night Wars would come to an end in March of 2001, when Vince McMahon purchased WCW’s assets for a mere $3m USD.

To answer the rhetorical question, yes, Mick Foley did put butts in seats.