Though WCW amassed a large audience in its time and had a number of iconic stars, the company was always susceptible to uneven booking. Whether it was the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom, botching Sting’s big moment at Starrcade 1997, or completely reimagining its aesthetic to mirror 1980s WWE when Hulk Hogan arrived, the company made a number of big miscalculations.

Related: 10 WCW Wrestlers Who Were Always Better As BabyfacesThe promotion’s babyfaces were especially prone to poor decision-making—undermining fans’ faith in them by making bad choices that largely derailed the logic of major storylines, or at least hurt their characters’ credibility. Thought it’s a bit of a trope for heels to be the more cunning masterminds of the wrestling world, these heroes didn’t have to come across as quite so dumb.

10 The Top WCW Babyfaces Didn’t Trust Sting

Visions of Sting haunting the nWo from the rafters became iconic images of the Monday Night War, but fans don’t always remember how this Crow version of Sting got his start. After months of feuding against the nWo, Sting was a natural choice to represent WCW against them inside War Games at Fall Brawl 1996. However, Hollywood Hogan and company dropped repeated hints that Sting had defected to join them.

Sting had been a stalwart babyface, more than once betrayed in the past by teammates Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, and Lex Luger. However, in this instance, they chose not to trust The Franchise, and it came back to bite them. A disgruntled Sting entered the match and single-handedly laid waste to the nWo, before bitterly asking his teammates if that were good enough for them. Flair, Anderson, and Luger costing themselves one of their most valuable allies against the heel super faction for both the match at hand and the months to follow.

9 Cactus Jack’s Elaborate Ruse On Big Van Vader

Cactus Jack posed a sensational rival to Big Van Vader. He wasn’t the superhero type like Sting or Ron Simmons had been, but rather a rugged wild man, crazy enough to weather the super heavyweight’s brutality and keep fighting.

After Vader power bombed Jack on a cement floor, the Hardcore Legend disappeared, only for reporters to find him wandering the streets of Cleveland, suffering from amnesia on account of his head injury. Jack later revealed the whole amnesia thing to be a ruse, but it was never clear what he hoped to achieve. Rather, in practical terms, he deferred his own chances of challenging for the title or seeking revenge and gained nothing.

8 Roddy Piper Didn’t Pursue A Title Match For WCW Starrcade 1996

After the New World Order had run roughshod over WCW for half a year, the build to Starrcade 1996 saw Roddy Piper rise up as a last hope—someone with the experience, grit, and personal history to go toe-to-toe with Hollywood Hogan. Sure enough, Hot Rod scored a rare clean victory over Hogan when he beat him with a sleeper hold in the main event of the biggest show of the year.

Related: Hulk Hogan Vs. Roddy Piper: 13 Things Fans Forget About Their FeudMany WCW fans were surprised when Piper won but did not capture Hogan’s WCW Championship. It turned out the title was never on the line—a confusing plot point because it seemed awfully dumb for The Rowdy Scotsman to position in himself in such a high profile match with the champ, but not think to ask that Hogan put the belt on the line.

7 Goldberg Blindly Charging Bret Hart

One of the more iconic moments of Bret Hart’s WCW run came when Goldberg speared him, only to be rendered unconscious. The Hitman revealed he had a steel plate hidden beneath his hockey jersey, which had done the damage.

The spot made Hart look smart, but the less-discussed corollary was that Goldberg looked awfully dumb for putting himself in a spot to be KOed by his own move. Naturally, he wasn’t expecting the heel plate, but hitting a spear like that—head first—all but invited injury by any conventional logic.

6 JJ Dillon Couldn’t Understand Who Sting Wanted To Wrestle

When Sting took on his Crow persona, he spent over a year not speaking on WCW television. Stoic and stern, he stalked the New World Order with increased focus as time went on, until Commissioner JJ Dillion made overtures to bring The Icon back into the fold, offering him the match he wanted.

However, Dillon didn’t offer Sting the world title match with Hollywood Hogan he was so obviously after. The Commissioner instead offered Sting matches with different, lower profile nWo members, oblivious despite all logic (and the fans screaming at him) to what Sting sought. It took weeks for Dillon to get it right.

5 Ric Flair Brought David Flair Into The Ring

1999 saw David Flair join WCW to fight by his father’s side. Ric wanting his son to join him in the business made sense, however, this alliance only hurt The Nature Boy over time. Early on, David became a weakness for the nWo to exploit, including an incident of Hollywood Hogan whipping the youngster with a weight belt.

Shortly thereafter, David turned on his father, lured into the nWo fold by Torrie Wilson, early in her WCW run. In the end, the storyline of Ric bringing David into the company came wasn't about the bond between a father and son, but rather a father who didn’t know his son at all to put him in harm’s way, then create a new enemy for himself.

4 DDP Put David Arquette In A Position To Cost Him The Title

Diamond Dallas Page was a major factor in most of David Arquette’s celebrity booking in WCW. DDP had the actor’s back in a singles match with Eric Bischoff and then teamed up with him against Bischoff and Jeff Jarrett in the match that infamously moved the title from DDP to Arquette through a series of contrivances.

Not only did Arquette cost DDP the title via happenstance in that tag match, but at Slamboree the actor turned on Page. Arquette defended the WCW Championship in a Triple Cage Match against DDP and Jarrett, and wound up hitting The People’s Champion with a guitar to turn heel and hand the title to The Chosen One. So, Page lost his last world title and his best chance at getting it back because he trusted and empowered Arquette.

3 Sting Trusted Ric Flair

In 1989, Sting joined The Four Horsemen, teaming up with former rivals Ric Flair and Arn and Ole Anderson. Based on Sting’s own history feuding with the group, it wasn’t necessarily the smartest move to trust them, but at least there was the rationale that the faction had changed its ways and Sting was still an inexperienced wrestler. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a shocker when they turned on Sting in early 1990.

The even dumber move on the part of Sting’s character, however, came in 1995. Despite spending much of the five years to follow off and on feuding with Flair, he trusted The Nature Boy enough to team up with him against Arn Anderson and Brian Pillman at Halloween Havoc. This choice fell very much under the wisdom of “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” The Stinger wound up on the wrong side of a three-on-one beatdown from a reunited Horsemen squad.

2 Rick Steiner Got Fooled By Scott Steiner Over And Over

When the Steiner Brothers split up in 1998, the writing was on the wall that they'd feud However, the months to follow told a different story. Scott feigned injury, schemed out situations to attack his brother and otherwise managed to dodge a meaningful confrontation with Rick for months. At first, one might credit Big Poppa Pump’s heel cleverness, but over time Rick looked foolish for letting himself get duped time and again.

Related: 10 Biggest Mistakes WCW Made With Scott SteinerThings grew worse when a spot gone wrong left Buff Bagwell with a legitimate neck injury at the hands of The Dog-Faced Gremlin. Rick trusted Bagwell upon his return, teaming up with him, only for Bagwell to promptly turn on him and side with Scott—yet another error in judgment on Rick’s part.

1 Sting Put His Faith In Lex Luger

When Lex Luger returned to WCW in 1995, the company booked him as a tweener. He behaved mostly heelishly, except for maintaining a close friendship with Sting. Trusting The Total Package proved just as dumb as the fans expected.

Luger put his friend and tag team partner into increasingly uncomfortable situations, highlighted by talking Sting into a Chicago Street Fight with The Road Warriors for Uncensored 1996 (a match Luger wound up sitting out). The cherry on top was the untrustworthy Luger leading the charge in accusing Sting of betraying WCW come Fall Brawl.