Sting talks! When the title change is disputed in January, Sting speaks his first words in nearly 18 months: "Dillion, you're a damn coward! And Hogan...you're a dead man." Bret Hart comes in from the WWF to "take apart the nWo brick by brick". Bryan Adams (formerly Crush) comes to back up Hart, but swerves to the nWo, allowing for Hart to be beat down. The world title was held up due to the Starrcade controversy, but Sting won it back over Hogan at SuperBrawl. Scott Steiner starts arguing with Rick and eventually goes nWo thanks to Buff Bagwell. Several weeks later Rick Steiner and Lex Luger face Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell. During the match Rick accidentally injures Buff while performing a top-rope bulldog (Buff slipped out of Rick's arms and nailed his head hard against Rick's back, producing a stinger). Buff is (temporarily) paralyzed from the neck down. Scott Steiner gets his "revenge" by having Bryan Adams break Rick's shoulder during a "touching reunion" (One of many swerves that Scott and Buff would put poor Rick through).

Savage starts going wild and finally challenges Hogan for leadership in nWo. This starts the Wolfpack split. The Disciple (formerly Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake, Booty Man, Zodiac, Man with No Name, etc.) comes on as Hogan's personal enforcer. Dusty Rhodes splits from WCW and goes nWo (During the Hall vs. Zybysko match at Souled Out). Louie Spiccoli becomes an nWo recruit but accidently OD's on painkillers (Somas). Hall goes into rehab shortly after when it turns out supposedly that underneath it all that Spiccoli was distributing painkillers illegally to Hall as well.

At first Nash tries to keep peace between Hogan and Savage, but eventually he and Hogan get into it as well. Savage and Hogan show down in which Savage is told he's still nWo but will get no support from other nWo members since Savage said he doesn't want it. Savage then turns around and takes the tile from Sting in March. Savage then declared Nash the new leader of the nWo. Hogan at first hit Savage and put Sting on top, but Nash came out and nailed Sting and put Savage on top. Match between Hogan and Savage for leadership of nWo next night on Nitro, Roddy Piper is special ref. Disciple injures Savage, Hogan goes for pin but Nash nails Hogan, puts Savage on top. Bret Hart comes in and nails Nash, puts Hogan back on top for the pin and Hollywood is the new heavyweight champ. Piper asks Bret what's up, Piper gets nailed (in a very surprising turn). Nash, Savage and Konnan split, forming the Wolfpac. Savage, Bret and Piper feud for a bit. Lex Luger finally comes into the Wolfpac, and is made head recruiter, and his first attempt is to bring Sting over. nWo Hollywood decide to make a competing bid. Giant and Sting are scheduled to face Hall and Nash for the tag titles. Two days before the match, Giant turns nWo Hollywood again, telling Sting he will need to make a decision when they win the tag belts. At the PPV Scott Hall returns w/ Dusty Rhodes as manager, and both turn against Kevin Nash when Hall hits Nash w/ the belt and allows Giant to get the pin. On the following Nitro Sting spits on the Giant for his answer to going nWo Hollywood, Giant attacks, Luger and Nash make the save. This prompts Sting to come into Wolfpac, and then Luger goes to recruit DDP again. DDP starts to finally announce his decision when Rodman and Hogan attack, killing that angle, but starting a huge feud again between DDP and the nWo. Elizabeth swerves back to nWo Hollywood, becoming Eric Bischoff's main squeeze. Two weeks later Savage is injured by Bischoff in a vicious nWo attack in the middle of May, from which he won't be seen again until the end of the year.

Then the big one hit--GOLDBERG. He won the WCW U.S. heavyweight title from Raven pretty easily and successfully defended it against Raven and a host of jobbers, gaining a 120-0 record. He finally got his shot at Hogan when J.J. Dillon made the last-minute announcement on a Thunder in July. The match would take place next Monday on Nitro. This would be a Nitro broadcast from Atlanta's Georgia Dome, where Goldberg used to play for the Atlanta Falcons. Hogan comes out on Nitro and says he'll face Goldberg ONLY if he can defeat the #1 nWo contender, Scott Hall. Goldberg is put to the test by Hall, but weathers the storm. Later that night Hogan whips Goldberg good as well, but Hogan succumbs to the might spear of death, followed by the Jackhammer. (Hennig had attempted to interfere but was thwarted by the duo of Page and Utah Jazz' Karl Malone). He has since defended the title against nWo members Curt Hennig, Bryan Adams and Scott Norton, as well as more jobbers. nWo Hollywood has also had it's share of celebrity matches. In June they pitted Diamond Dallas Page and NBA star Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz against Hogan and NBA star Dennis Rodman. Both NBA stars looked good, but Hogan/Rodman eventually win. In July Bischoff decides to pick a fight with talk show host Jay Leno, and after some Tonight Show appearances DDP and Leno (w/ Kevin Eubanks manager) face Hogan & Bischoff. This time DDP/Leno wins after Eubanks executes a Diamond-Cutter on Bischoff, then rolling him in the ring to let Leno Pin him.

Buff Bagwell starts making appearances in his wheelchair, and the fans eat it up. During a Nitro Rick Steiner comes out and offers to help Buff any way he can since he caused the accident. Hollywood Hogan comes out, shoves Bagwell out of his wheelchair and shoves Rick Steiner around. Next week on Nitro Rick again comes out to apologize to Buff, when Scott Steiner comes out. He says that after what Hogan did he's leaving the nWo, takes off the shirt, etc. Then he picks up a chair and hits his brother Rick with it again. Buff gets out of the chair to avoid being hit, then he grabs the chair from Scott, stands up and nails Rick as well. Afterwards he rips the neck brace off and reveals that he's perfectly fine now. After Goldberg abandoned the U.S. title, Bret Hart eventually wins it (against the other top contender, DDP). After 3 weeks, he loses it to Lex Luger on a Monday Nitro, who loses it back to Bret just 3 days later on Thunder.

The Warrior arrives in September to challenge Hogan and the nWo, and later comes out and declares that he is starting the One Warrior Nation--OWN (nWo backwards), and joins Roddy Piper and Diamond Dallas Page as part of Team WCW later on in the month at War Games. Bischoff challenges Warrior stating he isn't signed w/ WCW, but Piper overrules Bischoff and signs him on. The nWo sign on a new enforcer--Stevie Ray of Harlem Heat. His brother Booker T was to defend his World TV Title against Bret Hart, but is injured by a mystery man (later revealed to be Scott Hall). Stevie Ray states that Booker T told him to defend the title for him, and ends up dropping it to Chris Jericho a few weeks later after The Giant chokeslams Stevie Ray for no reason. The next week Stevie Ray goes to face Giant, only to be offered nWo membership, and he joins.

The format for War Games is different yet again, as it has been expanded to THREE teams, of course that being Team WCW, headed this year by Diamond Dallas Page; Team nWo Hollywood, headed by Hollywood Hogan; and Team nWo Wolfpac, headed by Kevin Nash. The one single winner from War Games gets to face Goldberg at Halloween Havoc. That winner was DDP, who fights a very good battle but ends up falling to the "Spear 'O Doom" at Halloween Havoc. Hogan and Warrior fight each other at Havoc, Hogan wins, and Warrior kinda disappears. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash are feuding some more; at Halloween Havoc they face each other and after Nash has Hall clearly beaten he just walks away, refusing to pin him. After the November elections, Hogan comes onto the Jay Leno show to announce that he's retiring from the sport. (Hogan claimed that he was running for president in 2000 as a cover. This was presumably in response to Jesse Ventura winning the governorship of Minnesota). Hogan names Scott Steiner as the new head of nWo Hollywood (the Black & White).

In the middle of this, sort of lost as far as angles go, is the return of Ric Flair. Outside of the ring, Flair had been gone for nearly 6 months as he was entangled in a contract dispute with Eric Bischoff and WCW. They finally worked it out as Flair returned, but as far as the storyline goes, Bischoff doesn't want Flair back, and devises ways to keep the Horsemen down and keep Flair out of the picture. They have the injured Arn Anderson arm-wrestle a mystery nWo member, who turns out to be the injured Buff Bagwell--left-handed in order to allow Flair back in. Arn's left arm was left weak after surgery, so it was an easy win. They have the Horsemen arrested at several arenas and have court restraining orders placed against all but Dean Malenko at several of the arenas, and beat down Malenko when they get a chance. But then they have Dean Malenko wrestle former Horseman turned nWo associate Barry Windham in order to give Flair a shot at wrestling Eric Bischoff at Starrcade. Malenko fights a very tough match and wins, and gets an nWo beatdown for it, but the Horsemen make the save. A week before Starrcade, Flair does an interview and then suffers from chest pains, and is taken to the hospital and later released. It's revealed on the Thunder before Starrcade that it wasn't a heart attack as thought before, but food poisoning, and Bischoff immediately starts denying any knowledge about it. (There were also rumors that Flair actually--in real life--hurt his elbow during one of his maniacal interviews. There still seems to be no 100% answer as to whether it was a shoot or work).While Flair was off recovering, however, Bischoff acted as if he was sorry for all the trouble he had caused, and called out Flair's family to apologize, only to have Scott Norton grab up 8-year old Reid Flair (to prevent him from tackling Bischoff again as he had done in previous months!), delivered several kicks to eldest-son David, and then proceeded to try to grope and kiss Flair's wife while Windham beat on David. This set the stage for a very heated Starrcade, where now if Flair wins he not only is back in wrestling, but gets to be the head honcho at WCW for 90 days!

Weeks before War Games, Kevin Nash and Goldberg keep getting in each other's way, first as tag partners against Hogan/Hall, then as opponents. After DDP fails to grab the title, Nash goes for it and sets it up for Starrcade in December, getting a binding agreement that Goldberg faces no other opponents for the title in between there. Bam Bam Bigelow shows up from ECW and tries to go at it with Goldberg, but Nash makes sure that Bigelow doesn't get too far to come between him and the gold. At Starrcade Konnan defeats Chris Jericho to take the World TV title, Flair beats up on Bischoff, accidently KOs the ref and puts Bischoff in the figure-4 leg lock submission, only for Curt Hennig to make a surprise return after months off for rehabbing his bad knee, hand a pair of brass knuckles to Bischoff who nails Flair, wakes the ref, gets the pin; and Nash defeats Goldberg thanks to Scott Hall putting a tazer stick into Goldberg's chest w/o Nash seeing it. On the next Nitro (the 29th) Kevin Nash announces that he feels Goldberg got screwed, and wants to sign a rematch for the title on the next Nitro--Monday, January 3rd, 1999 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. To end off the year, later that night Flair gets a re-match at Bischoff. Bischoff tries to back out and leave in his limo, only to find the rest of the Horsemen already there, who drag him back to the ring and keep watch on the ring as Bischoff submits to the figure-4. During this match we see the return of Randy Savage, wearing nWo black/white colors, with a new look (more pumped-up and with slicked hair) and a hot new looking babe on his arm. He comes down, stares at the Giant, goes to show the nWo clique sign, Giant accepts, then gets low blowed by Macho Man, who then leaves.