He then lost the title to Ric Flair at Uncensored in a Steel Cage First Blood match. A heavily bleeding Flair won via pinfall thanks to biased referee Charles Robinson. During that match, however, Hogan began to show some signs that a face turn was imminent, showing off some old tactics like his "Hulking up" no-sell. On the July 12 edition of Nitro, Hogan made his grand return as a full-fledged face and accepted a challenge from Savage, who had gained the world title at Bash at the Beach the night before. Thanks to interference from Nash, who had lost the title to Savage, Hogan defeated Savage to win his sixth and final WCW World Heavyweight Championship. On August 9, 1999, he started the night dressed in the typical black and white, but after a backstage scene with his son, Hogan came out dressed in the traditional red and yellow for his main-event 6-man tag team match. Injuries and frustrations were mounting up however, and he was absent from television from October 1999 to February 2000. In his book Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Bollea said that he was asked to take time off by newly hired head of creative booker Vince Russo and was not told when he would be brought back at the time. Despite some reservations, he agreed to do so. On October 24 at Halloween Havoc, Hogan was to face Sting for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship (which he had lost to Sting at Fall Brawl the previous month, when Sting beat Hogan by cheating and had turned heel in the process). Hogan, however, came to the ring in street clothes, laid down for the pin, and left the ring. Soon after his return in February 2000, at Bash at the Beach, Hogan was involved in a controversial, real-life incident with Vince Russo. Hogan was scheduled to wrestle Jeff Jarrett for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Before the match, there was a dispute between Hogan and Russo. Unbeknownst to Hogan, Russo told Jarrett to lie down in the middle of the ring and asked Hogan to pin him straight away. A visibly confused Hogan complied with a foot on Jarrett's chest after getting on the microphone and telling Russo, "Is this your idea, Russo...? That's why this company is in the damn shape it's in, because of bullshit like this!" Russo responded by coming out and saying that "From day one, that I've been in WCW, I've done nothing... nothing... but deal with the bullshit of the politics behind that curtain." Since Hogan refused to job to Jarrett, a new WCW World Heavyweight Championship was created, setting the stage for a title match between Booker T and Jeff Jarrett later that night. Whether or not the whole incident was a shoot or a work is still a hot debate. As a result, Hogan filed a defamation of character lawsuit against Russo soon after, which was eventually dismissed in 2002. Russo claims the whole thing was a work, and Hogan claims that Russo made it a shoot. Eric Bischoff agreed with Hogan's side of the story when he wrote that Hogan winning and leaving with the title was a work, and that he and Hogan celebrated after the event over the success of the angle, but that Russo coming out to fire Hogan was an unplanned shoot which led to the lawsuit filed by Hogan.