Let’s continue our look back at Ted Turner’s December classic, STARRCADE!
Ted Turner’s Starrcade
Part 2: 1992-1994
Starrcade ‘92 (BattleBowl)
(I really don’t feel like putting those corny PPV posters here like last time)
Held on December 28, from The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia
It worked so well the first time around (note the sarcasm) that WCW decided to bring back Battlebowl. Ugh
They did make a few changes, which were for the better. There was only one ring this year instead of two, only four “Lethal Lottery” tag team matches (and therefore only eight men in the battle royal), and they featured several other matches including an NWA and a WCW title match.
As far as the Lethal Lottery goes, this show has the best tag matches as compared to the ‘91, ‘93, and ‘96 versions of the gimmick. The battle royal, on the other hand was dreadfully boring. All eight men basically walked through the thing and Sting got eliminated halfway through, which killed the crowd. Muta won and got a good pop, but the whole thing felt like an afterthought. It was another weird focal point to WCW’s supposed “Biggest Show” and really made the show feel like just another show.
I should mention that this year’s show was commentated by Jim Ross and Jesse “The Body” Ventura. This would actually be JR’s final WCW pay-per-view. It’s for the best, because Ventura and JR don’t mesh well at all. Jesse would do his normal heel stuff, but JR would just ignore him. It was weird. I wonder if maybe JR had already mentally checked out on commentary. Either way, the commentary was no good.
The two World Title matches were okay at best. The WCW matchup of Ron Simmons and Dr. Death Steve Williams had absolutely no angle tied to it since Rick Rude had to be pulled from the match at the last second. The NWA Title match was just plain boring, with Muta and Masahiro Chono having a rest hold fest. The crowd loved Muta though. He was one of the more popular guys throughout the night.
All the matches that followed the WCW title match was announced as having a time limit of “TV Time Remaining” which means conceivably the PPV could go off the air in the middle of the tag title match or something weird. That honestly wouldn’t have been too shocking, consider Bill Watts was in charge. Speaking of Watts, this was during the reign of terror where Watts implemented so many bizarre and dumb rules. Heels and Faces couldn’t dress together or travel together. Guys couldn’t leave until the last match was over. For a time, guys couldn’t jump off the top rope (though that was done away with by this show). The worst part, in my opinion, was when he did away with all of the mats at ringside. It was stupid. Especially on this show, as the floor was an ice rink covered with nasty looking particle boards. Every time someone bumped on the outside, they came up covered in dirt and filth. Yeah, Bill Watts was an idiot.
Sting and Vader fought for a pretend thing called “King of Cable” which was promptly forgot about after the event. That match was very weird, as the match was awful but the crowd popped like it was amazing. Sting made fans go crazy.
The show ended with Muta winning the Battle Bowl battle royal. The finish popped the crowd but everything that preceded that finish looked like everyone was just walking from one spot to another.
This show started nicely but then just ran out of steam. The problem here, again, is that nothing about this felt like “The Biggest Show of the Year.” It was better than the previous three STARRCADE events, but the event still seems so far away from having that WrestleMania feel.
Why Watch?
Well, on the WWE Network, at the 1:36:44 mark, there’s a bizarre sign directed towards Dustin Rhodes. Maybe you’d want to watch it and wonder why someone would make a sign like that?
(in case you can’t see it, it asks Dustin “If my groin was hurt, would you pin me?)
Yeah, that’s all I got.
Starrcade ‘93 (Yay, no more subtitiles!)
Held on December 27, from Independence Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina
This show is what I want out of Starrcade. This show felt like WCW’s biggest show of the year and had a WrestleMania feel surrounding the main event.
The best part is that there are no gimmicks for this show! No random round robins, memorial tournaments, lotteries (lethal or nonlethal), or BattleBowls! This was a wrestling show and the gimmicks were left behind.
We opened with an excellent video package. We also got some really awesome segments featuring Ric Flair traveling to the show with Mean Gene Okerlund. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen with Okerlund and it’s something that could be used to great effect today. The segments seemed real and it gave you the feeling that Ric might actually be on the verge of retirement.
Yes, in 1993, they were threatening Flair’s retirement. It made the show feel so much bigger and more important than it might otherwise have felt. Obviously, we know Flair wrestled for about a hundred more years after this, but it still gave a nice atmosphere to the show. Flair being back with the company really helped Starrcade. I’ll speak more at length in the fourth and final part of this series about Flair, WCW, and Starrcade, but what really made Starrcade a critical success was Flair having a meaningful involvement on the show. That disappears soon after a certain mustachioed man makes his way into the company shortly.
Steve Regal and Ricky Steamboat have a terrific Television Title match that uses the 15 minute “TV Title” time-limit nicely. The United States title match between Dustin Rhodes and Stunning Steve Austin was fun, but the finish looked odd and I wonder if an audible wasn’t called in the ring. The match for the Big Gold Belt was clunky, but it was fun seeing the Big Boss Man trying to get away with just being the Boss in WCW. WWF’s legal team put a stop to that fairly quickly. Oh, and the tag title match was way too long.
But make no mistake about it, this event was all about the main event. Flair had been driven from WCW by a dummy named Jim Herd and fans were desperate to see him back. The two defined each other. Without Flair, WCW seemed empty and less than. Without WCW, Flair seemed to be missing a piece of his identity. It’s strange to me that Flair never left again. He was in it until the end at this point, despite all of the political crap that came sliding down the mountain before the whole thing crumbled to the ground. But, again, I’ll get to that in a couple of weeks.
This match was great. It felt like an Attitude Era PPV main event, with the guys brawling to the outside as the crowd exploded. The punches and kicks looked lethal from Vader and Flair’s chops brought the crowd to life. Harley Race played his role well as Vader’s manager, and also added to the match. This could have easily been a WrestleMania main event (it was a million times better than anything we got at that year’s 9th edition). Flair went over, won the title, and the crowd went absolutely mental for the win. It was a great way to close out a fun night of wrestling.
This is what I would be looking forward to when I was a kid. Even if I was let down, I would still have hopes of seeing a Starrcade like this one. This is why I wanted to do this retrospective series, because I thought it would bring back good memories. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to be the case. Instead, what I’m finding is that even in WCW’s most successful period (which I’ll be discussing in part 3 next week) they had no idea how to have that one big supercard to payoff all the storylines from the year. This series has kind of bummed me out, to be honest.
Why Watch?
The main event is worth a look on the Network. Also, look for the Flair/Okerlund segments at the start of the show.
Regal and Steamboat is a forgotten match, but I’d consider it a Network hidden gem.
See The Boss and ask yourself how WCW thought they wouldn’t get sued.
Starrcade ‘94
Held on December 27, from The Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee
Oh, good, Hulk Hogan has made his triumphant entry into Turnerland. I’m overflowing with joy… in no way whatsoever.
This card is main evented by Hulk Hogan and his best friend Ed Leslie (known at the time as The Butcher) better known by everyone on planet earth as Brutus The Barber Beefcake. Fun fact, we changed my cat’s name so much that when it came time to finally pick a permanent name, I went with Brutus because he had been given about as many names as Ed Leslie had and he was black and white like The Zodiac. Yes. No. Yes… anyway, I digress…
This was right at the early stages of the dreaded Dungeon of Doom era in WCW. My old pals (and by pals, I mean people who don’t know me at all but happened to be loosely affiliated with a website I used to write for) over at OSW Review just wrapped up an excellent Dungeon of Doom story arch on their excellent podcast. Their episode discussing Starrcade 1994 is worth going out of your way to watch or listen to. So, go do that here so I don’t have to type as much.
Alright, so this card is fine, but the focus being on Hogan throughout the night was a letdown. No one ever took The Butcher seriously as a threat to the Hulkster, so the main event just felt like a predetermined mess going in. Also, Mr. T “wrestles” kind of on this show, and that’s just pathetic. Mr. T was not popular still in 1994, so why they brought him in was weird and just made WCW look like they were trying to resurrect the Rock N’ Wrestling days of the WWF.
In fact, the top four matches featured old WWF guys (T included) in some form or another. One person who was not on the card was Ric Flair, who had been “retired” by Hogan in a cage match at the previous PPV, Halloween Havok. Because, God forbid Hogan wrestle at Starrcade with Flair there as well. Here’s a fun (and sad) fact for you, Hogan and Flair never appeared on a Starrcade together. Never. Ever. They were under contract to WCW for at least 6 Starrcades (maybe 7, but I don’t know much about Hogan’s status with the company after the Russo promo). That is just mind numbingly stupid and utterly sad.
The whole reason for the Dungeon of Doom, according to Kevin Sullivan, was to make Hogan relax and give him people to beat that were cartoonish villains. Sullivan wanted to make sure Hogan didn’t feel out of place. He wanted to make him feel like he did in 1989 WWF. The biggest draw in wrestling had a self esteem issue. How sad. Let’s all hand him a tissue. It kind of makes me sick to see the way Hogan had to be babied in WCW and that’s what this PPV is about. I don’t want to talk anymore about this year’s show. Blame Hogan.
Why Watch?
Triple H makes his only Starrcade appearance here, taking on Alex Wright.
Wrapping Up Part 2
I started to feel like things were getting better, then Hogan and his paranoid, egotistical, and coddled self had to show up. Things, I think, get better once the nWo show up, just because it changed the formula for placating Hogan somewhat. Although, even at its peak, WCW couldn’t pull off a Starrcade without Hogan messing up the finish (allegedly) by getting in the referee’s ear (allegedly). But, that’s coming up next week. I think we’ll see a lot more positives next week, which will make me feel a little more at home.
Do you have a special memory from Starrcade? Share in the comments or hit up @TWMNewsUK on twitter, or me @THExWilliam!
Until next time, brother!