The WWE’s next attempt at exploiting their extensive tape libraries is something that I had been waiting on for a long time, a DVD set based on the NWA/WCW’s highlight PPV, Starrcade.

Unfortunately in many ways this three-disc collection is a disappointment, as the documentary is scandalously short at just around 50 minutes, and the match selection was done by fan voting on WWE.com which leaves me wishing the WWE actually went with their usual format of “just randomly pick stuff” because at least you get some lesser known stuff and some hidden gems there.

The documentary portion of the show starts with a discussion of the tradition of Thanksgiving night being wrestling night, which is something that happened right across the country during the territorial days. This is something that Vince McMahon has changed, to the point where WWE are often on overseas tours during US Thanksgiving. It’s a shame really, but I think it might be one of those holdovers from the territorial days, where going out to watch wrestling was a local social event and it might not work with say WWE or UFC putting on a PPV that night in these days of national and international promotions.

They show the build to Starrcade 83 including an incredible piece where the NWA held a press conference with NWA President and owner of the Kansas City territory Bob Giegel announcing that Jim Crockett Promotions had won the right to hold the first event, taking place in Greensborough North Carolina. Dusty Rhodes comments that at the time they’d always intended it to be in Greensborough every year, and some other people including David Crockett put over Dusty for “coming up with the idea of a wrestling supercard” which sounds like it must be bullshit but if enough people buy this DVD it might become the WWE version of the truth. Quite how that jives with the “Vince McMahon took wrestling out of smoke filled halls and into big arenas” lie I don’t really know so maybe they’ll leave that one.

Then we get comments from Greg Valentine and Roddy Piper about their great Dog Collar Match at the first Starrcade, a brutal bloody brawl where they just laid into each other. Magnum TA, who was working in Mid-South for Bill Watts at the time, talks about how Watts would make his guys watch this match as an example of how to make your brawls look realistic and have your guys come across looking tough, which is something that I think is lost in wrestling today.

Then we come to the Flair/Race cage match, the main event of the first show as Flair won back the NWA World Heavyweight Title. Dusty, 25 years later, still tries to work some heat between his two big rivals of the time by suggesting Harley wasn’t really happy at dropping the belt to Flair, which is a story I’ve certainly never heard before. Flair then talks about how Greensborough deserved the event and that everyone who worked for the Crocketts would always see Greensborough as the important show where fans would come from all over the territory and the guys would always bring their best. Flair’s interviews here were actually done at the Greensborough Coliseum rather than at WWE studios, a cool touch to add to this documentary.

They skipped over the 1984 show very quickly, only talking briefly about the Dusty Rhodes v. Ric Flair Million $ Challenge in the main event. They never mentioned that former boxing World Champion and all-time great Smokin’ Joe Frazier was the guest referee and they had plans for the finish to lead to a Dusty/Frazier feud after this match into 1985 which never happened for whatever reason.

In 1985, Starrcade became simulcast in two locations, adding The Omni in Atlanta to the Greensborough Coliseum. For some reason the double location deal is something that worked for the NWA, yet when the WWE did it a few months later for WrestleMania 2 it was such a failure that they’ve never even considered doing it again. The Greensborough main event that night was Magnum TA beating Tully Blanchard in an I Quit Match inside a Steel Cage. This match is a genuine contender for the greatest match of all time in my opinion, a perfect match where the rich arrogant playboy took on the down to earth working class ‘man of the people’ in an intense heated feud who could both play their roles down to a tee hit every note dead on the button in one of those magical matches where everything clicks and I couldn’t wait to watch this again by the time I got to the extras.

1986 would have been Magnum’s crowing moment as he was scheduled to win the NWA World Title from Ric Flair as the NWA had high hopes for him to be their Hulk Hogan. I know he came later, but really if you’re going to compare Magnum to a top WWE draw then from a character perspective he was far more like Stone Cold Steve Austin. Hogan was a larger than life superhero, whereas Magnum was a man of the people like Austin. It was that connection with the fans that lead to a huge outpouring of emotion, and a massive blow to the NWA, when Magnum had a car crash that ended his career, and in looking at footage of the wreckage it’s really a miracle he didn’t die, in fact at the time there was a fear he could be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life, which thankfully wasn’t the case.

With Magnum out of the picture, the 1986 event is really remembered for the Scaffold Match between The Road Warriors and The Midnight Express, and we get comments – I assume from an old interview – with Jim Cornette talking about this match and the spot where he fucked up his knee. It really was scary to see him drop like a stone off the scaffold, as Big Bubba Rogers, who some might know better as The Big Boss Man in WWF, wasn’t in position to catch him. Also, the 1986 Starrcade was the first one to be simulcast across the country in movie theatres, which was really the forerunner of wrestling being on PPV. They try to paint this as a great innovation, but it had been done for Mohammad Ali’s big boxing matches from a decade earlier, including his famous MMA match with Antonio Inoki as well as some WWF shows by this point.

The 1987 Starrcade was a turning point in the history of pro wrestling for several reasons, and you really could’ve done a 50 minute documentary on that show alone. Jim Crockett Promotions had tried to change the company from a Carolina based local NWA member into a national promotion. They had done several things to this end, including moving their offices from Charlotte to Dallas, and here they moved Starrcade out of Greensborough to Chicago. Several people, Ric Flair included, have always talked about how moving Starrcade to Chicago killed the Greensborough market for the NWA and later WCW, as they’d always seen Starrcade as “their show” and even before Starrcade had been the centrepiece of the promotion going back decades. With national expansion that was always bound to change, although WCW didn’t help things later on in the nWo years by constantly burying Flair, occasionally throwing him a bone and letting him cut a great promo or be in a big angle, which would always pop ratings, then bury him again – and this was before the WWE strategy of never putting people over in their hometowns.

The more important thing as far as the future of the industry was that this was to be the first Pay Per View event ran by the NWA, in the traditional Thanksgiving timeslot. PPV had been very successful for the WWE, in particular the excellent WrestleMania III show, and Vince McMahon decided to fuck with the NWA by booking the first annual Survivor Series on PPV the same night. At that time, PPV was in its infancy and the option of running multiple events at once wasn’t really there, so Vince went to the cable companies and threatened to not allow them to carry WrestleMania the following year if they carried Starrcade ahead of Survivor Series. The cable companies almost all caved to the point where the 1987 Starrcade became a massive money-loser for Jim Crockett Promotions in a time when they were already overspending, and certainly speeded up the downward spiral of the company’s finances that lead to Ted Turner’s buyout. That wasn’t the end of counter-programming PPVs, as Vince ran a TV special, the debut of the Royal Rumble, in competition with the NWA’s next PPV in January 1988, before the NWA responded by doing Clash Of The Champions free TV specials in competition with WrestleMania IV and V, until the cable companies got upset about the counter-programming that was going on and costing them buys so they told both the WWE and the NWA to stop fucking around and ruining each other’s shows.

By the following year, Ted Turner owned WCW and Starrcade had moved from Thanksgiving to the weekend in between Christmas and New Year that remains a PPV date to this day for the Ultimate Fighting Championships as one of their major shows of the year.

Talk leads to how the Turner buyout lead to greater production levels, in terms of pyre, sets, flashy entrances, video packages and all that stuff. It’s portrayed by the comments made here as a good thing that made the company seem big-time, but to me it actually lost what is so great to watch about the old NWA, as what used to be an alternative to the glitzy WWF became a low rent imitation WWF, in much the same way that the old ECW was so much more interesting to watch than modern ECW even if things like production and lighting are infinitely better now.

The early Turner years saw several “concept shows” taking place at Starrcade, from the Iron Man Tournament of Starrcade 1989 to the Battlebowl Starrcade’s of 1991 and 1992 and bringing in overseas talent due to their working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling on several different occasions. These concept shows didn’t really work, as pro wrestling in its most money drawing form hasn’t ever been about complicated concepts like points systems or random draw tag team matches with the winners moving onto a two ring battle royal, it’s about building two big personalities, creating a conflict and making people want to see a resolution to that conflict. As Dusty Rhodes put it “Turner had great marketing people working for him, but the people he put in charge [of WCW] knew jack shit about wrestling.”

We also get a section talking about Ric Flair and how he’s “Mr. Starrcade” with numerous highlights of his World Title matches and people talking about how, at least in the early years, Starrcade was always about Flair and the World Title in great main events, leading to clips of him beating Big Van Vader in the 1993 main event, again with no mention of the back story. It was supposed to be Sid Vicious turning babyface and beating Vader for the title, but on a UK tour a month or so before Starrcade he got into a fight in a hotel with Arn Anderson that included both guys getting stabbed with scissors and Sid getting fired, so WCW, as they always did when people they planned to put on top failed, went back to Flair.

Then talk moves onto WCW in the Eric Bischoff era, as JR and Bischoff point out that Starrcade had lost its lustre as far as being the major show of the year, and he tried to get that back, helped by showcasing Hulk Hogan, who had been a major part of so many WrestleMania’s for the WWF, and by extension it added prestige to Starrcade by having him main event that show. JR also brings up The Outsiders as former WWE stars, and Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero as far as guys who had travelled the world and maybe weren’t stars at first but became stars because of their work.

OK, I know WWE has chosen to ignore Chris Benoit from sound bites like that, but you know who doesn’t get nearly enough credit from the WWE for the “WCW had these incredibly great workers” spiel that gets made on documentaries like this? Rey FUCKING Mysterio. And there’s absolutely no reason for it either, I mean that guy is a current WWE star, he stole the show at last weekend’s No Way Out PPV with an amazing main event performance too, so it’s not like they’d be burying their current product. Back then, he was incredible, a highflier at a level I’d never seen before, but by putting together great matches rather than by being a spot monkey.

At the 1997 Starrcade, the nWo angle was at its absolute peak, and WCW had turned Sting into the hottest act in wrestling by having him change his character completely from the happy-go-lucky bleach blonde outgoing guy to this dark brooding character inspired (some would say directly ripped off from) Brandon Lee’s character in the cult hit movie The Crow. WCW was winning the Monday Night Wars, and convincingly so, was at its hottest point in the company’s history, and had built up Sting v. Hollywood Hogan as the most anticipated match in wrestling by far. Then they fucked it up by having the conquering hero pinned cleanly, as Nick Patrick screwed up – or was convinced not to go along with the original booking plans by a sabotaging Hulk Hogan if rumours are to be believed – on what was meant to be a fast count, before the match was restarted and Sting won.

In one night, WCW had managed to screw things up to a point where the nWo and specifically Hogan were never as over as heels after this, and Sting was certainly never as over as a babyface, and within a few months WWE had won the ratings war, had moved into the Attitude Era spearheaded by these great characters like Steve Austin, Vince McMahon, The Undertaker, Kane, Mankind, The Rock and DX, and never looked back. You know how much of this is mentioned in this DVD documentary? Zero seconds. That’s right, fucking NONE of one of the most important matches in the history of pro wrestling. Arguably the best built match of all time, and that’s not an idle claim, is not even worthy of mention in the documentary. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Talk moves onto Bill Goldberg, and him losing his undefeated streak at Starrcade 1998 to Kevin Nash. I’d forgotten just how big a pop Nash got for the winning powerbomb. Arn Anderson and Jim Ross disagree on the Goldberg streak here, as Arn says it should’ve in fact ended earlier as it overshadowed him, while Ross thinks Goldberg was a freight train of popularity at that time and derailing it at that point was a retarded decision. Given that the company was out of business just over two years later and the downward spiral accelerated greatly after Starrcade 1998 with a huge money-losing 1999 you can certainly side more with Ross. They killed off what was marketable about their biggest star.

The last couple of shows are ignored completely as a wrap up video package has several clips and people talking about what it meant to wrestle at Starrcade, and where it’s place in history stands. To simplify it, you could really say that in the Crockett Era, great wrestling but bad business decisions, in the Turner Era it started badly, had a brief turnaround in the Bischoff years before big decisions were messed up due to wrestlers having too much power, before they messed things up too much to save the company. Thinking of it in those terms, Starrcade is really a snapshot of where JCP/WCW was at that point in their development, which actually really helps its reputation as that company’s WrestleMania.

I think this documentary really could’ve been better, so I am left quite disappointed in it. DVD documentaries are amongst the best things that WWE does, arguably the very best thing they do, so to have 18 years of history covered in 50 minutes, and the last 8 years covered in about 10 minutes was a letdown to say the least. Luckily there are some great matches and some historically significant matches in the extras section that make the set worth buying still.

The extra matches are the top 25 from a WWE.com poll to find the greatest Starrcade match in history. Interestingly, Jesse Ventura’s commentary is left intact for all matches he originally appeared on, which is something that hasn’t always happened on DVDs featuring his announcing, and I hope that means it’ll be the same for the Saturday Night’s Main Event set.

Taking the format of having a WWE guy in studio (Mean Gene, JR, Flair amongst others) to introduce each bout individually – the matches are:

Roddy Piper vs. Hollywood Hogan from 1996 – Hogan did some great heelish things in the first few minutes that had me loving his work and getting tremendous heat, but as things went on it really dragged. Kicking Piper’s hip operation scar was evil bastard behaviour at its best though.

Sting vs. The Great Muta from 1989 – This is incredibly boring and disappointing given who is involved and their GREAT match at the Great American Bash earlier that same year.

Barry Windham & Brian Pillman vs. Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas from 1992 – A truly great tag team match as Pillman is growing into his heel role and Steamboat gives a babyface master class in building sympathy, getting revenge and all kinds of great shit. It’s just perfect, and if I was to write a book on how to build the ideal tag team wrestling match I might just do the play by play for this one. I know some modern fans might see the names as maybe not being the biggest of stars, but you have to watch this match, skipping it to watch some of the other stuff here would be a crime.

Goldberg vs. Kevin Nash from 1998 - This is the infamous streak ending match. It’s a fine match to have on here for historical purposes, but really not good. Amazing crowd heat though.

Battlebowl Battle Royal from 1991 – After talking about the concept in the documentary, it was almost that they had to include one such match, and it’s better than the 1992 version and has Sting winning.

Steve Austin vs. Dustin Rhodes from 1993 – Definitely an example of people voting for the guys in the match rather than the match itself because this 2/3 falls match is dull as dishwater.

Tully Blanchard & Arn Anderson vs. The Road Warriors from 1987 – Oh yeah, remember when I talked about leaving Greensborough and Vince killing them on PPV as reasons why Starrcade 1987 led to the downfall of the company? I forgot to mention the third reason – Dusty finishes. This was THE time to put the belts on the Road Warriors and it didn’t happen, and Chicago never drew the same for the NWA afterwards. Good match though from two great teams of the golden era of tag team wrestling.

Jushin Liger vs. Rey Mysterio from 1996 – GREAT fucking match. Rey was kind of pushed as the king of the cruiserweight division at this time, so to see him here essentially dominated and beaten cleanly, even by a legend such as Liger was a bit of a shock. But luckily he’s fucking awesome and it’s a role he excels at, so it’s still an excellent match and one that showed his versatility as a worker and proved he could still be great once his athleticism subsided, a theory he proves to be true on a regular basis in WWE now.

The Midnight Express vs. The Midnight Express from 1987 – Yes, after Cornette blew out his knee the Midnights were back on the scaffolds 12 months later. Watching this and knowing the history of great matches between these teams you wonder why they didn’t just have a regular tag team match. Somehow despite the limiting stipulation it’s still really good, but given the teams maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.

Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger from 1988 – I know you might see Luger in the match list and baulk at watching but he’s probably the one guy who has an unfair reputation for always sucking when he used to be really good, and Flair was at his peak here too. A great match, I’d say Flair’s best at Starrcade, and probably the most “Flair-like” match as far as being heel World Champion selling his ass off and making the babyface look like a megastar.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Shinjiro Ohtani from 1995 – Great match between two great wrestlers. As I talked about more extensively in my review of WWE’s Eddie Guerrero DVD a few months ago this is something that would probably appeal to fans of today’s indies as it has that Ring Of Honor “two guys going out there for no reason and having a great match” thing, but to a much higher level obviously.

Sting & Dusty Rhodes vs. The Road Warriors from 1988 -Historically important as that angle was one of the main things that lead to Dusty being fired, since Turner executives had banned blood loss, so Dusty went and booked himself in a bloody angle to try a power play. The match is good and Dusty going for revenge always got heat, and the DQ ending would’ve had me screaming for a rematch if I was a fan at the time.

Sting vs. Vader from 1992 – Sting finally slays the monster and gets a big singles victory over his greatest rival in a great match. Can’t go wrong with this, it’s everything that’s right and awesome about pro wrestling.

The Brisco Brothers vs. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood from 1983 – Really good tag team match with veteran heels losing to highflying risk taking young babyfaces in a great match, which really formed an important part of the theme of the entire show as it pertained to the younger generation taking over from the old guard.

Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes from 1985 – This is your classic “babyface hero returns from injury to conquer the heel” as Dusty gets revenge for the Horsemen breaking his leg and wining the World Title. A great story between the quintessential 1980s heel and the quintessential 1980s babyface, and the crowd were with them the whole time. Dusty finish though, as the belt was returned to Flair on TV the next week.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko from 1997 – A strange one as this match has the reputation that it sucked for some reason, but every time I watch it I think its fine. Not as good as their ECW matches but still good stuff as you’d expect from these two.

The Steiner Brothers vs. The Road Warriors from 1989 – its 8 minutes of me marking out fucking big time as the two monster babyface teams of the era collide in a fantastic hard-hitting contest. Should’ve felt more epic than it did, but that’s a side effect of the lame Iron Man Tournament idea unfortunately.

The Jung Dragons vs. Three Count v. Jamie Noble & Evan Karagis from 2000 – I’m sure Jamie Noble used to be in the Jung Dragons and Evan Karagis used to be in 3 Count but whatever. Its young guys doing spectacular “can you top this?” type spots and to be honest that’s a fun diversion and change of pace from the rest of the selection here.

Sting vs. Ric Flair from 1989 – This was the finals of the Iron Man tournament, and so was given the time and had the heat that it wasn’t just another match. Not that you can really screw up this match anyway to be honest, and this was one of their better ones, as Sting was clearly being groomed to take over on top of the company at this point, and was at his athletic peak before his knee injury the following year.

Roddy Piper vs. Greg Valentine from 1983 – The famous Dog Collar Match. As I mentioned in the documentary part of this review, it’s a classic story of two guys beating the living shit out of each other, basically. And fired up babyface Piper wasn’t broken down enough to drag the match down like he was in the Hogan match from 13 years later.

The Midnight Express vs. The Road Warriors from 1986 – This is the scaffold match where Jim Cornette blew out his knee at the end. They don’t have the chemistry to still have a really good match with the limiting gimmick like the Midnights and Rock N Rolls did, but this is all about the cowardly heels being stuck in a gimmick where there’s nowhere to run, and that payback occurs big time.

Hulk Hogan vs. Sting from 1997 – OK so it’s in the countdown which makes the decision to exclude it from the documentary all the more puzzling. Undoubtedly deserves to be on here for historical reasons even if the match is fairly bad and certainly not giving the fans the payback that WCW had almost guaranteed they’d be receiving here. It still puzzles me that you bring back an all-conquering babyface and have him not just destroy Hogan completely.

Harley Race vs. Ric Flair from 1983 – This is one that you might not like if you’re a newer fan because the slow pace can be a killer, but that was Race’s style, to make sure every movement is soaked in and part of the story. It works, but today even guys who do that need to do some more exciting stuff in amongst it to capture modern fans.

Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard from 1985 – Definitely the best match on this set, and as I said earlier maybe the best match of all time. This steel cage I Quit match is a bloody brutal brawl where the hero gets his payback in the most vicious manner possible – breaking off a chair leg and jabbing it in the heels’ face until he has no choice but to quit. And Tully had been such a prick that he could have that happen to him and not get any sympathy whatsoever as he was such a great heel. It was just amazing to watch. Just nasty brutal greatness from two tough dudes where the winner was the guy who had to win, everything was note perfect here.

Ric Flair vs. Vader from 1993 – OK I know they wanted a Flair match to take the top spot, and I like this, but Magnum vs. Tully is on a different planet. It seems funny now that the crowd had so much heat and emotion for Flair working a “if he loses he retires” storyline. Really good match, and Vader was tremendous as the unstoppable monster heel at the time, the likes of which you wouldn’t see for another decade until Brock Lesnar emerged, although unfortunately his run was too short.

The matches definitely turn this set around and change it from a disappointment to a must-buy. Even the great matches I’d forgotten just how great they were, and stuff like the 2000 ladder match were pleasant surprises because I’d never seen them before.

As always, if you’re in the UK and Europe, you can pick up a copy of Starrcade: The Essential Collection via Silver Vision by clicking here.

Mark Bright
mark@ifight365.com