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Before I get started, I just want to mention that the audio on my copy of Starrcade 83 isn’t that great, so I apologize in advance if I miss anything important that was said on commentary.
The Undercard
The show opened with Bugsy McGraw & Rufus R Jones taking on the Masked Assassins. One of the Assassins was Jody Hamilton, who would go on to become a manager in 1993-94 in WCW and was also an agent around the same time. I’m not sure who the other one was. Bugsy McGraw was a guy who liked to dance and he wasn’t quite a “crazy†wrestler, but you could still tell he was a few fries short of a happy meal. He also looked like Darren, my auto mechanic. Rufus R Jones was no relation to Paul Jones (who was managing the Assassins), but he also liked to dance, though his dancing looked more like he was having convulsions. Whatever, it got over. In any event, pure stallfest that ended when one of the Assassins rolled up McGraw out of nowhere for the win.
The second match pitted Johnny Weaver & Scott McGhee against Kevin Sullivan & Mark Lewin. Sullivan and Lewin were full on crazy, as opposed to the half-assed semi-crazy Bugsy McGraw from the previous match. Lewin was also really big and strong, making him UBER DANGEROUS. I always thought Weaver had a really weird looking face, like he always had that gobbly chin but it wasn’t loose like your grandmother’s chin, maybe a better description would be bulbous. Actually, he looked like a pelican man, that sounds about right. You might remember Weaver from the angle where Dusty Rhodes needed to learn the finer points of the sleeperhold for his upcoming match with Lex Luger, so Weaver, who had such an awesome sleeperhold that he called it the Weaverlock, helped train Dusty in the arts of one of the simplest moves in professional wrestling. Dusty then went on to beat Luger with a DDT on a steel chair after Luger spent about a half hour crouching over the chair trying to pick it up and waiting for Dusty to come DDT him. In any event, Lewin pinned poor Johnny Weaver, who didn’t even get to do the Weaverlock, and then attacked McGhee and also Angelo Mosca with a steel spike. This would throw into doubt Mosca’s ability to referee later as he was booked to.
The next match on the show featured Carlos Colon taking on Abdullah The Butcher. This was just a brawl, and not a very good one. I never got Abby, I always just thought of him as this slow fat guy who didn’t have enough talent to do anything other than stab people in the head with a fork. I don’t get the fascination. These two had a pretty infamous feud in the Caribbean, mostly because Colon is a legend down there. When I think about WHY Colon would be a legend there…well, put it this way, the phrase “big fish in a small pond†springs to mind. Anyway, there was blood, the fork came out, Abby elbowdropped the referee, and someone (later identified as Abdullah’s manager, though I couldn’t make out his name) ran in and nailed Colon, allowing Abby to pick up the win. At least it was short.
The fourth match on the show was our third tag team match of the evening, as Wahoo McDaniel teamed with fellow (?) American Indian Mark Youngblood to take on Bob Orton, Jr and Dick Slater. Nope, Mid-Atlantic wasn’t a tag team territory, nosirree. Randy Orton wishes he was half the worker his father way, but Bob kind of looks like Seth Rogen here. Ric Flair said in his shoot interview that nobody ever watched Wahoo wrestle and said it looked fake, and even though Wahoo was on his way downhill at this point, Flair wasn’t kidding. He didn’t look like he was hurting anyone, but you could definitely tell Wahoo was a stiff worker. This was a pretty good tag match that ended after Orton pinned Youngblood with the superplex. Wahoo ended up brawling with the heels after the match, but Orton and Slater ended up beating him down and injuring his arm.
That match was followed by the Great Kabuki defending the World Television Title against Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown is Jimmy Valiant under a mask, not the kid with the big bald head who says “good grief†a lot. You might remember Kabuki as one of Mr Fuji’s hired henchmen in Royal Rumble 94 who were brought in to keep Lex Luger from winning the Rumble match. Somebody somewhere thought it would be a good idea to give these guys 15 minutes, most of which were spent with Valiant in the clawhold. Anyway, Valiant…er, I mean Charlie, picked up the win and won the TV Title.
The Top Matches
And now it’s time to get on to the interesting matches, the first of which was US Champion Greg Valentine taking on Roddy Piper in a Dog Collar Match. Valentine had beaten Piper for the US Title some months earlier, and then had used a ringbell to attack Piper’s ear and injure it, costing him 75% of his hearing in that ear. This led to a series of Dog Collar matches around the horn, culminating with the final confrontation here. This turned into a pretty brutal match with both men bleeding quite a lot, and right from the beginning both men were wrapping the chain around each other’s faces, and then Piper wrapped the chain around the ringpost and yanked on it to choke Valentine. I have to say, I didn’t appreciate Valentine as much when I was younger, but watching him now, everything he did looked like it hurt like hell, like whenever he would drop an elbow, it looked like he was coming down like a ton of bricks. The finish came when Piper used the chain to yank Valentine off the second rope, then started whaling on him with the chain, and finally used the chain to tie Valentine up so he could pin him. Valentine attacked Piper after the match and brutalized him, hanging him over the top rope with the chain and attacking the referee for trying to break it up. Piper had won the match, but the title was not on the line, and Piper never regained the US Title until years later when he returned to WCW in the late 90s, about 15 years after his last US Title reign came to an end.
The championship matches continue, as Jack & Jerry Brisco defended the World Tag Team Title against former champions Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood.. The Briscos had been babyface allies with then-World Tag Team Champions Steamboat and Youngblood, but turned on them and began a feud between the two teams. They traded the title back and forth several times, with the Briscos coming into this particular match as champions. Angelo Mosca was assigned as the special referee for this match, and though his ability to referee had been cast into doubt after the attack on his arm earlier in the evening, he did make the match after all.
This match was my first time to see either Jack Brisco or Jay Youngblood wrestle, and I had heard all kinds of good things about Jack Brisco, but didn’t know much about Youngblood. After watching this, I can tell you that if nothing else, Youngblood takes a beating well. Jack on the other hand was awesome, and I probably enjoyed watching him because I’m a mat wrestling mark, but the Briscos can flat out wrestle. Jack was of course a collegiate wrestling star and a multi-time World Champion, but Jerry was no slouch himself and even though he wasn’t quite at Jack’s level, he definitely knew what he was doing in there and had a decent collegiate background himself. I sure wouldn’t want to get on a mat with him and even though he became somewhat of a comic figure years later as one of Vince McMahon’s stooges, I bet he could still stretch the hell out of anyone reading this.
Anyway, the Briscos controlled most of the match and even did the double shoulder tackle that Jay & Mark Briscoe use now, which was a cool little spot to me. The Briscos worked over Youngblood pretty good, but finally he made the hot tag and Steamboat came in and cleaned house and within a minute or so Steamboat launched Youngblood onto Jerry with the assisted splash that the Rockers would use as a finisher years later. This was the last title change to take place between these two teams, and Steamboat and Youngblood held the title for about a month after this until they relinquished the titles when Steamboat announced his retirement from the sport, and we can all see how well that worked out. As for Youngblood, he was around for another two years or so before his life tragically ended on a tour of the Pacific in 1985 where he suffered a series of heart attacks after a match and died in the locker room, and even though he didn’t particularly impress me in this match, there are a lot of people who think that if he had lived, he would have been a huge star in the business.
Finally, we come to the main event of the evening and the match which the show had been entirely built around, as Ric Flair challenged Harley Race for the NWA World Title. Flair had lost the title to Race a few months earlier and in the time since, Race had tried to prevent Flair from challenging for the title by putting out a bounty on the head of the former champion. Bob Orton and Dick Slater tried to collect by brutally attacking Flair, and though Flair did announce his retirement, it was just a ruse, as he returned shortly after and announced that he wanted Race. The match was announced on NWA TV by Jim Crockett and would be the centerpiece of a supercard to be held in Greensboro, North Carolina and called Starrcade, with former NWA World Champion Gene Kiniski serving as special referee.
All night, we had gotten vignettes from both locker rooms, with Flair and his friends Wahoo McDaniel, Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper and Jay Youngblood, as well as Race and his group of Greg Valentine, Bob Orton, Dick Slater, and the Briscos. Though all of each man’s companions did discuss their own matches for the evening, the focus was always on Race vs Flair. Between matches, interviewer Barbara Clarey went around the crowd asking the fans in attendance their thoughts about the match and got them to talk about how far they had travelled to get to Starrcade. Dusty Rhodes, while not in action at the inaugural Starrcade, was also in attendance and was interviewed as well, and in an amusing faux pas that would give Kevin Dunn an aneurysm, the audio completely cut out during Dusty’s interview and we didn’t hear most of it, but the main point came through at the end: Dusty wanted the winner.
As for the match itself, it had the potential to be really good, but Kiniski ended up getting in the way more than he added to the match as he repeatedly would physically get between Flair and Race, injecting himself more than an official really should. Race dominated the early part of the match, methodically working Flair over with a lot of headbutts and kneedrops before Flair started making his comeback, but when Flair rammed Race into the cage, Kiniski really began to make a spectacle of himself by repeatedly shoving Flair while sticking his finger in Flair’s face. Race turned around and rammed Flair into the cage and started grinding his face into the mesh, getting Flair some color, but when Flair tried to take a swing at Flair, Kiniski caught Flair’s fist which allowed Race to suckerpunch him, which is not only a spot I really hate in general, but one which made no sense in a cage match which is supposed to be No DQ. Still, Flair made his comeback and ended up catching Race in the figure four, but Race was able to get out and headbutted his way back to the advantage. At one point Race had Flair on the ring apron and was standing on his throat, and Kiniski literally dragged Race off of Flair and across the ring by the hair. I kept waiting for Race to turn around and knock Kiniski’s lights out, but the best we got was an accidental spot where Race rammed heads with Kiniski and knocked both men down, but as Race recovered, Flair hit a crossbody off the top rope (!) for the R-E-A-L-L-Y L-O-N-G three count.
After the win, all the babyfaces poured into the ring to celebrate with the now two-time champion, which is funny to hear since nobody at the time probably had any idea that Flair would end up winning as many World Titles as he did. As for Race, he rolled out of the ring and headed to the back, where he gave a short interview saying that he would be back and Flair hadn’t seen the last of him, but except for a few days in 1984 where they traded the title back and forth to build interest on a tour through the Pacific, this was pretty much the end of the road for Harley Race as a World Title-caliber wrestler.
Final Analysis
Well, this was the first of a long tradition of annual supercards, and the top three matches were each special in their own way, but other than that this was a supercard full of really crappy matches. The Flair-Race match could have been one of the greatest of the 80s, but Kiniski ended up making such a nuisance of himself that he ended up ruining it for me. The US Title and World Tag Team Title matches were good, but neither were worth going out of your way to see. Recommendation to avoid unless you’re a big Flair fan and want to see one of his early historically-significant matches.
So that’s it for 1983, I’ll be back soon with 1984. Until then, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com or you can catch me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all soon!
