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Starrcade 1985: The Gathering was an innovative show in that it would take place at two separate locations, as half of the card took place in the original home of Starrcade, Greensboro, North Carolina, and the other half would take place in Atlanta, Georgia. In fact, people thought it was such a cool idea that the WWF would blatantly lift it and then take it one step further by running Wrestlemania 2 from three different locations. This show would feature the latest chapter in the long-running Ric Flair-Dusty Rhodes rivalry, as well as one of the most famous cage matches of all time.
Rather than go in sequential order of the entire show, I decided to break up my coverage by location, starting with…
Greensboro, NC
I’m not sure what happened with the live broadcast, but I know with the copy of the show I have, some of the matches were cut from the final product, so for the sake of completion, Don Kernodle defeated Tommy Lane and Denny Brown successfully defended the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title against Rocky King.
In the first match on the tape, Sam Houston took on Khrusher Khruschev for the Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title, which had been vacated when former champion Buzz Tyler left the territory. Houston is the younger half brother of Jake Roberts, while you might remember Khruschev in one of his many incarnations as Demolition Smash, Repo Man, the Blacktop Bully, Hole In One Darsow, and probably at least a few others I’m forgetting. People used to joke about how Barry Darsow, John Tenta, Ed Leslie, and Ray Traylor had enough identities between them to hold an entire Royal Rumble by themselves. The Mid Atlantic name was rapidly losing relevance at this point and meant little more than the ECW Title does today, and in fact this is the last time the title would appear on Starrcade, as it would be phased out midway through 1986. The match was clipped to hell, but the finish saw Houston hit a bulldog and cover, but Khruschev got his foot on the ropes, so we have the old gimmick where the babyface thought he won, but unbeknownst to him, the match continued and Khruschev flattened him with the Russian Sickle for the win.
Next up, the Long Riders explode as Ron Bass battled Black Bart in a Bullrope Match. Bass was working babyface here, and if he won, he got five minutes with JJ Dillon. Clip-O-Rama 1985 continues, with Bass winning after hitting Bart off the top rope with the bell in the middle of the bullrope. Dillon attacked Bass right away after the fall, but Bass predictably started kicking Dillon’s butt until the ref got bumped, allowing Bart to come in and piledrive Bass to hand Dillon the win.
After that, Georgia National Champion Terry Taylor defended against “Nature Boy” Buddy Landell, with JJ Dillon in his corner. Not much to this match except for the finish which saw Taylor go for a superplex, but Dillon hooked his leg and Landell fell on top to win the match and the National Title.
The Main Events
Greensboro saw a double cage main event, and the first of those two matches was the infamous I Quit Match for the US Title between Tully Blanchard and Magnum TA. I have mixed feelings about this match, because on the one hand it had some really dramatic moments where one guy would shove the mic in the other guy’s face and go “SAY IT!” and the other guy would yell “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” and it had a really cool finish where Baby Doll threw a wooden chair into the ring, and Tully smashed it up and tried to use a shard to gouge into Magnum’s face, but Magnum got ahold of the shard and turned it on Tully, gouging it into his forehead until Tully started yelling “YEEEEEEEESSS! YEEEEEEEEEES! YEEEEEEEEES!” and then cowered in the corner below the victorious Magnum.
On the other hand, other than the finish and the mic work, this wasn’t a very good match at all. It was very slow paced and boring, with nothing really exciting happening until the finish, and if you take away the mic and the finish, you’re left with a really boring match that would get panned if it was on a PPV today. I’m not saying these guys were bad wrestlers because they weren’t, they were both very good, I just think this is one of those matches that, like the Wrestlemania 10 ladder match, just doesn’t stand the test of time. Unfortunately, this was pretty much Magnum’s last hurrah, as he would be involved in a very serious, career ending car accident the following year, and he still hasn’t fully recovered to this day.
The second cage match was for the NWA World Tag Team Title, as Ivan & Nikita Koloff defended against the Rock N Roll Express. This was a great tag match, and played up a great big man vs little man dynamic, as Morton and Gibson did okay whenever they had Ivan in the ring, but couldn’t do a thing with Nikita, so they tried isolating Ivan and working on him, but finally Nikita tagged in and the RNRs were in trouble. Strangely, Gibson played the face in peril instead of Morton, but the same basic formula. Finally Morton tagged in and they did a cool finish where Ivan didn’t realize the tag had been made, so he whipped Gibson into the ropes and backdropped him, but as he was executing the backdrop, Morton snuck in behind with an inverted sunset rollup for the win. After the match was over, Nikita tossed Morton out of the cage and the Koloffs and Khrusher Khruscev all came in the ring and beat the crap out of Robert Gibson, even at one point taking the chain and whipping Gibson with it.
I personally like the tag match a lot better than the I Quit Match, and here’s why: when I watch the I Quit Match, I think about how some people would look at the Undertaker-Mankind Hell In A Cell match and say that yes, the two big falls and the stuff with the thumbtacks were impressive stunts, but there wasn’t much of a match in between the big spots, and I feel the same way about the I Quit Match. While it was very dramatic and had an awesome finish, there wasn’t that much there in between the big stuff. The tag title match, on the other hand, was almost nonstop action from the time the bell rang to the end, and I personally thought it had an even cooler finish than the I Quit Match. Granted, I’m a bit biased because I appreciate athleticism more than bloody brawling, but overall I think the tag match was the stronger of the two. In fact, I would even put the I Quit Match third best on the show behind the tag title and the World Title Match later on.
Atlanta, GA
Moving on to the Omni in Atlanta, we got two more dark matches before moving on to the main part of the card, as Thunderfoot #1 defeated the Italian Stallion and Pez Whatley defeated Mike Graham.
The first match from Atlanta shown on the video was a Mexican Deathmatch between Manny Fernandez and Abdullah the Butcher. This was yet another crappy match featuring the largely immobile Khali the Butcher and his total inability to do anything other than pick stuff up and hit people with it or move so slowly that he makes the US government look like Speedy Gonzalez. First person to get the Mexican sombrero off the cornerpost wins. Thankfully, this match was heavily clipped as well, but to briefly summarize, both men bled, Abby stabbed Fernandez with a bunch of stuff, and Fernandez got the hat. Typical Abby crap garbage match. I don’t get him and don’t understand why such an obviously talented hack gets so much love. If he were around today, he’d be one of the dime a dozen fat, talentless, homeless looking slobs who make up the CZW roster and would never have amounted to anything. Keep him in the ribs restaurant and out of the ring, please.
I guess they wanted to see how far they could push me after forcing me to watch Abby wrestle, so up next we get an arm wrestling match between Superstar Billy Graham and the Barbarian. They armwrestle. Graham wins. Barbarian and Paul Jones attack Graham. It leads to a match. Graham wins that too. The match sucked. Next.
Finally we get on to some decent stuff, as Ole & Arn Anderson defended the Georgia National Tag Team Title against Wahoo McDaniel & Billy Jack Haynes. McDaniel and Haynes were the US Tag Team Champions at this point, but only the National Tag Team Title was on the line. You don’t really realize it when watching him in the WWF with all the other behemoths, but Billy Jack really was huge. The Andersons…get this…worked over Wahoo’s arm throughout much of the match, but Wahoo finally made the hot tag and a pier six brawl broke out, but as Wahoo pounded on Arn in the corner, Ole hooked his ankle from the outside and Arn came down on top for the pin to retain.
The Atlanta wackiness continues as the Midnight Express (the Condrey/Eaton combination for those keeping score) took on Jimmy Valiant and Miss Atlanta Lively in an Atlanta Streetfight. Miss Atlanta Lively was not an actual woman, but actually a crossdressing Ronnie Garvin. I have no idea what that was about and really don’t care, but he was hanging out with Valiant, which I guess gives you all the explanation you need. I know there’s a joke in there about French Canadian wrestlers enjoying dressing up as women, but it’s like 5am as I type this so cut me a break, okay? Valiant and Garvin also had some really nasty looking chick with them who I’d never seen before and have no idea who she was, but she was butt ugly. The Midnights wore tuxedos to the ring, which I thought was a cute touch.
Anyway, this turned out to be a pretty good match, and it definitely came off like more of a fight than Tully-Magnum. People were throwing powder in each other’s eyes and then at one point Condrey started whipping Valiant with his belt pretty hard. The Midnights both got color early on, though Valiant got opened up as well soon enough. The Midnights tried to pants Garvin, and I know there’s a joke in there about French Canadian wrestlers enjoying having their pants pulled off by other men, but it’s 5:02am as I type this, so we’re still in slack cutting mode. Anyway, Eaton came off the top rope to try and splash Valiant, but Garvin decked him in the face on the way down with the Well-Manicured Hands Of Stone for the win, and then Garvin and Valiant tore off Jim Cornette’s clothes, exposing his boxers with the hearts on them. God bless Jim Cornette.
The Main Event
With all that goofiness through the entire Atlanta side of the card, we finally get serious as Ric Flair defended the NWA World Title against Dusty Rhodes in a rematch of the previous year’s main event. These two had been rivals for quite some time by this point, but their feud intensified earlier in the year when Flair and the Andersons attacked Dusty and broke his leg. There was some annoying yahoo in the crowd who spent the whole match yelling “DUSTY RHODES! DUSTY RHODES!” and going “WOOOOOOOOOOO!” along with nearly every move Dusty did, but not like the Flair WOO, it was more like the “’Sup y’all, I’m on MTVWOOOOOOOOOOO!” kind.
Flair got in a lot more offense in this one than he did the previous year, but he still wasn’t able to sustain any long periods of offense before Dusty would start a comeback, and I remember watching this and other Flair-Dusty matches some years ago and being bothered by the fact that one of the greatest wrestlers of all time always got treated likea jobber by Dusty, Sting, and others and was always picking up fluke wins. Eventually, I realize that this was the whole point and that Flair was supposed to look beatable so people would pay to come watch him drop the title to whoever their local hometown hero was.
Dusty worked over Flair’s leg for most of the first 15 minutes, and then hit a crossbody off the top (!), but somehow that theoretically crippling move only got 2. Dusty kept up the assault and, surprise surprise, Flair bled. Flair finally was able to mount a comeback and start working over Dusty’s leg, catching him in the figure four, but Dusty got to the ropes and went back to no-selling Flair in short order. Referee Tommy Young got bumped out of the ring, at which point the Andersons ran out and attacked Dusty before running off, but as Flair picked Dusty up off the mat, Dusty small packaged him as a second referee jumped into the ring to make the three count and award Dusty the win and the NWA World Title. This led to a big crowd pop, and a big celebration backstage with Dusty and all the other babyfaces.
Of course, the whole celebration was for nothing because on the next week’s TV, it was announced that the original referee saw the Andersons interfere and ruled that Flair was disqualified before the pinfall took place, so the second referee’s decision was overturned and the NWA Title was returned to Flair. Of course, nobody watching the show either live or on closed-circuit knew this, and at the end of Starrcade, we all thought that Dusty was the new World Champion. This happened a lot during this time period, and the fans would keep going home thinking they had seen a title change only to have it completely nullified on TV that weekend. It was innovative at first, but eventually got to a point where it was being run into the ground. The finish became so overused that it was actually christened the “Dusty Finish” in honor of its creator.
Final Analysis
Well, here’s how Starrcade 85 stacks up: one the one hand, the undercards in both locations were really bad, and all the undercard matches in Atlanta were actually comically bad. On the other hand, the Flair-Dusty match and the two cage matches were all good to great and are worth getting the show for alone, but just be forewarned that if you do get ahold of the show, those are the only three matches that won’t make you want to gouge out your own eyeballs. Mildly recommended.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back soon with yet another installment of this fine series, but until then, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com or you can catch me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider, where all my past work is archived and I regularly update my blog with my latest thoughts on current events in the world of wrestling. Okay, I’m out, take care everyone!
