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STARRCADE 1988: MIDNIGHT EXPRESS VS ORIGINAL MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, ROAD WARRIORS VS STING & RHODES FOR THE WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE, LUGER CHALLENGERS FLAIR FOR THE NWA TITLE, AND MORE

By Stuart Carapola on 12/23/2008 9:35 AM
In addition to being a far better show than the previous year’s outing, Starrcade 1988 was a show which featured a couple of firsts. For one, it was the first Starrcade that had Gary Michael Cappetta doing the ring announcing. I was always a huge fan of Cappetta, as he was my favorite ring announcer growing up, and I told him so when I had a cigarette with him at a Ring Of Honor show in New Jersey a couple of years ago. As the conversation went on, it became clear to me that Gary seemed to feel that he was a bigger star than he was, as he seemed put off that I didn’t know his entire career history of where he worked, but whatever. You were a ring announcer and that’s all, get over yourself, Gary.

More importantly than Gary Cappetta (as most things are) was that this was also the first Starrcade to take place after Jim Crockett sold the company to Ted Turner, and while this led to a lot of great things for the NWA and later WCW, the new corporate structure was not quite compatible with the wrestling business and that caused a lot of problems as time went on.

The Undercard

The show opened with Varsity Club members Kevin Sullivan and Steve Williams challenging the Fantastics for the US Tag Team Title. I never felt like the Fantastic got their just due as a tag team, as it seemed that they were always behind the Rock N Roll Express, and by this point were behind the Road Warriors, the Midnight Express, the Road Warriors, and most of the other teams in the NWA for that matter. It’s sad because both guys were really talented and were really over too, and I personally thought they were at least even with the Rock N Rolls. Anyway, the Varsity Club stiffed Tommy Rogers around until he made the hot tag and Bobby Fulton came in and cleaned house, but a pier six broke out and Williams hotshotted Fulton onto the top rope for the win and the US Tag Team Title.

From there we go to a match that was part of one of my favorite feuds of the 80s, as the Midnight Express took on the Original Midnight Express. To explain this one, Dennis Condrey, Randy Rose, and Norvell Austin were a three man stable known as the Midnight Express years earlier, and the group disbanded and the name went unused for several years until Condrey and Bobby Eaton became a team with Jim Cornette as their manager and they needed a name, so they used the Midnight Express name and became one of the best teams in the country. They were successful for several years until one day, Dennis Condrey just disappeared. Nobody, his wife included, knew where he went, but Eaton and Cornette were left hanging and needed to do something, so they brought in Stan Lane as a replacement for Condrey and became an even better team than Condrey and Eaton had been. Eventually, Condrey resurfaced in the AWA with his old tag team partner Randy Rose, and the two of them, with Paul E Dangerously as their manager, began calling themselves the Original Midnight Express. They wound up back in the NWA and began a feud with Lane and Eaton over who was the “real” Midnight Express. By this point, Eaton and Lane had become what I consider the greatest tag team in wrestling history, but Condrey and Rose were no slouches themselves and used a lot of the same double team moves that Lane and Eaton did, so in many ways these teams were mirror images of one another. Making the situation even more interesting was Cornette and Paul E in the teams’ respective corners, and while they did tangle themselves many times during the feud, their interaction wasn’t interesting so much because of what happened during this feud as for how intensely they would come to dislike one another in later years. While I appreciate both men’s styles, I think that a lot of Cornette’s problems with guys like Heyman and Vince Russo stems from the fact that Cornette is intensely loyal to the old school wrestling mentality and sees Russo and Heyman as taking wrestling in a bad direction, and I don’t think I can argue with that sentiment, but Cornette’s passion has led to a lot of problems for him over the years, though I tend to agree with a lot of what he has to say.

Anyway, getting to this particular match, they did a ton of stalling to start, but after the first two or three minutes, Lane and Eaton pretty much dominated through most of the match until Eaton missed a charge into the corner, allowing the OME to take over for several minutes, but when they went for the Rocket Launcher, Eaton moved out of the way and made the hot tag to Lane, starting their comeback. A pier six broke out with all six men getting involved, and in the confusion, Paul E hit Lane in the back of the head with his cell phone (for those who are too young to remember, cell phones were far less common in the late 80s than they are today, in large part due to them being huge and completely conceivable that you could knock somebody out with one) and Randy Rose covered and the ref counted, but stopped at 2 when he saw the phone laying in the ring and stopped the count. Rose protested his innocence to the referee, but Lane and Eaton used the distraction to hit the Double Goozle for the win. Condrey, Rose, and Paul E attacked Cornette and his Midnights after the match, setting up another match down the line that was meant to be the end of the feud, except that Condrey pulled another one of his disappearing acts and ruined the blowoff. Thanks, Dennis!

After that came a fun (?) match between the team of the Junk Food Dog and Ivan Koloff and the Russian Assassins, managed by Paul Jones, who inexplicably still hada job in 1988. Putting aside the obvious problems inherent with a babyface Ivan Koloff, I have to wonder why there were so many assassins in wrestling in the late 80s. I thought that was supposed to be the Golden Age of wrestling paychecks, did wrestling really pay so poorly that people had to do hit jobs on the side to make ends meet? As you might imagine from my digression, this match wasn’t very good, but thankfully it was kept short as Russian Assassin #2 ( I think) pinned Ivan after knocking him out with a Russian object.

Next up was the TV Title Match as Mike Rotunda defended against his former stablemate Rick Steiner. The backstory here was that Rotunda and Steiner, along with Kevin Sullivan, were members of the Varsity Club, but even though Steiner was on their team, he was frequently ridiculed and pushed around by Rotunda and Sullivan, until finally Rotunda and Sullivan turned on him outright, and this match was set up as a result. Rotunda was the World TV Champion for almost a full year at this point, and even though Steiner would go on to become a really big name teaming with Scott in later years, at this point Rotunda was built up as a much stronger wrestler than Steiner and he would have seemed to be the favorite going in, even though Sullivan was locked in a cage which was hung over the ring, rendering him unable to interfere. The match was mildly stiff, with each of them catching the other with some pretty rude clotheslines. Though Sullivan was unable to interfere, Steiner’s replacement, Steve Williams, was still free, and came down to the ring and rang the bell, fooling Steiner and the referee into thinking the time limit had expired. The match was stopped and Sullivan was released from the cage, but then a second referee came to the ring and informed the original referee about Williams’ chicanery. The match was restarted, and Sullivan got on the ring apron to protest the decision, but Steiner rammed Rotunda into Sullivan, sending Sullivan flying and knocking Rotunda out, and Steiner covered rotunda and scored the upset to win the World TV Title, and the crowd went nuts for Steiner. They were really happy for him, because in much the same way they popped for Virgil when he turned on Ted Dibiase, this had been built up slowly for a long time, and people sympathized with Steiner so much over the slow burn that the payoff was just that much better when it finally happened.

That nice moment was followed by a really good match for the US Title between Bam Bam Bigelow and defending champion Barry Windham. Bigelow had recently come over to the NWA following a disappointing run in the WWF that saw him fail to become the major star a lot of people predicted he would become. He was another one of those guys who had all the tools, but even though there was no injury or other major incident that turned his course, it just never happened with him for some reason. Windham, on the other hand, was like a god at this point, as nearly everything this guy did during the 87-89 stretch seemed to turn to gold, but unfortunately he also never quite attained the level a lot of people predicted, and it especially kills me with him because here was a guy who had talent oozing out of every pore of his body, but he ended up with the bad knees that plague a lot of guys his size and it ended up ruining him. Windham really could have been an all-timer if his career hadn’t been more or less cut short after he had the knee surgery in 1993, and it is so tragic that such a promising career was so severely hampered the way it was.

Bigelow totally overpowered Windham for several minutes and no-sold everything Windham tried, but Windham finally caught an advantage by tossing Bigelow to the floor. Bigelow hurt his knee when he hit on the outside, and Windham immediately went to work on the knee in vicious fashion. Windham got him back in the ring and viciously laid into him, including nailing him with one really stiff lariat before catching him in the clawhold that he was using as a finisher at the time. A Windham crossbody sent both men tumbling over the top to the floor, and Bigelow tried a charge on Windham, but Windham moved out of the way and Bigelow cracked into the ringpost and got himself counted out. Bigelow didn’t stick around long after this, and it would be over four years before he had another run with a major company.

Next up was a very unique match for the World Tag Team Title as the Road Warriors defended against Dusty Rhodes and Sting. The Road Warriors had turned heel after attacking Sting, and then later turning on Dusty as well. They went on to steamroll over the Midnight Express to win the NWA World Tag Team Title, so not only were Dusty and Sting out for revenge here, but wanted to hit the Road Warriors where it would hurt them the most, by taking the title they had finally claimed after it had eluded them for so long. The fact that Sting was in this match with these three guys showed what kind of confidence those in charge had in Sting’s future, as within his first year or so in the NWA, he had gone from jerking the curtain at Starrcade 87 in a six man tag, to going to a 45 minute time limit draw with Ric Flair on live television, to teaming with the booker against one of the greatest teams of the era. In the meantime, it was interesting to see the Road Warriors finally matches up against a team that could physically match up with them in a way that most of their opponents couldn’t. While Sting and Dusty weren’t as built as the Road Warriors, they were two of the top singles stars in the NWA, and it was a classic case of the famous question: can two great singles wrestlers work well enough together to beat a great tag team?

This turned into a pretty rough match early on, and a pretty even one at that. Each team would take control for a minute or two before one of their opponents would completely turn the tide with an explosive move out of nowhere. The Road Warriors did a lot more selling here than we were used to seeing out of them, but at the same time you couldn’t really have them obliterate Dusty and Sting either. Finally, Sting hit a top rope crossbody onto Animal and went for the pin, but Paul Ellering pulled the referee out of the ring before he could complete the three count, and the referee rang for the bell, disqualifying the Road Warriors for Ellering’s interference. On the surface, this seemed like just a lame non-finish, but after this match, the Road Warriors could claim that even Dusty Rhodes and Sting had been unable to beat them, making people wonder who could take the title from the Road Warriors if those two couldn’t get it done.

The Main Event

This all brings us to the main event of Starrcade 88, as Ric Flair defended the NWA World Title against Lex Luger. Luger had been a member of the Four Horsemen, but had been booted out early in 1988 after he refused to voluntarily eliminate himself so JJ Dillon could win a battle royal. It was a classic case of the Horsemen deciding that a member had gotten too big for his britches and decided he had to go, and Luger subsequently spent the rest of 1988 chasing Flair and the NWA World Title. They had a match at the Great American Bash where Luger seemed en route to beating Flair for the title, but the match was stopped by a representative of the Maryland State Athletic Commission due to blood because Luger had a cut on his forehead. It was a pretty laughable situation since the cut was incredibly small and insignificant, and the finish was obviously contrived. Luger kept chasing Flair through the rest of the year, and Flair kept retaining the title by some means or another, and with this being the final match between the two of them, a stipulation was added that if Flair got himself disqualified, he would lose the title to Luger to ensure that Flair didn’t take the easy way out.

Flair was at his absolute best as the dirtiest player in the game here, because he wasn’t able to put a dent in Luger by directly attacking him, so he’d do stuff like sucker Luger into the corner by begging off, but kick him in the gut when he got too close, or would jab him with the occasional thumb to the eye, or some other cheapshot like that. Luger, in the meantime, would just no-sell Flair’s offense and flex occasionally, and it just goes to show how talented Flair really was that he could take a guy as limited as Luger and turn him into a superstar by carrying him to so many incredible matches that people actually took him seriously. I don’t think anyone really appreciates how good Flair was at making guys look good and severely underrate how valuable a talent that is.

Flair finally took control after sending Luger to the floor and ramming him into the guardrail, but Luger soon turned the tide again and caught Flair in a sleeper, but Flair was able to escape and go up top for the mystery move he never hits, but predictably didn’t hit it because Luger superplexed him and put Flair in his own figure four. Flair escaped and the ref got bumped a few minutes later, giving Flair the opportunity to toss Luger over the top to the floor, but Luger no-sold and hit a top rope crossbody for two, leading him into his rally toward victory, but before he was able to get Flair in the Torture Rack, Flair escaped Luger’s grasp, pulled his legs under the ropes, and bashed them with a chair. From there, Flair went into his usual routine of working over the legs before catching him in the figure four. This is why Flair is such a master, because he can make a big lug like Luger look like a tank at the beginning of the match, but then uses his brain to gradually wear him down until he’s got him completely helpless and ripe for the picking.

Unfortunately, Flair ended up being stupid and going up top for the Mystery Move again (as an aside, I always thought that if he ever hit that move, it should not only win him the match, but put the poor guy who took it out of action for weeks) and of course Luger caught him with it and went back to work on Flair, but finally the injured legs come into play as Luger went for the Torture Rack again, but his leg buckled and Flair came down on top and put his feet on the ropes for the win. And so Luger had blown his final match with Flair, and in fact Luger never would beat Flair, and even when he got the title almost immediately after Flair left WCW in 1991, he always had the stigma of a choker because he was never able to beat Flair. Even when they both wound up back in WCW in the mid to late 90s, the had several matches and Luger still couldn’t beat him. Then again, Steve Austin never beat Bret Hart, so I guess even the great (?) wrestlers have that one guy they just can’t beat.

Final Analysis

This show flat out kicked ass. Flair was able to carry Luger to an amazing match for over a half hour, and on top of that you had a great tag title match, a great match and angle between the two Midnight Expresses, and a great feelgood moment with Rick Steiner’s TV Title victory. This show was a lot of fun to watch and easily the best Starrcade up to this point, and I would highly recommend getting a copy.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all soon with my review of Starrcade 89, but until then thanks for reading, and send all your feedback to stupwinsider@yahoo.com or catch me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider, where all my past work is archived and I regularly chime in with thoughts on current events in the world of wrestling. Take care, and see you all soon!