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The Undercard
The show proper opened with a tag match pitting former WCW World Tag Team Champions 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Alexander “Not Yet Buff Or The Stuff†Bagwell against the newly formed duo of Paul Orndorff & Paul Roma. Before the match started, a member of some WCW committee awarded Teddy Long the Manager Of The Year Award, I guess in recognition of leading Bagwell & Scorpio to their record setting 24 hour reign as tag champions. Yep, ability always counted for a lot in that WCW. Roma and Orndorff, who were not yet using Pretty Wonderful as their team name, were managed by the Assassin, aka Jody Hamilton, who was not only a manager and former wrestler, but also a fairly high ranking member of WCW management, and he also probably weighed more at this point than both Roma and Orndorff put together. Roma had just turned heel a couple of weeks prior to this after turning on Erik Watts during a tag match, in what was more or less Erik’s final burial on his way out of WCW. I always thought Roma was a lot more talented than people gave him credit for, he was really smooth and fluid with everything he did and I think he would have been remembered in a better light if they hadn’t made him a Horseman. This was a pretty standard tag match, and Roma and Orndorff picked up the win when the FatAssassin loaded his mask and headbutted Scorpio to allow Orndorff to get the pin.
Up next was a really crappy match between the Shockmaster and Awesome Kong. This Awesome Kong was a big fat masked white guy, not the female wrestler of modern day TNA. Awesome was one half of the Colossal Kongs tag team along with King Kong, another really fat guy who looked just like Awesome. I have no idea where they came from and no idea where they went (and I’d love if anyone who knows could email me and let me know), but they were only in WCW for a few months and then I never heard from them again. Of course we’re all familiar with the Shockmaster and his classic, unforgettably botched entrance into WCW when he burst through a wall, tripping on his way through and falling on his face, losing his Stormtrooper helmet on the way down. For anyone who doesn’t know and wants to hear about it, email me and let me know and I’ll do an entire column on it and other stupid WCW ideas from the 92-93 time period. Then again, maybe I’ll do it anyway since I love stuff that sucks. That includes this match, which was about two minutes long and was won by Shockmaster after slamming Awesome and pinning him.
Thankfully, we followed that up with a much better match that saw Lord Steven Regal (aka William Regal) defending the World TV Title against Ricky Steamboat. This would be Steamboat’s last Starrcade appearance, as he’d retire the following summer due to a back injury. Regal was accompanied by Sir William, aka Bill Dundee from Memphis, who was actually Australian and not British, but I guess us stupid Americans weren’t supposed to know the difference. Anyway, the story here was that Regal had cheated to beat Steamboat for the TV Title back at Fall Brawl and they had crossed paths a couple of times since, and this was going to be Steamboat’s last chance at the title. I always loved Regal’s TV Title defenses because they were so cerebral, in that they had a 15 minute time limit so Regal’s strategy was not necessarily to win, just not to lose, and he would go out there and tie up his opponents and try to run down the clock, and it was great watching all these challengers frantically try and go after Regal to get him in a position where they could do some serious damage and try and win the title, but Regal would just shut them down by tying them up or taking a hike to the outside. It was a great strategy that would be totally lost on today’s fans, and for those newer fans who wonder why old timers like myself think Regal is so great, his TV Title run is a great example because you knew you were probably getting 15 minutes out of him, and during these matches he would put on some amazing mat wrestling clinics, and while a lot of the stuff he would do was too subtle to really get over today, if you watch some of the moves and holds he pulled out, you were sitting there going “Wow, that was really clever! How come nobody ever thought of that before?â€
So Regal basically clamped down on Steamboat with one hold or another, until Steamboat made his comeback with about three minutes left, but missed a top rope crossbody at the ten second mark, and by the time he recovered and hit a German Suplex, the time limit ran out and Regal was saved by the bell. This may seem like a cheap way out for Regal and it’s true, but that was what was getting him all his heat, and we were all sitting there wondering who was ever going to come along who could beat him within 15 minutes. While he was going to all these time limit draws, while he wasn’t winning most of his matches, Regal started running up a pretty impressive list of guys who COULDN’T beat him for the TV Title, and that list included not only Ricky Steamboat, but Davey Boy Smith, Sting, Brian Pillman, Johnny B Badd, and Arn Anderson. Great stuff, and as you can tell I’m a bit of a Regal mark, but it’s my column so nyah.
Following the TV Title Match, we get a short tag match between Tex Slazenger & Shanghai Pierce and the newly-formed team of Cactus Jack & Maxx Payne. Tex & Shanghai would later go on to much greater fame in the WWF as the Godwinns. Cactus, in the meantime, had just finished up a really brutal feud with Vader that saw him get put out of action for months after taking a powerbomb on the floor, then coming back to wrestle Vader in a big time PPV main event, only to end up losing in the end to make Vader seem like that much bigger a monster. Following that, Cactus formed this team with Maxx and this match was their first major match as a team as they began building to a tag title shot early in 1994. Short tag match that Cactus & Maxx won when Cactus hit the double arm DDT for the win.
Next up was the match for the United States Title, as Dustin Rhodes defended against Steve Austin. Austin had recently split with Brian Pillman, his partner in the Hollywood Blonds, and had taken on Col Rob Parker as his manager, and Parker negotiated the newly-single Austin into this match for the United States Title. Rhodes, in the meantime, had spent most of the year feuding with Rick Rude over the US Title before finally winning the title in a best of three match series in late August or early September, and had just been floating around defending the title for three or four months without any real direction. It’s strange to see Austin at this point and see him portray a completely different character than what he would end up doing as Stone Cold, and you could already see him using a lot of what would become trademark Stone Cold moves and mannerisms. The really strange part is that even though at the time we had a pretty good idea that he would go on to become a big time player in the business, when he finally did do it he went about it in a completely different way that we expected and in a different promotion. Rhodes got himself disqualified in the first fall for throwing Austin into Parker, who was up on the ring apron, but the momentum sent Austin over the top rope and the referee called for the bell. In the second fall the lights in the building briefly went out, then came up against just in time to see Dustin go up for the ten punches in the corner, but Austin yanked him down and grabbed a handful of tights to win the fall and beat Dustin in two straight falls, which was unheard of until the Briscoes made it their gimmick almost 15 years later.
After that mild upset, we moved on to Ravishing Rick Rude defending the International World Title against The Boss. Okay, where to begin with this one…Rick Rude was the International World Champion, and the short version of the story of that title is that Ric Flair was the NWA World Champion when WCW pulled out of the NWA in September of 1993. However, WCW had months of footage in the can of Flair defending the title before losing it to Rick Rude, who would then go on to defend it through the end of the months of footage. They had to call the title something and couldn’t call it the NWA World Title, so they first called it “The World Heavyweight Titleâ€, then “The Big Gold Beltâ€, before finally settling on “International World Titleâ€, with the idea being that Rick Rude was recognized by the (fictional) WCW International Board Of Directors as the World Champion. The problem with that story was that if everyone BUT the US promoters recognize Rude as the World Champion, then that would make it seem like he has a better claim to the title than Vader did, but I guess I’m probably thinking about it more than WCW management was. As for this match, the feud was actually between Rude and Davey Boy Smith, but Davey Boy ended up exiting WCW abruptly, and I have no idea why, but the Starrcade match had already been announced, so they had to come up with something. When Davey Boy “no showed†a match against Rude on WCW Saturday Night, in his place appeared The Boss, aka the Big Boss Man, who came in, plowed through Rude, and pinned him clean in the middle of the ring to earn Davey Boy’s Starrcade title shot. “The Boss†was basically the same gimmick as the Big Boss Man, and this ended up leading to the WWF threatening to sue WCW for copyright infringement for stealing a character owned by them, and this led to Ray Traylor having to stop using the Boss gimmick within a few months, but for now he was The Boss, nightstick and all.
So putting all that aside, as well as how weird it is to watch this match and realize both these guys are gone now, this was a pretty fun match that was sort of an unofficial blowoff to their feud in the WWF that never had a conclusion because Rude was “suspended for making insulting remarks about the Boss Man’s mother†and never returned. Boss basically spent the whole match beating the tar out of Rude, including one awesome spot where he hung Rude upside down in the ropes outside the ring and just started pounding on him from the floor. Then Boss went back in the ring, and as Rude tried to pull himself up to free himself, Boss would just deck him in the face. Boss is, for my money, the best puncher in the history of the business, his punches always looked so real and looked like they knocked the hell out of whoever was unlucky enough to take one. The finish came when Boss went for his rope straddle thing where the opponent’s hung over the second rope and Boss runs and sits on him, but Rude moved out of the way and Boss hit the ropes, allowing Rude to get a sunset flip from the outside to catch the fall. Jesse accidentally called him the Boss Man on the replay, which Tony tried to cover for by telling Jesse what a good looking man he is.
The final match before the main event was not only the worst match on this show, but in fact one of the worst matches I’ve ever seen in my life, as the Nasty Boys (with the about to be fired Missy Hyatt in their corner) defended the WCW World Tag Team Title against Sting and Road Warrior Hawk. The Nasty Boys had spent months defending the title against various combinations involving Ricky Steamboat and Sting, and it all led to this one as Sting teamed with Hawk, who was flying solo in 1993 while Animal was sitting out with a back injury, to challenge for the title. I always hated the Nasty Boys, and I thought that they were absolutely terrible, sloppy workers even years before I became remotely informed about what a “good worker†was, and never understood why anyone thought it was a good idea to let them anywhere near a World Tag Team Title, yet somehow two different companies ended up doing just that. Their problem as workers was that you’re supposed to make it look like your hurting your opponents without actually doing it, but the Nastys got it completely backwards because they constantly potatoed people, but their work looked like crap.
This match was Stallfest 93 until Hawk did his patented shoudlerfirst dash into the cornerpost and tumbled to the floor where Missy smacked him. The Nastys got him back in the ring and made him tap out to an armbar, but tapping out didn’t count as a submission until 1997 or so, so the match continued…unfortunately. Knobbs botched a bodyslam, which Hawk tried to top by completely missing a clothesline. At one point the Nastys tried to have mercy on us by heading to the locker room, but Hawk and Sting were determined to continue tormenting us, so they grabbed them and tossed them back in the ring. The Nastys regained control, and Knobbs jumped off the second rope and I have no idea what the hell he was going for, but ended up sitting on Sting’s head. Knobbs went on to toss Sting over the top right in front of the referee, and even the announcers couldn’t come up with an explanation as to why the ref didn’t call it. This match ended up dragging on FOREVER until Sting and Hawk hit the Doomsday Device on Knobbs, but Missy squeaked in and hit the lightest shot of all time to break the fall, and this time the ref did call for the DQ with about ten seconds left in the time limit. It occurs to me that they could have done this finish 10 minutes in instead of forcing us to sit there and watch this atrocity for a half hour, but I don’t think you’d want to read what I’d come up with, so we’ll just move on.
The Main Event
Finally, after sitting through all that, we finally get to the main event as Ric Flair, the 10-time (by WCW’s count) World Champion, challenged current reigning and defending champion Vader for the WCW World Title. Flair had returned to WCW earlier in the year, and even though he had technically won his tenth World Title when he beat Barry Windham for the NWA Title at Beach Blast, the real top spot in WCW was held by Vader, and Flair was going to have to beat him and become WCW World Champion to prove he really still was The Man. Vader wouldn’t inititally grant Flair a title shot, and it took Flair putting his career on the line to get Vader to give him a shot at the title. Even though Flair had emerged victorious in many seemingly no-win situations in years past, Vader was such a dominating monster that even the stoutest Flair fans were in doubt as to whether he could beat Vader, even though the match was taking place in Flair’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.
The funny part about this is that it wasn’t even originally supposed to be Flair facing Vader in this match, it was supposed to be Sid Vicious. Unfortunately, Vicious ended up getting into a hotel room brawl with Arn Anderson that resulted in Sid getting fired and Anderson getting very badly injured after a pair of scissors found their way into the altercation. As usual, WCW went crawling back to Ric Flair to come bail them out yet again, just proving one more time that no matter what WCW did to try and kill the guy off, you just can’t bury Ric Flair.
At the beginning of Starrcade, we got video of Vader arriving at the arena hours early and getting himself warmed up, and then in contrast, we were informed that Flair still hadn’t arrived at the arena even as the event started. In between the next couple of matches, we were shown vignettes of Flair first at home saying goodbye to his family and then leaving and getting into a limo with Gene Okerlund, then in the limo talking to Okerlund about how his family was worried, but he knew the reality of what he’d gotten himself into and had to face Vader to prove to himself that he was still The Man. Finally, Flair arrived at the arena, grabbed his bags, and headed to the locker room to get ready.
Finally after that abysmal undercard, we got to the main event and the Charlotte crowd was on their feet for Ric Flair. The interesting thing going into this match was that a lot of Flair’s most famous, classic matches had been against more average sized guys, so we weren’t sure how well Flair’s style would mesh with Vader’s, and if Flair’s offense would even come off as effective against Vader. In a cool subplot, Vader’s manager at this time was Harley Race, whom Flair had beaten for the World Title ten years earlier in the main event of the first Starrcade, and as Vader was whupping on Flair, Race was standing at ringside yelling at Flair to quit, obviously salivating at the idea of his old nemesis finally being put away once and for all by his protégé and helping Vader out by getting in a cheapshot every chance he got. Tony even started talking about all the opponents Flair had faced over the years at Starrcade and still come out the champion, but Jesse countered by saying that this was 1993 and this was Vader, just to drive the point home that Vader was a challenge unlike anything Flair had ever faced before.
This was all great storytelling and a great build to a true David vs Goliath story, and even as Vader beat the crap out of Flair, Flair would start slowly but surely chopping away at Vader with chops and shots to the legs. Flair actually ended up hitting not one, not two, but THREE shots off the top rope, and I thought that he had been saving up that shot for so long that it would end up killing the poor guy he finally hit it on, but it only got him a two count. Flair took him to the outside and started beating Vader up there, including wrapping Vader’s leg around the ringpost and then hitting Vader with a couple of chairshots behind the referee’s back. Back in the ring Flair caught him in the figure four and Vader was able to escape, but missed the moonsault. Flair went for the cover andRace went up top to break the fall with the flying headbutt, but Flair moved and Race hit Vader. The referee shoved Race out of the ring and Flair rolled Vader up from behind into a cradle for the win and the crowd went NUTS.
This was a huge moment, and the crowd was so electric after Flair’s victory that even after he went to the back, he ended up coming out and taking a second bow because none of the crowd had left yet. Finally Flair goes backstage and did a very emotional interview with his family, including his now ex-wife Beth, a very young David (who even than had his deer in the headlights look that he got anytime he was in front of a camera), Ashley (before she was picking fights with cops), and a probably six or seven year old Reid. Sting and Ricky Steamboat both came out to congratulate Flair and say that even they had their doubts as to whether Flair could pull it off, but he did and he showed why he still is The Man.
Final Analysis
Other than the awesome Flair-Vader match and the pretty good Regal-Steamboat match, this show sucked as much suck as you could ever possibly suck. This was like the Wrestlemania 13 of Starrcades in that there was one blowaway match and one decent match, but everything else was so bad it was almost insulting to the intelligence. Recommended for Flair-Vader, but stay away from everything else unless you have someone you want to tie to a chair and torture.
On that note, I’m calling it a day yet again. Thanks for reading, and as always all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com, and you can catch me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Take care and see you all soon!
