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But right now, let’s take a look at Starrcade 1997, which was the blowoff show to end all blowoff shows in the history of WCW. For a year and a half, the NWO angle had been running hot and heavy, and the entire angle built toward a final, climactic showdown between WCW/NWO World Champion Hulk Hogan and Sting, who would be setting foot in the ring for the first time in about 15 months (unless you count some sporadic house show appearances). Everything since July of 1996 had built toward this one show so the pressure was certainly on, but how well would WCW deliver?
The Undercard
Starrcade 97 opened with Eddy Guerrero defending the Cruiserweight Title against Dean Malenko. Malenko had had a great year in 1997, much of which involved frequent clashes with Guerrero. Malenko actually opened the year by regaining the Cruiserweight Title from Ultimo Dragon, but Guerrero’s involvement inadvertently led to Malenko losing that title to Syxx at Superbrawl VII. A month later, Malenko defeated Guerrero for the US Title, which he would go on to hold for several months before Guerrero’s interference cost him the US Title against Jeff Jarrett, only this time Guerrero’s intentionally cost Malenko the win. Since that time, Guerrero had won the Cruiserweight Title and was now defending it against the man who put the title on the map.
Shawn Michaels was far and away my favorite wrestler at this time, but Malenko was easily #2. He was simply the best, smoothest worker around, and he would constantly pull out all kinds of moves and counters that nobody had ever seen before, and it seemed like there was nobody who could outwrestle Dean Malenko. It was his skill and amazing record that ended up earning him the #1 spot in the PWI 500, which really means nothing but made me happy in my Apter Mag-reading youth. However, this would not be Malenko’s night as Guerrero spent the match working over Malenko’s knee and Malenko was never able to mount a really effective comeback before Guerrero hit a frogsplash to Malenko’s knee for the win. So we start of with the heels going 1 for 1 on the big blowoff show.
Up next I guess we were supposed to get the battle of the big men between Kevin Nash and the Giant, but Kevin Nash didn’t make it to the building that night so there was no match. We were never given any explanation as to what caused Nash to miss the show so I don’t know if he had a legitimate reason or not, but I have my doubts. Instead, Nash’s partner Scott Hall came out and did his survey routine, getting the cheap pop long before Mick Foley made it cool. Hall was so over it was scary, and he could definitely have been a World Champion if it weren’t for his personal issues and the fact that he was always in Nash’s shadow. In any event, Hall lets us know the situation and starts ripping on the Giant, but this brings out the Giant to tell Hall that he’ll be in wrestling for a long time and will be waiting for Nash to come back. Hall makes the mistake of attacking the Giant, so Giant beats him up and powerbombs him before walking out. I’m not sure why they didn’t just get Hall to wrestle the Giant instead of giving us this pretty pointless, time killing segment.
We waste no time before moving on to the next match, a six man tag pitting the NWO’s Scott Norton, Vincent, and Macho Man Randy Savage against WCW World Tag Team Champions the Steiners and Big Bubba Rogers. It was supposed to be Konnan in this match and not Savage, and I’m not sure why we got this no-show either, but it wasn’t setting a good tone for the show. Scott was looking seriously huge here, and it was pretty scary watching him pull off some of his moves like the top rope Frankensteiner. It was fun watching the Steiners and Bubba toss Vincent and Norton around, though. I think Vincent’s entire purpose in life was to stand on the apron flashing hand signals at the crowd. Standard tag match that the NWO won when Savage hit the big elbow on Scott for the win, putting the heels up at 2 for 2 on the big blowoff show.
We take a short break to hear Mean Gene conduct an interview with WCW Commissioner JJ Dillon, who announced that Nick Patrick had been drawn out of a hat and would be refereeing tonight’s main event between Sting and Hogan. If you recall, Patrick had turned heel and joined the NWO earlier in the year, and even though he had since left the fold and rejoined WCW, there would be a cloud of suspicion when it came to shady refereeing hanging over his head for the rest of his career.
The next match saw Steve McMichael take on a promising newcomer named Bill Goldberg. This was before they really started running with the undefeated streak as Goldberg’s gimmick, and he had started getting over but WCW hadn’t quite jumped on the Goldberg bandwagon quite yet. Instead, he had been playing henchman for Debra McMichael Austin Jagger Reznor Bon Jovi, and had sneak attacked McMichael to allow Debra’s new protégé, Alex Wright, to beat him at Halloween Havoc. McMichael had returned the favor by taking Goldberg out with a pipe at World War III, a rare moment when Goldberg did not look indestructible, which really didn’t happen again until he finally suffered that first loss. It’s strange to watch these early Goldberg Matches where guys got in more offense than we became accustomed to seeing once The Streak started.
Goldberg often caught a lot of flack for being really limited, and it’s true to a degree, but every so often he would pull out moves you wouldn’t expect from him, like a rolling ankle lock and a dropkick in this match. After doing a table spot on the floor, which drew an ECW chant, Goldberg rolled McMichael back into the ring and went for the Jackhammer, which McMichael did his best to botch, but Goldberg powered him up in a pretty impressive display of power and drilled him anyway to pick up the win. The heels are now 3 for 3 on the big blowoff show.
Up next we got another bait-and-switch as Chris Benoit was supposed to wrestle Raven, but ended up wrestling Perry Saturn. They had been doing an angle for weeks where Benoit would be set to wrestle Raven on Nitro, only for Raven to decide he didn’t feel like wrestling and sent in a member of his Flock to get squashed instead. Raven was supposed to finally wrestle Benoit at Starrcade, but again decided not to wrestle and sent in Saturn instead. The match was still held under Raven’s Rules (aka anything goes) and it did turn out to be a pretty good match with Saturn looking like a monster, dominating Benoit until Benoit caught him in the Crossface on the floor. The Flock all jumped the guardrail and attacked Benoit and he rolled into the ring and tried to fight them off, but Raven caught him with the Even Flow DDT, allowing Saturn to catch the now unconscious Benoit in the Rings Of Saturn for the win. So not only did we not get a third advertised match, but the heels are now 4 for 4 on the big blowoff show.
From there, we return to NWO vs WCW as Lex Luger, fresh off a short World Title run and several submission victories over Hulk Hogan earlier in the year, took on Buff Bagwell. I know what you’re thinking: there’s no way the babyface can lose this one, right? Or maybe you’re thinking that judging by the participants, this is going to be a really bad match. Or you might be thinking that these are two guys who aren’t getting invited into the WWE Hall OF Fame anytime soon. Or perhaps you’re thinking that after three other guys missed the biggest show in WCW history, it was nice of Buff to not have his mom call him out sick.
In any event, Bagwell was a firm second-tier NWO member at this point, and the angle here was that Bagwell had scored a DQ win and a countout win over Luger on two episodes of Nitro leading up to this, with the idea being that there’s no way Bagwell could ever actually beat Luger, yet he had snuck out with two cheap wins and Luger was finally going to put Bagwell away here. The match stunk: Luger kicked and punched Bagwell a lot, then Bagwell kicked and punched Luger for a while, then Luger started punching and kicking Bagwell again and also threw in some clotheslines as well and a couple of inverted atomic drops for good measure. The ref got bumped and Savage tried to run in and attack Luger, but Luger saw him and beat him up when he got into the ring and ended up putting Savage in the Rack. Unfortunately, Scott Norton casually strolled into the ring and knocked Luger out with Rick Steiner’s dog collar (which was never explained), then rolled Bagwell on top of Luger and revived the ref, who counted three. Bagwell pinned a two time former World Champion and the top babyface in the company that year, the heels are now 5 for 5 on the big blowoff show, and at this rate Sting’s not just going to have to beat Hogan to save this show, but actually kill him.
This was followed by the US Title Match, as champion Curt Hennig defended against Diamond Dallas Page. This was supposed to be Hennig vs Ric Flair, but Flair suffered some kind of injury that I don’t even know if it was a work or not, but he ended up missing the show as well and DDP got the spot instead. At least we found out about this one before the show. Hennig was the one member of the NWO who was actually going out there and winning all his matches cleanly and without any interference, including the match where he won the US Title from Steve McMichael. DDP, in the meantime, had been having a pretty good year in 1997, turning in a great feud with Randy Savage and becoming one of the top faces for WCW. In fact, it was DDP who brought Hennig back to the ring as his partner earlier in the year, only for Hennig to turn on him in the end. A lot of DDP matches had turned into him getting beat up for most of the match and then hitting the Diamond Cutter out of nowhere to get the win, and that’s exactly what happens here as Page turned a crucifix into the Diamond Cutter and wins his first US Title. I always felt bad that for as hard as Page did work to get better and become a more complete wrestler, a lot of people still thought of him as a one-move wrestler. In any case, a babyface finally picks up a win on this show, and of course it’s against the one heel with a proven track record of clean wins.
Page-Hennig would have made a good lead-in to the main event, but unfortunately we have one more hurdle to clear before we get there, as Eric Bischoff of the NWO battled WCW’s Larry Zbyszko, with WCW Monday Nitro on the line. If Zbyszko won, Nitro would remain the property of WCW, but if Bischoff won, it would become NWO Monday Nitro. If you’re wondering how Zbyszko of all people wound up in this match, he was an announcer on Nitro and had been having a war of words with Bischoff and Scott Hall (who was at ringside) for months, and now Zbyszko was getting back in the ring to do his part in the war. Our special referee for this match was Bret Hart, fresh off being screwed by Vince McMahon in Montreal. I’m not sure why you would sign away the competition’s World Champion and then make him a referee in his first appearance instead of giving him a marquee match, but maybe that’s why I’ve never booked a national wrestling promotion. I also have no idea why a match with ERIC BISCHOFF AND LARRY ZBYSZKO would be the semi-main on WCW’s biggest show ever, but again, what do I know?
Bischoff, being the karateka that he is, comes out in his karate garb, and it’s amazing how much younger he looks here than he did even five years later in WWE. I guess running WCW into the ground and then having to work for a guy you challenged to a fight can age you a bit. Bret kept breaking all the holds Zbyszko put on Bischoff which may have been chokes, and this was supposed to make you wonder whether he was WCW or NWO. Zbyszko basically kicked Bischoff’s butt the whole match until Hall loaded Bischoff’s shin guard with what looked like a chunk of metal, and when Bischoff kicked Zbyszko in the head, the metal thing went flying out into the crowd where it probably whacked some poor sap in the head. After knocking Zbyszko silly, Bret knocked Bischoff out, bringing Hall into the ring, but when Hall went to attack Bret, Bret laid him out too and trapped him in the Sharpshooter while Zbyszko choked Bischoff out with his karate belt. Bret raised Zbyszko’s hand for some reason even though there was no pinfall or submission or any other traditionally recognized form of victory, so even though the babyface apparently won this one somehow, Bischoff didn’t actually lose. Why a non-wrestler would need to be protected is beyond me, but I guess they didn’t want Eric to lose his heat. Poor Bret, even in WCW he can’t get away from people who refuse to do jobs.
The Main Event
And this is the main event to end all main events in WCW. Here’s the backstory: when Hulk Hogan first turned on WCW and joined the NWO, Sting was one of a group of main event babyfaces who opposed WCW. Another was Lex Luger, who was Sting’s best friend in storylines and, I gather, for some time in real life. All that changed on an episode of Nitro when Luger chased Ted Dibiase into a parking lot and was attacked by Sting, who now was apparently a member of the NWO. Of course it was a fake Sting, but Luger and company didn’t believe Sting, so in the Wargames match at Fall Brawl 96, Sting came out to the cage and laid out the entire NWO team, including the fake Sting, and then walked out, leaving WCW high and dry and costing them the match. That was the last time Sting wrestled in a televised match for 15 months.
Sting immediately underwent a radical change, going from the blond, spiky-haired, neon tights-wearing babyface we had known for years and instead morphed into a silent, black clad, Crow-esque mysery man. For 15 months, he sat in the rafters at every WCW show, watching the war between WCW and the NWO without saying a word. For a while we didn’t even know which side he was going to end up on until Uncensored 97 when he came into the ring and cleaned house on the NWO, who were doing a postmatch beatdown on Lex Luger.
From there everybody knew it was going to come down to Sting and Hogan, but instead of giving it to us right away, they held out for another nine months. Every so often, Sting would come out and attack the NWO and lay them out with his baseball bat, and Hogan was almost always his target, but Hogan would always run before Sting could get his hands and bat on him, and the NWO was never able to so much as try and strike Sting back. The more time went by, the more the fans salivated for the match. JJ Dillon eventually started coming out on Nitro and offering Sting contracts to wrestle various members of the NWO, with Sting just walking out of the ring without responding every time. Finally he was offered a contract to wrestle Hogan, and the match was on for Starrcade 97.
The atmosphere for this one exuded “big match†more than anything else in WCW since the NWA days. Sting had a grand entrance fitting for the savior of World Championship Wrestling, complete with a light show and new music. Even though I was far from being a total mark at this point, I still got chills watching Sting finally climb into the ring and stand face to face with Hogan. Sting put down the bat and took off his trenchcoat, and the bell rang. Hogan shoved Sting, Sting responded by slapping Hogan in the face, and it was on.
What should have happened is that Sting should have come in, cleaned house on Hogan, no-sold everything Hogan threw at him, and put him away clean with the Scorpion Deathlock in about ten minutes. What ended up happening is that Hogan, who had been running scared from Sting for months, spent almost the entire match squashing Sting like a bug. Sting got a grand total of seven punches, two kicks, and three dropkicks through the entire match. At one point he did reverse a whip into the guardrail on the outside, but then missed the follow-up Stinger Splash and impaled himself on the guardrail. Hogan threw him back in the ring, smacked him around a little more, and then hit the legdrop for the clean three count in the middle of the ring.
Now, what was supposed to happen was that Nick Patrick was supposed to do a fast count, but for some reason (which has been debated over b y conspiracy theorists ever since) he counted a perfectly even, normal three count just like in every other match, so to everybody watching, it looked like the conquering hero had just been defeated completely fairly by the evil heel. Bret Hart came down to ringside and, since he had a referee’s license for the evening, restarted the match due to the injustice of the “fast countâ€, at which point Sting rallied to hit the Stinger Splash and catch Hogan in the Scoprion Deathlock for the empty win and Hogan’s WCW World Title.
Final Analysis
Yes, Sting did officially win the match and the title, and all the babyfaces poured into the ring to celebrate, but Sting had the rug yanked out from under him and his big, crowning career highlight that had been built to for a year and a half. Sting would go on to win several more World Titles over the years, but this match hurt him badly and he never recovered. Hogan, meanwhile, would have the title back within three months while Sting was pushed down to the midcard by summer and made a background player in Kevin Nash’s NWO Wolfpac.
So, of the eight matches on the big blowoff show, five were won by heels, and of the three that were won by babyfaces, two were empty victories, and the one decisive babyface win came on a Hail Mary move on the one heel who has shown that he can win matches without cheating. At the time, there was no way you could know how bad WCW would get over the next three years and change, but with the benefit of hindsight you can see that this show, which was supposed to be the biggest, most successful show in WCW history that should have sent every fan in the world home happy, was truly where everything began to go wrong and was the beginning of the end for the only true competition Vince McMahon ever had.
This is, without a doubt, the most disappointing show I’ve ever seen. Bret Hart may have been screwed in Montreal, but the fans were screwed at Starrcade 97.
Thanks for reading and I’ll be back soon with Starrcade 98, featuring another main event rife with boneheaded booking. Until then, all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com as usual. See you all soon as we continue our journey way down Starrcade way!
