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By the time Starrcade 1999 rolled around, some major, major changes had taken place in WCW. Shockingly, Eric Bischoff had been removed from his position as head of WCW earlier in the year, a move that some thought was overdue because of the major downward slide WCW had been on for nearly two years by the time of his removal. The removal of Bischoff was certainly a shocking headline to read, and perhaps equally or even more shocking news came later, as in October of 1999 word leaked out that the WWF’s head writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, who had in large part been credited with the WWF’s remarkable turnaround and shift into the Attitude Era, would be leaving the WWF and would be assuming control of the creative end of WCW. This was seen as a major coup for WCW, as they put faith in Russo and Ferrara and hoped that they would be able to turn around WCW the way they had done for the WWF.
It didn’t take long into Russo’s tenure in WCW to realize that while a lot of the ideas that had made it to TV in the WWF had undoubtedly come from the head of Vince Russo, a lot of people didn’t realize that Russo was a guy who obviously needed somebody working with him to filter out the bad ideas, because when he was set loose to do whatever he wanted, he ended up coming up with some really bizarre things. Russo’s booking consisted in large part of nonsensical turns, match stipulations that were selectively adhered to during matches, endless non-finishes, blatant ripoffs of stuff he already booked in the WWF, and lots and lots of juvenile humor that must have popped Vince McMahon but didn’t get over with the audience at large.
That’s not to say that Russo’s run as booker was all bad. One of the things Russo was very good at was giving people characters and a reason to be there, so everybody in WCW, even the Nitro Girls, now started developing some kind of personality and storyline. The angles and characters might have sucked, but they at least had something to do, and I think that’s something that’s often overlooked in an era where most of WWE’s talent gets let go because creative has nothing for them. He also listened to the internet fans to a much larger degree than other bookers seemed willing to, and it was under his watch that Bret Hart became WCW World Champion, Chris Benoit got his first serious push to the main event, and Billy Kidman got a feud with Hulk Hogan, however poorly it ended up coming off.
But even though this is quickly turning into an essay on Vince Russo’s qualities and faults as a booker, we’re really here to talk about Starrcade 1999, so let’s get into the action.
The Undercard
The show opened with a tag match pitting Disco Inferno & Lash Leroux against the Mamalukes of Big Vito & Johnny The Bull, with Tony Marinara at ringside. You might know Marinara better as Tony Mamaluke from ECW, ROH, and other indies, and he’s a better worker than anyone actually wrestling in this match. The story here was that Disco Inferno owed Tony’s father, Big Daddy Marinara, thousands of dollars and the Mamalukes were here to collect. Rumors that they were gambling debts from the casino Disco had in his basement are unsubstantiated. The stip was that if Disco’s team won this match he’d be cleared of his debts, and I’m not sure what would happen if he lost, but I guess the Mamalukes would dump him in a river or something, I don’t know. I’m also not sure how Lash Leroux got mixed up in this, as you don’t generally associate Cajuns with Italian mobster activity unless there’s stuff about organized crime I just don’t know anything about. Pretty standard tag match, though the Mamalukes were a much better team that I remember them being. Disco accidentally gave Leroux the Chart Toper (aka the Stone Cold Stunner) when Leroux bumped into him from behind, and that led to Vito hitting a big implant DDT for the win. After the match, the Mamalukes beat Disco up and stuffed him in a bodybag, then carried him to the back, threw him in the trunk of a car (with Virginia plates…I guess it was from the Virginia section of Brooklyn?) and sped away, so maybe I was right about Disco getting dumped in a river.
At this point they announce that US Champion Scott Hall suffered an injury and would be unable to defend the US Title against Chris Benoit in a Ladder Match as planned. With this being the third year in a row that Hall didn’t wrestle at Starrcade, I’m starting to think he has some kind of phobia about working the show. In any event, Benoit is awarded the title, but he comes out and says that he doesn’t believe in titles being won or lost in a boardroom, so he wants to defend the title in a Ladder Match tonight and issues an open challenge to anyone who wants to face him. Why don’t guys like Barry Horrowitz or Skinner ever answer open challenges like this?
Speaking of people who shouldn’t be anywhere near a title, we next get Cruiserweight Champion Evan Karagias defending against Madusa, who was starting to look a bit past her prime by this point, and I think by now she’s probably graduated to wearing big gaudy fur coats and smoking those really long cigarettes…you know, the Cruella Deville look. I don’t know if this speaks to them trying to really do something different or to Vince Russo’s obvious issues with women, but Karagias didn’t hold back at all on Madusa here, and actually seemed to stiff her worse than he would a male wrestler. Spice (the Nitro Girl, who was unfortunately not accompanied by Sugar and Everything Nice) was at ringside, ostensibly in Evan’s corner, but this being Russo Booking, we had to have an obvious heel turn, so she got up on the apron at one point to randomely make out with Karagias who, being a complete idiot and all, completely forgot about the match he was in and went for it, but this led to Spice punching him in the groin (which Karagias forgot to sell) and allowing Madusa to hit the German Suplex for the win to become the first woman to hold a men’s title in WCW. Russo did this all of two months after he did the exact same angle with Chyna in the WWF.
Speaking of things that were ripped off from the WWF, we now go to Norman Smiley defending the Hardcore Title against Meng. I’ll give Russo a pass on this one since the WCW Hardcore Title was created a few months before Russo started there, but it still came off like a total ripoff of what the WWF was doing and doing better. That said, I have to give Russo credit for creating Screamin’ Norman Smiley, the cowardly Hardcore Champion who didn’t really want to be Hardcore Champion and would literally run screaming from his opponents, including tonight’s challenger Meng, of whom he was (understandably) deathly afraid. Norman ran like hell the whole match and would try to hit Meng with something every so often, Meng would no-sell, and Norman would scream and run away. It was hilarious to watch them battle all the way through the backstage area until Meng got ahold of him and started trashing the backstage catering area by throwing Norman around back there. Finally, Fit Finlay and Brian Knobbs jumped Meng and laid him out with a pipe, and then Smiley, who had hid under a table during the attack, snuck out, pinned Meng, and ran off. Norman Smiley was so awesome.
Now we go to what was supposed to be an eight person tag match pitting the Revolution against Hacksaw Jim Duggan and three mystery partners, but Shane Douglas had an arm injury that was preventing him from wrestling (which he suffered three months before this match was announced) and spent the whole match at the announce table, so the Revolution was already down one person. Then you have Asya, a not quite as beastly looking ripoff of Chyna who still wasn’t a very good wrestler and barely factored into the match anyway, so you really had Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn against four guys. Duggan brought out the Varsity Club (Rick Steiner, Mike Rotunda, and Kevin Sullivan) as his partners, and with it being over ten years since the Varsity Club originally split up, I’d be willing to be that no more than 20% of WCW’s viewership even remembered who they were in the first place.
The backstory to this one was that the Revolution had declared themselves a sovereign nation, which uber-American Jim Duggan took great exception to and challenged them to this match. Duggan wrestled the entire match and for some reason wouldn’t make a tag to his partners, so the Varsity Club finally came in the ring and cleaned house on the Revolution, then turned on Duggan (I know, a nonsensical heel turn, how shocking!), but they kept fighting the Revolution as well, so I guess we were supposed to wonder whose side they were really on. While the Varsity Club was outside the ring brawling with the Revolution, Douglas took advantage of the opportunity and slid into the ring and pinned Duggan. Because of this loss, Duggan now had to renounce his US citizenship the next night on Nitro.
From there, we go to Vampiro vs “Dr Death†Steve Williams, with Oklahoma in his corner. I thought Oklahoma was sort of dumb, but is made out to be worse than it was because Ed Ferrara did imitate Jim Ross’ Bell’s Palsy, but I think that if it weren’t for that, it would have been fine for a one or two time thing because I thought his imitation of Jim Ross’ announcing style was funny. But they ended up dragging it out way longer than they should have, and I thought that it was lame that they made a recurring gimmick out of a character that basically parodied something from the WWF, which made WCW look bush league. But that’s Russo for you, and he’s done the same thing at least 8000 times since in both WCW and TNA.
As for the match, Oklahoma was locked in a cage at ringside and if Vampiro wins, he gets a five minute match with Oklahoma, which is OK with me. Come on, that was funny! Okay, well it’s not looking like Vampiro would get that five minutes because Williams basically destroyed him the entire match, then beat up the Misfits (who I don’t know anything about, but I gather were some gimmick band that were wrestling fans and somehow hooked up with WCW, who put them with Vampiro, and I gather Fampiro wasn’t too happy about it), and then went back to beating up Vampiro, then got himself disqualified for shoving the ref down when he tried to pull Williams off of Vampiro. So legally speaking, Vapiro got the win, but now he’s down in the ring after getting destroyed by Dr Death, so Oklahoma’s more than happy to get let out of the cage for his match. He gets in the ring and gets some offense in on Vampiro, but Vampiro recovers and he and the Misfits take turns beating up Okalhoma before Vampiro puts him away with the Nail In The Coffin (aka the Michinoku Driver) for the win. I would have thought he’d just beat him up for the full five minutes instead of trying to simply pin him, but whatever.
From there we go to Curt Hennig & Creative Control against Booker T & Midnight in what, again, wass supposed to be a six man tag, but Stevie Ray decided in an interview right before the match that he wasn’t wrestling tonight because he didn’t like Midnight, and Midnight was so green that the only move she knew was a wristlock, so really it was a 3-on-1 on Booker. Creative Control and Curt Hennig were working for the “Powers That Beâ€, who was a faceless voice in an office backstage who would dictate the direction of the company. He could have been Doctor Claw since the most of him we ever saw on camera was a single arm, but he never told his gang to eliminate anyone. The Powers That Be had an obvious bias towards Jeff Jarrett and their other flunkies, Curt Hennig, Creative Control (who you may remember as the Blu Twins, DOA, or simply the Harris Boys), La Parka, and Shane, who you may remember as Virgil or Vincent, and is now given yet another joke name. How this guy made such a good living for so many years is beyond me.
Anyway, much like the Cruiserweight Title Match earlier in the evening, the heels had no problem whatsoever beating up Midnight, which was fine with me because she sucked and couldn’t do much more than take a beating anyway. She didn’t last long in the wrestling business, for anyone who was wondering. She played Greenhorn In Peril and did make a hot tag right in front of the referee, but he “didn’t see it†because she wasn’t supposed to make the tag yet, and WCW did a lot of those kinds of dumb things around that time. Anyway, Stevie did end up coming to ringside but Booker told him to get lost, and a minute later Hennig used brass knucks to knock Booker out and allow one of Creative Control to get the win. Maybe Booker should have let Stevie hang out after all.
Up next we have a Bunkhouse Brawl between Jeff Jarrett and Dustin Rhodes, but sadly Bunkhouse Buck is not the guest referee. I would have thought he would be given the Tennessee connection and all, but then again Buck is SO 1994. This is a come as you are brawl, so Dustin comes out in a t-shirt, jeans and boots while Jarrett came out in assless chaps. I figure they might be from David Lee Roth’s collection, but they’re not fancy enough. This match had a pretty lackluster, thrown together build and it ended up turning out to be a really terrible match that was mostly notable for Curt Hennig flagrantly interfering at every turn. Dustin at one point randomely decided to duct tape the referee into the corner, then gave Jarrett the running kick to the groin. Curt Hennig tried interfering, but Dustin finally got tired of him sticking his nose into the match and gave him the groin kick too. Dustin and Jarrett brawled out of the ring and over toward the entranceway when Hennig jumped in AGAIN, and this time while Dustin was distracted Jarrett climbed a ladder and jumped off with a guitar shot to Dustin then pinned him on the floor, so I guess this was Falls Count Anywhere as well. Remember what I said about WCW being bad about informing us of the stips?
Speaking of people being bad at things, David Flair came out next to do a bad imitation of a wrestler as he took on Diamond Dallas Page in a Crowbar On A Pole Match. If you’ve never seen him wrestle, believe me that Ric Flair didn’t pass down any wrestling talent genes to his son because he really, really sucked. About the only actual wrestling move he knew was a vertical suplex, other than that all he could do was kick and punch, and those kicks and punches looked so bad they made you wonder how Ric Flair’s son could possibly be so talentless. Ric has said since that they threw David into the spotlight way too quickly without giving him time to develop first, and I guess there’s some merit to that, except that he continued to wrestle for over another year in WCW after his debut and he never improved the slightest bit. I made a remark before Reid Flair made his pro debut that he had David as his partner for the match because no matter how badly he did, there’s no way he could possibly be worse than his brother, and if you were watching WCW back in 1999-2000, you know what I mean.
But getting back to the match, DDP had put Ric Flair out of action, so David went crazy and beat DDP within an inch of his life with a crowbar, then spent the next month stalking Page’s wife Kimberly. The new, crazy David Flair was no better than plain old David because he was still a crappy wrestler, only now he had a really stupid, completely forced and over the top gimmick too. Eventually DDP returned and targeted David Flair, and that led to this match. The less I tell you about this match the better off we’ll all be, so let’s cut right to the finish: David got the crowbar, but before he was able to hit DDP with it once, DDP hit the Diamond Cutter for the win, so the crowbar didn’t actually end up playing into the match at all. DDP hit another Diamond Cutter after the match was over and grabbed the crowbar, but just to ensure we didn’t get any of the crowbar shots we were expecting, Daffney ran into the ring and threw herself over David to save him from any further attack from DDP, who just stood there watching as Daffney pulled David out of the ring and helped him to the back.
The next match pitted former best friends Lex Luger and Sting against one another, ten years after their first meeting at Starrcade way back in the Iron Man Tournament at Starrcade 1989. The story here was that Elizabeth was Lex Luger’s manager, but Luger mistreated her and would lock her in closets and cages while he went to go wrestle, which was eerily reminiscent of the stories about how overprotective Randy Savage used to be back in the WWF in the 80s. It was also strange seeing them together and thinking about how she would end up dying in Luger’s home just a few years later. Eventually, Sting stepped in because he was tired of seeing the way Luger treated her, so if he wins this match, Elizabeth gains her freedom. Backstage before the match Elizabeth was carrying a can of mace to use in case Luger went for her, and Sting gave her what he described as a “super high octane version†of the mace and told her to leave the one she had in the back. Turns out that after over ten years of being repeatedly suckered into sneak attacks by his “friendsâ€, Sting had finally gotten a clue because when both men were knocked out during the match, Liz snuck into the ring and went to check on Luger, and when Sting caught her she sprayed him with the can Sting had given her, but instead of mace it turned out to be a can of silly string. Sting smiled at her and calmly asked her to leave the ring, which she did, but when Sting went for the Scorpion Deathlock, Liz came in with Sting’s bat. She went to hit him but he caught her again and told her to leave. Liz went to leave again, but this time she turned back around just as Sting trapped Luger in the Scorpion Deathlock and cracked him in the face with the bat, drawing the DQ. Sting crumpled to the mat unconscious, but this didn’t stop Luger from taking a chair and Pillmanizing his arm like 10 times.
That was followed by a Masster Of The Powerbomb Match between Kevin Nash and Sid Vicious, with the winner being the first man to powerbomb the other. I think I must have been the only person who actually enjoyed their series in 1995 because everyone else seemed to think they sucked. They worked a slower, more methodical style, sure, but I guess people expected a 45 minute mat wrestling marathon instead. In any event, they had their usual match but this one had a really dumb finish as the referee got bumped and Sid hit the powerbomb, but since the ref was out he couldn’t call for the bell. Jeff Jarrett ran out and cracked Sid with the guitar, and Nash tried powerbombing him but he had hurt his back during the course of the match and couldn’t get Sid up, so he revived the referee and told him that he powerbombed Sid, and the ref took his word for it and called for the bell. Geez, if that works, why doesn’t everyone try it?
Finally we get to one of the only two decent matches on the card, as Chris Benoit defended the US Title against Jeff Jarrett in a Ladder Match. Benoit was at his best at this point and was hitting on all cylinders, while Jarrett was doing the exact same act he’s been doing his whole career which never fails to put me to sleep. That said, Benoit worked really hard and this was a really good match for being a)a backup match and b)a Jarrett match. They did a couple of cool spots where Benoit was on top of the ladder and Jarrett hit a missile dropkick to the ladder, causing Benoit to drop like a rock, and then later Benoit ducked a Jarrett clothesline, rolled under the ladder, and dropkicked it into Jarrett’s face. The finish came when Benoit went to the top of the ladder and actually had the belt in his hands, but instead of going for the win, he hit a flying headbutt onto Jarrett, and then climbed back up the ladder and grabbed the belt for the win. Benoit was amazing and actually carried Jeff Jarrett to a good match, and was totally deserving of the World Title win he would get a month later and then walk out on the next day.
The Main Event
After two non-wrestling appearances, Bret finally has his first match at Starrcade, defending the WCW World Title against challenger Bill Goldberg. Bret had actually come to WCW around the time Goldberg made his TV debut, but it was Goldberg who was given the monster push straight to the WCW World Title while Hart, the five time former WWF World Champion, was pushed down to US Title level. Bret and Goldberg finally had their first confrontation on an episode of Nitro in the Spring of 1999 as Bret challenged Goldberg to come out and face him in the ring. Instead of a match, Goldberg simply speared Bret but though Bret had certainly taken a nasty knock from the move, Goldberg was completely unconscious. Bret slowly got to his feet and took off his shirt, revealing that he had strapped a metal plate around his midsection which Goldberg had unwittingly rammed into when he speared Bret.
Immediately after that incident, Bret took some time off to heal a couple of nagging injuries and while he was off, his brother Owen unfortunately died in a tragic accident on a WWF PPV. After Owen’s accident, Bret ended up taking several more months off before finally returning to action and rededicating himself to winning the WCW World Title. As it happens, the WCW World Title was vacated right around that time and put on the line in a 32 man tournament. Bret entered the tournament and, as luck would have it, his first round opponent was none other than Bill Goldberg. Bret defeated Goldberg when, unbeknownst to the Hitman, Sid Vicious and the Outsiders ran in and attacked Goldberg. Hart went on to win the entire tournament and as his first title defense on PPV, Bret put the title on the line against Goldberg to make up for the suspect circumstances under which their first match ended.
Breaking with tradition, Bret came to the ring first, and I don’t know why it bothers me when it goes that way, but it does because it just feels wrong. Goldberg dominated the early part of the match, overpowering Bret and more or less tossing him around at will until Bret moved out of the way of a spear and Goldberg crashed into the turnbuckle at top speed. Bret followed that up with the ringpost figure four and then got back in the ring and went to work on the leg. The heat for this match was unreal, and even though WCW had its usual band of mindless Goldberg followers in the crowd, there were also a very vocal group of fans chanting “Goldberg sucksâ€, making Bret the only person I can remember during the WCW years that was able to take away part of Goldberg’s fanbase for his own.
Bret locked Goldberg in the figure four, but Goldberg was able to escape that and the match continued. From there, there were three ref bumps, after which we were apparently left with no more referees, so Bret and Goldberg went at it alone in the ring when Goldberg caught Bret square in the head with a stiff superkick that gave Bret such a bad concussion that he ended up having to retire not long after this. On a personal note, Bret is one of my favorites of all time and I resent to this day that a guy who can honestly say he was careful enough to never seriously injure any of his opponents had his career ended at the hands of a guy who had to be a man and kick Bret hard and sloppily enough that it ended his career. If I were Bret, I would add Bill Goldberg to Vince McMahon on that list of guys he’ll never forgive for what they did to him.
Anyway, you could see that Bret was very badly rattled from Goldberg’s sloppy ringwork, and it didn’t improve matters when Goldberg drilled him as hard as he could with a spear right afterward. Bret somehow finished the match, clipping Goldberg’s knee and putting him in the Sharpshooter just as Roddy Piper, who held some fleeting position of power in WCW that I don’t care to look up just now, cmae into the ring to replace the three referees who had been knocked unconscious. No sooner had Bret gotten Goldberg in the Sharpshooter did Piper call for the bell and award the match to Bret, making this #424 of the 8293489234 times the Montreal finish had been redone. Bret obviously didn’t want to win the match this way and protested with Piper, who simply walked out and let the decision stand.
In case you were wondering what happened after this, Bret ended up wrestling for almost a month after this, during which time he turned heel on Goldberg and formed a new, streamlined version of the NWO with Jeff Jarrett, who would go on to win the US Title from Chris Benoit, and World Tag Team Champions Scott Hall & Kevin Nash, marking the first time a stable consisted of all four champions since the Ric/Barry/Arn/Tully combination of the Four Horsemen in 1988. He was scheduled to defend the WCW World Title against Chris Benoit at Souled Out in January of 2000, but by that time he finally discovered the extent of his injury and missed the match. The initial injury was probably bad enough on its own, but the fact that he continued wrestling with it, not knowing how severely he was injured, undoubtedly made it worse, and after being terminated by WCW several months later, he announced his retirement and never wrestled again. Thanks, Bill. Thanks a lot.
Final Analysis This was a show that was entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons. If you enjoy shows full of dumb gimmicks, complex and selectively enforced stipulations, and several wrestlers who were so bad that they shouldn’t have been anywhere near a wrestling ring, much less the biggest show of the year, this is the PPV for you. Through sheer force of will, Chris Benoit and Bret Hart dragged their opponents kicking and screaming to good matches, but since neither would be wrestling in WCW for more than a month after this show, neither match meant much in the long run. On top of that, Bill Goldberg’s sloppy ringwork caused the end of the career of one of the greatest workers of all time, something I’ll never forgive him for and something that makes me hate him for reasons beyond the usual reasons people despise the guy. In other words, if you want to see how WCW could get even worse than it got in 1998, check this show out, otherwise avoid at all costs. Thanks for reading, and as usual all feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com. Before we move on to Starrcade 2000, I’m going to go back and do the reviews of Starrcade 1986, 1995, and 1996 since I missed those the first time around, so keep your eyes open for those, and I’ll see you soon!
