wrestling / Video Reviews

The Furious Flashbacks – NWA Starrcade 87

March 14, 2008 | Posted by Arnold Furious
4.5
The 411 Rating
Community Grade
12345678910
Your Grade
Loading...
The Furious Flashbacks – NWA Starrcade 87  

The Furious Flashbacks – NWA Starrcade 87

Chi-Town Heat

Despite having done several supershows 1987 was the year that the writing was on the wall for the NWA. The WWF had made PPV work. Wrestlemania 3 made Vince McMahon SO much money that the NWA had to follow suit and do their own PPV. The obvious choice was Starrcade seeing as it was their version of Wrestlemania before there was a Wrestlemania. Vince McMahon’s immediate reaction was to completely fuck with Crockett and do the first Survivor Series on PPV the same night. And force the cable companies to choose between them. After Wrestlemania 3’s huge numbers there was really only one choice. Starrcade ended up being carried by some suppliers though and because wrestling was hot it did 3.30. Survivor Series did a 7.0. Cable companies chose 10-1 in favour of Vince’s Survivor Series. 2-0 Vince. He’d make it 3-0 by airing the Royal Rumble in 1988 for free against the NWA’s PPV Bunkhouse Stampede. Crockett got his own back by putting the first Clash of the Champions show on against Wrestlemania IV. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Vinny Mac! Of course the damage was already done and we all know what happened afterwards. Hell, if Ted Turner hadn’t thrown cash at WCW Vince would have won the American Wrestling Civil War a long time before his eventual victory in 2001.

The story leading into Starrcade was that the NWA wanted a marquee match up. The original plan, and you’ll notice this shit happens all the time down in the NWA, was for Magnum TA to be champion. But his career was ended in a car crash. So the NWA board got together and thought about it and decided the big money would be in a match between the Nature Boy Ric Flair and the OTHER Nature Boy Buddy Landell. I’m not really seeing that myself but Landell was a decent talent. The idea being that Landell won the title and Flair took it back at Starrcade seeing as they’d run the Flair defence at Starrcade the previous three years. BUT Landell was pretty fucked up at the time and got stoned the day he was due to win the title. He turned up in no fit state to compete and instead of winning the NWA title he won himself a P45 (pink slip to American readers). Unfortunately this turn of events left Flair as the champion and Starrcade looming quickly. Step forward the substitute…Ronnie Garvin. Now, Garvin wasn’t a bad performer but he really wasn’t seen as a champion by the NWA fanbase. So he gets the big babyface win over Flair, you know the guy who gets anyone over as a babyface because he’s such a good heel, and gets booed. The NWA fans didn’t want him as champion. Plain and simple. The title match was set here for Flair to win his belt back but with the crowd strongly divided over the issue (think X-Pac or possibly John Cena) it made for some interesting viewing.

We’re in Chicago, Illinois. Hosts are Tony Schiavone & Jim Ross.

The Freebirds/Sting w/Precious v Eddie Gilbert/Rick Steiner/Larry Zbyszko w/Baby Doll

BADSTREEEEET, ATLANTA GA! Sting is pre-Clash 1 so he’s not AS over as usual but everyone on the babyface team gets popped huge anyway because it’s the opening match at Starrcade. The first basic amendment coming into this show is the concept that the opening match should be important, which is one up on previous Starrcade’s and it works because the crowd is hot as hell from the start. The story behind this is that Rick & Sting used to team but Sting turned face. So Sting didn’t get turned on this time? He gets turned on a lot. He’s stupid. So they select team mates and have a 6-man. Erm. So a one on one match was out of the question then? Of course Gilbert managed the duo. Perhaps just a tag match then? Sting brings the excitement early with a fucking tope. Ok, looks like we upped the ante somewhat. I guess they went out here thinking they needed to outshine the WWF’s efforts. The Freebirds work over Rick’s arm in reverse heat. Great, now I have “Badstreet” stuck in my head. Larry gets a tag and he’s picked off too. Gilbert in and Sting takes him apart as a measure of revenge. I know a few old bosses I had that I’d like to give a kicking to. We get an announcement about the time (“7 minutes have elapsed”). So, time limit draw then! It’s also a signal for Garvin to get beat up and take the heat segment. I’m glad JR is doing the PBP here but that does mean we get Tony’s inane rambling as “colour”. “He can kick out when all the chips are down” – Tony. Thanks for that Tony. Cheers. More heat on Garvin. Crowd seems a bit nonplussed as 10 minutes elapses. Weird that the heat is on the only NWA guy. Everyone else in this match came from the UWF. Garvin would go on to team with Michael Hayes on a regular basis later. Technically Garvin wasn’t even a Freebird until 1989 so I’m somewhat jumping the gun on the team name. Sting gets roughed up to use up some more of the time limit. Hayes gets a hot tag and everyone spills in for a huge brawl. “It’s breaking down in Chi-Town” – JR. Bulldog on Larry for 3 but his foot was on the rope. Sleeper but that gets NO pop. One minute left. C’mon guys…no one will take a crowd pleasing job? The crowd can smell the lousy finish and have died. Hayes gets a miracle sunset flip but the time limit expires. **. It was fine apart from the lack of a finish. Why book a time limit draw as the opener? I mean REALLY. Did no one just pipe up when that was booked and say “shouldn’t a babyface go over in the opener”? Get the crowd all riled up. Or book a cheating heel to go over and piss them off. Get them all riled up. In fact ANY finish would be better than a time limit draw, which solves nothing and pleases no one.

BACKSTAGE Missy Hyatt is handling interviews. Talking appears to be an issue. Much like Jim Ross’ horrible fake smile on the handover segments. Thankfully Missy disappeared for the remainder of the evening.

UWF title – Steve Williams (c) v Barry Windham

Yeah, another booking winner here. Put the UWF title on second to show how “important” it isn’t. Putting Windham in there makes it look like they’re taking it seriously but outside of Bill Watts (who had a total hardon for Dr Death) no one wants to see Doc as a champion. The luke warm crowd response is a fine example of that. Amazingly it’s Tony that brings up the Sooners not JR. Doc tries to win the crowd over by pressing Windham but Barry sneaks out and rolls him up. Windham seems to have lost a lot of momentum because he couldn’t get it done against Flair. They work some nice counters on the mat. Crowd is actively bored. They start trading on suplexes. Because Windham is so big it makes Doc look like Taz. Well, Tazmanic anyway. He’s all hair and headlocks. Crowd is bored again. There’s a very definite feeling out process going on. Doc goes for a leapfrog but Windham headbutts him in the groin. Windham WON’T take advantage and the crowd hate that. Yeah, it’s good sportsmanship but people hate that. Put the boots in man! Make the title mean something. Doc milks this for WAY too long. Either that or he managed to really hurt himself, which could be the case because his selling goes to shit post-groining. Windham decides to work in something interesting and throws himself over the top rope. Doc cradles him on the way back in and gets the win at 7.02. ¼*. Crowd rightfully shits all over the bullshit finish. Nice work guys. Both men ended up looking like shit. Doc gets booed for winning. This is NOT ideally what you’d want from a booking perspective.

Midnight Express w/Jim Cornette v Rock N Roll Express

Now normally this would be great. But some frickin’ genius decided what this feud needed was a scaffold match. Yanno, a match where neither team can play to their strengths and the action is absolutely guaranteed to suck? The crowd seem happy but that’s because they know someone’s going to have to take a sick bump. Two people in fact. And they sure hate the Midnight Express. The bonus for Camp Cornette of having a match where you can’t get disqualified is that Big Bubba Rogers, Cornette’s hired muscle (well, weight), is he can cheat on their behalf and get away with it. Case in point; Ricky gets his bitch ass BOSSMAN SLAMMED by Bubba after he made the mistake of going after Cornette. So Gibson ends up left 2 on 1 against both MXP. Ricky takes the bump in sick fashion like Jeff Hardy takes that sick bump off Umaga’s urinage. Ricky recovers and wails on Cornette with his own tennis racket. He takes it up onto the scaffold and uses it on MXP. Quite why MXP didn’t just throw Gibson off and win the match is anyone’s guess. What, you two guys couldn’t overpower one guy? Pussies. Gibson has bladed. Tony tries to explain that you can’t just throw someone off. And why not Tony? There’s powder flying around up there and I’m shocked it’s not from Ricky’s private stash. MXP try and run a miscue but thanks to the danger of this match they have to run it at quarter pace and it looks like shit. I’m not feeling the danger element in this one. Hence it’s just boring. Four guys just aimlessly pounding on each other….really carefully. Gibson pulls off a support strut and the racket falls to the floor. Lane goes off the top but grabs the side of the scaffold. He actually dropped a few rungs first, which is a really fucking ballsy move. Eaton is bloody. The racket is back up there and Eaton takes that in the face. Lane ends up on the underside of the scaffold and hangs like he did last time and like last time he falls. Eaton is left up there on his own. This looks so fucking dangerous. Morton gets the racket and sends Eaton tumbling off the scaffold. I feel for these MXP guys. Taking these bumps two years in a row. *. It was better than shit I suppose.

POST MATCH Cornette sends Bubba up top. Ricky decides he’ll face him for revenge on that earlier slam. Ricky opts for shouting “is that the Goodyear blimp?” then punching Bubba in the nuts and running away. Ah, the cowards school of fighting. I actually like him more for that. He steals Bubba’s hat for additional abuse and he now looks like an old Vince Neil.

BACKSTAGE Bob Caudle is also on interviews. He has the “Freebirds”. Jimmy Garvin is really happy he didn’t lose. He’s just happy to be on Starrcade. Geez, what a dork. Garvin delivers a ridiculously long promo not letting Hayes speak at all. I guess they need to kill time to get the scaffold down. Dr Death gets an interview too. He says when the title is on the line you don’t give people an opening.

NWA TV title vs UWF TV title – Nikita Koloff v Terry Taylor w/Eddie Gilbert

This would be a unification match. I always hated the TV title. It sounds so lame. Not like the US title or the Intercontinental title. Being champion of an area of land is great. I’m the best man in the USA! Being the champion of TV just sounds shit. Time to see how good Taylor really is. He’d always have good matches with good wrestlers. Could have a good match with a bad wrestler? Nikita isn’t aggressive enough from the bell for my liking. He’s too tentative and stays on the back foot letting Taylor come to him. What kind of monster babyface behaviour is that? Just spotted Earl Hebner’s hair again. Hopefully that won’t cause as much of a distraction as last time. Nikita grabs an armbar and Taylor can’t get out of it. Gilbert makes a nuisance of himself so Nikita stares him down. NOW he’s the monster. Koloff starts no selling while hanging on to the armbar. Taylor gets sick of being beaten up and bails. Couldn’t he just go for the count out loss? He’d retain his title that way. Koloff starts slugging away and he’s punching the shoulder because he’s actually working some smart psychology in this one. Taylor is no Ric Flair though so every time he does some sort of stalling tactic its just not as much fun. He does steal the Flair pin but Koloff has way too much left and kicks out before going straight back to the arm. This is amazing…Koloff is carrying Taylor. He’s providing the continuity and the backbone of the match. Taylor needs to do more and contributes an eye rake. He misses an elbow drop…PSYCHOLOGY. He sells that bad arm and Koloff grabs it again. Taylor has clearly upset him as Koloff just chokes him. Sickle misses. Koloff ends up lariating the turnbuckle. Koloff’s selling isn’t reliable though. Let’s face it his selling is so bad it makes baby Jesus cry. So Taylor works at the arm for a while. The wrong arm. The right arm is the one that hit the buckle. JR tries to cover for him even after pointing out Taylor is working the wrong arm. 15 minutes elapsed by this point. Way too long for Koloff. Taylor continues the cheating by using the ropes on pinfalls and whatnot. He argues with the ref and gets rolled up…for 2. Gilbert clips Koloff’s knee behind the ref’s back. The importance of having a manager in 80’s wrestling demonstrated there. Figure Four from Taylor and Gilbert adds in leverage. Hey, Earl Hebner is totally copying Tommy Young’s style to make the cheating realistic. He sees it eventually and Taylor argues with Hebner again thus positioning Koloff for Gilbert to attack. Koloff drags him onto the apron the heels miscue and Koloff nails the SICKLE for the pin. TV titles are unified by Nikita Koloff. He then totally forgets his knee and arm are bad while celebrating. Doofus. **. Way too long but actually a really good match considering who was involved. If it didn’t suffer from all the little errors it would have pushed over three snowflakes easy.

BACKSTAGE Magnum TA gets interviewed. He talks about Sting executing the most exciting aerial move he’s ever seen and puts over the rest of the card.

Tag titles – Horsemen (c) v Roadwarriors

Horsemen are now Arn & Tully; the best tag combination they had until Benoit & Malenko in 1999. Of course they’d bugger off to the WWF the following year to become the Brainbusters. In theory this should be great. Arn starts out getting beaten up and selling like crazy before bailing to threaten Paul Ellering. Heh. Yeah, pick on the skinny manager. Ellering thens gets into an argument with JJ Dillon. I guess one cancels out the other. Tully tags in and he gets beaten up for a while. Tully takes a powder but Hawk goes after him, beats him up in the aisle and throws him back in. Animal considers selling something but as Tully comes off the top he’s caught in the powerslam for 2. Tully is fucked so he tags Arn in. Arn is, shall we say, reluctant to enter the fray after last time. Animal lariats him. Tully jumps in on cue and gets laid out as well. The champs isolate Hawk…who promptly clotheslines both of them and if it weren’t for the ropes would pin Tully clean. This isn’t going well for the Horsemen so far. I guess they’re working at the Rope-A-Dope. Or just getting beaten up. One or the other. Arn tries for basics by grabbing a headlock. That doesn’t work. He tries for a piledriver. That doesn’t work. Animal presses Arn without Arn jumping. Fuck me, that’s impressive power. Hawk goes to press Tully as well and an opening finally presents itself as Arn clips the knee. The Horsemen start working as a team and Hawk gets a chair shot to the knee. Arn adds in a DDT for 2. Now the Horsemen have a swagger about them. They cut the ring off and keep on that knee. Tully gets the Figure Four but you’d question whether they’ll ever get a submission off Hawk. I doubt he ever tapped in his entire career. Hawk gets out and Animal gets the tag. He cleans house and they fuck up a spot where Tully trips him up and they have to do it again. Tully bumps the ref. Arn gets thrown over the top rope but the ref misses it. Or does he? Arn gets taken down with the Doomsday Device and a new ref jumps in there to count the 3. ***. Fun formula stuff.

POST MATCH You can tell who’s booking this show because Tommy Young reverses the decision calling the finish a DQ. Now that is a lame booking decision. This IS Starrcade. They could have booked the Roadwarriors to win the titles.

BACKSTAGE Magnum gives his thoughts on that last match. Next Nikita Koloff mangles the English language. He claims his only remaining ambition is to win the world title. JJ Dillon arrives to discuss the prior match.

US title – Lex Luger (c) w/JJ Dillon v Dusty Rhodes

This is a cage match, presumably to stop Dillon from interfering. Johnny Weaver is the official at ringside to prevent the Horsemen from breaking into the cage. Yeah, he’ll be able to stop Arn, Tully and Flair if they decide they want to break into this match. But then I doubt any of them really care about Luger. Hell, this match helped to kickstart his departure from the group, subsequent face turn and run with Flair. Luger poses with his muscles. Dusty poses with his…er…tits. You fat fuck. Put a shirt on. Dusty goes right for a sleeper and Luger gets into the ropes post haste to prevent losing to an embarrassing hold and an embarrassing opponent in all of 2 minutes. I’m sorry but I don’t buy Rhodes as a threat to anyone. He’s just a big fat mess. On the other hand Luger is still a little green around the gills so Dusty has to carry the match. Fuck me, this is terrible. The first five minutes consist of Dusty working the arm. Yawn. The following five minutes consist of Dusty working the arm. Not in any interesting way mind you. Just a hammerlock. Or as it is Dusty Rhodes perhaps hamlock would be more appropriate. Perhaps he’s just waiting for Luger to get sufficiently warmed up that he can bite into his arm and get the gamey taste of man-flesh in his mouth. You know he’d eat Luger if he could. Dusty blades. I’m sure he’d have rather eaten a half dozen cheeseburgers but when in Rome. I’m still not sure I understand what that means. JR calls Luger “methodical”, which is polite announcer speak for “boring”. Dusty breaks out his yearly dropkick. FLY, FATASS, FLY! Luger tries for the Rack but wouldn’t you know it Dusty is too fat for it. Tony talks about Dusty using his “presence” to get out of it. Presence? Try gravity. Luger remembers the opening boredom of an eight minute armbar and works his own for a while. JR is so bored that Tony has taken over on play by play. Dusty piefaces the ref. Excellent. DQ. Match over. DUD.

Sidenote – there’s no way Dusty would ever pieface anyone. After all you can’t pieface someone if you’ve already eaten all the pies.

What do you mean there’s no DQ? Fuck. Dusty starts no selling. Well, his vital organs are protected with 17 layers of fat. 15 minutes gone now. That’s 15 minutes I’ll never get back. Dusty goes back to the sleeper and I find it funny he can’t get it on properly because he’s too fat. When he jumps on Luger’s back there’s a visual that looks a little like the rape scene from the Naked Lunch. Dillon lays out Weaver and throws a chair in. Luger strolls over towards it but Dusty DDT’s him on the chair and wins the title. DUD. So the Roadwarriors don’t win the titles but Dusty wins the US title? I would say “what retard booked that?” but it should be abundantly clear as he’s the US champion. The finish looks really ugly on the slo-mo replay.

NWA title – Ronnie Garvin (c) v Ric Flair

Crowd boo the babyface Garvin. That’d be the Chi-Town Heat from the show’s by-line then. I originally intended to do a new recap of this match but now I have to do it I can’t be bothered frankly. Let’s face it you don’t care if you get a new recap of this match do you? Good, that’s what I thought. Audible “Garvin sucks” chant breaks out from the off once again suggesting people aren’t happy with him as the champ. Garvin brings his dumbass stomp, which Flair sells but not with any particular effort. Flair goes low after his chops are shrugged off. Flair goes to work on the leg. Shinbreaker into the FIGURE 4! Tap, Ronnie, TAAAAAAP. Flair uses the ropes but Garvin turns the move over. Back up and Flair is caged drawing blood. Gee, a main event cage match with Flair in and there’s a BLADEJOB? Wow, this is a night of rare occurrences! Flair tries to run but Garvin gives chase and beats Flair down. Now it’s Garvin’s turn to apply the Figure 4. Flair survives and we get the CHOPS! Garvin cages Flair and hits a crossbody off the top for 2. Backslide gets 2. Up top and Flair is crotched. Garvin looks for the sunset flip but Flair blocks using the ropes for 2. Ref spots it, breaks it and Garvin gets 2. Ref is bumped into the corner allowing Flair to kick out of the Hand of Stone. Flair cages Garvin and pins him. Hmm. That finish sucked. **1/2.

Hmm, that was somewhat brief considering that was a 17 minute match. Anyway, if you want my advice you’ll be getting the Best of Starrcade 83-87 instead because you get to skip over all the crap I’ve had to sit through over the past five shows and just get the good stuff. Winner.

The 411: While it’s not a disaster like Starrcade ’84 there’s really no reason for checking this out. The big matches are all either badly booked or badly executed. Flair should have had a better challenger than Garvin, Rhodes shouldn’t have booked himself into a vanity match and the Roadwarriors should have won. Hell, even the no-brainer opening match didn’t have a finish. Result – disappointing Starrcade. Again. The thing with Starrcade is it was always considered the NWA, then WCW’s lead PPV. Their biggest show of the year and yet they managed to fuck it up more often than not. Compare their success levels to those of Wrestlemania. Now notice which company is still in business. And I don’t mean the NWA and the shadow of their former selves they’ve become.
 
Final Score:  4.5   [ Poor ]  legend

article topics

Arnold Furious

Comments are closed.