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Episode 1: Starrcade '83
37 Plays7 years ago
It begins! We start off our look through WCW with the series commonly called WCW's version of Wrestlemania, Starrcade. A pre-WCW Jim Crockett Promotions created the wrestling supercard with Starrcade '83, and in so doing made wrestling history. Will Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood win the tag titles for the record fifth time? Will Ric Flair get his revenge on Harley Race for attempting to take him out of wrestling for good? Is Wahoo's last name McDaniel or McDaniels? And how many times will Dusty Rhodes have to cut the same promo? For answers to all these questions...let's go to the ring!
Music by Michael Gary Brewer at https://www.instantmusicnow.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Let's Go to the Ring. I'm Bob Moore, and I'm joined by Alec Pridgen and John Mullins. Hey. We'd like you to join us as we take a trip back to the good old days, and sometimes not so good old days, of World Championship Wrestling, WCW. Together, we're going to explore WCW and find the high points and low points along its run. We're going to seek to understand just what WCW was, and what it can still be for fans looking back today.
Overview of WCW Content Review
00:00:58
Speaker
We're going to look at WCW by the series, looking at each year's edition of one particular show. By doing so, we hope to find out what makes that show tick. What makes Starrcade Starrcade, for instance, for Halloween Havoc Halloween Havoc? Are there traits or themes that repeat themselves across the shows? Which years are strong and which years are weak? We're going to largely be looking at versions of the shows available on the WWE Network.
00:01:25
Speaker
While other versions of each show are out there, and edits have been made to the WWE Network versions, these versions are the most easily available to fans these days, for us, and for anyone who might want to go have a look at the shows we discuss. We'll be starting with the show commonly called WCW's version of WrestleMania, their original supercard, Starrcade. So how's it going tonight guys?
Hosts' Personal Wrestling Histories
00:01:49
Speaker
You excited to start this? Yeah, I am.
00:01:53
Speaker
Well, I'm excited. I'm looking back here, not as somebody who grew up watching this and wants to reminisce, but as someone who really wants to get an appreciation and understanding of it now. Back when WCW was running, I only actually caught it near the very end. I heard about it at times from friends in high school, but I never really got into it at the time. And it was more my roommate who would sometimes have it on in the dorm when I was in college. Actually, and to be honest, this is such a dark thing to say at the start of this show,
00:02:22
Speaker
The first wrestling show I can actually remember watching in detail is the last ever episode of Nitro in 2001. So I guess why I wanted to do this is that I saw the end of WCW's story and now I'd like to learn how they got there. Al, what about you? Yeah, I didn't get into wrestling until about 2000. So by the time I started watching it, it was pretty bad.
00:02:48
Speaker
All the writing was not great. The number was really that good anymore. It still hung on for another like year and a half of time I started watching it, but not the best point to start watching a show. Yeah. John, what about you? Well, actually what got me into wrestling was my sister's boyfriend used to watch it with her and there was just some nights where they were sitting on the couch and I just ended up joining them and watching it with them.
00:03:16
Speaker
So it sounds like this is a journey of discovery for us, really, rather than us expounding on what we already know. Yes. And I think it's going to be a fun one. And I hope that you'll all enjoy listening along.
History and Creation of WCW
00:03:29
Speaker
Our journey begins in 1983 at the first Starrcade.
00:03:35
Speaker
Starrcade was created in 1983, when the company that would become WCW was still known as Jim Crockett Promotions. Owned by the Crockett family, Jim Crockett Promotions was an important part of the National Wrestling Alliance, the NWA, a nationwide group of different regional wrestling promotions that allied with each other to cross-promote and share stars. The 1980s were the waning days of the NWA's power.
00:04:01
Speaker
In 1983, Vince McMahon, having recently purchased Capitol Wrestling from his father, broke from the NWA and began seeking to expand beyond his region to form a true national promotion, moving from the World Wide Wrestling Federation to the Snappier World Wrestling Federation, or WWF.
00:04:20
Speaker
Jim Crockett Promotions, on the other hand, stuck with the NWA, but owner Jim Crockett Jr., currently president of the NWA, had ambitious plans for a national expansion as well. He would aim to create a unified NWA with all of its territories under his ownership. Interestingly enough, the name World Championship Wrestling first surfaced not connected directly with Jim Crockett Promotions, but with Georgia Championship Wrestling in 1982.
00:04:47
Speaker
At the request of Ted Turner's TBS, Georgia Championship Wrestling changed its public brand name to World Championship Wrestling in 1982. Georgia Championship Wrestling, though, would not bear the name for too long. More on that when we look at 1984. In 1983, Jim Crocker Promotions created Starrcade, a massive event that would be broadcast over closed circuit television to arenas where the promotion usually toured.
00:05:12
Speaker
The name is said to be wrestler Dusty Rhodes' idea, and traditionally he's thought to have had the idea for the show and booked it as well, though some claim it was actually Dory Funk Jr. at this time, and Rhodes just came up with the name and wouldn't book Stargate until later editions. I'm not a wrestling historian, so I'll leave that to others to debate. I mean, if it helps, Dusty Rhodes is the main event of the next two shows we're gonna watch, though he's probably definitely booking it then. But he is all over this show, too. That's true. So, yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
Starrcade aired on Thanksgiving Day as the continuation of a Jim Crockett promotion's tradition, but in the process, it was starting something new. A massive central supercard, which would be the focus of the promotion's year and broadcast across their territory, and later, nationally by pay-per-view.
Starrcade 1983 Event Details
00:06:02
Speaker
So this is, by my understanding, the very first wrestling super show that, at least in terms of being broadcast across a wide area, it predates WrestleMania by, I think it's two years. I believe so, yes. And also I know the AWA tries some as well, but I don't think they've made their super clash.
00:06:22
Speaker
I think that's later in the 80s. So Jim Crockett promotions definitely deserve some real credit for kind of putting together the very first huge supercard.
00:06:35
Speaker
Starrcade 1983, A Flair for the Gold, aired on Thanksgiving Day, November 24th, 1983, from the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. 15,447 were in attendance, and about 30,000 further fans watched via closed circuit. So, how was Starrcade 1983? And what happened that night? Well, let's go to the ring.
Match Analysis and Highlights
00:07:05
Speaker
Our first match actually kicks the show right off without even any kind of introduction whatsoever. I don't know if that's the original version or if it's just the version on the WWE Network, but we do end up after the first match getting a welcome to the show speech from the announcers, so maybe that is actually how it started. Boom, we're in the ring with a few wrestlers and no one even says something for a few moments. It's kind of weird.
00:07:30
Speaker
The first match is the Assassins versus Rufus R. Jones and Bugsy McGraw. I just want to say briefly that Bugsy McGraw, it may be my new favorite wrestler name. It's up there, yeah. It's definitely charmingly eccentric.
00:07:47
Speaker
The Assassins are a masked duo in bodysuits whose gimmick is that they sort of swap in and out. Although one of them is very young and fit in a bodysuit. One of them is not. So it's definitely not that you could actually mistake them unless you only look at their head and squint with one eye open maybe. So it's not a true like twin gimmick.
00:08:09
Speaker
like you get with the killer bees or anything. Right. But that said, they had different silly wrestling gimmick, which is they would take a little piece of metal, put it inside their mask, and then headbutt people, which would instantly knock people out. Apparently this being super lad, I guess the densest metal known to mankind. And also having no effect on them, you know, get their own skull somehow. Yeah, that's how physics works. And maybe have like a metal plate in his forehead, too. And
00:08:36
Speaker
I think I have a ridge. Oh, there's a Klingon. That are one of the vampires from Buffy maybe, yeah. It's some weird foreheads too. With an osmium plate. There you go, yeah. But yeah, one of the highlights they show on a previous build-up is that they're holding a head-butting contest because that's the thing.
00:08:56
Speaker
between Tassin No. 1, which is the older fatter one, and Rufus our freight train. I forgot the freight train, sorry. Yeah, his Rufus our freight train dunes. So yeah, the contests go extremely lopsided until they strike the referee again in a headbutting contest. He's our freevus apparently. And put the metal plated, which instantly knocks out Rufus.
00:09:20
Speaker
And that's about all there really is to this buildup, other than they're bad guys, they cheat, and now here's two people, one of whom incidentally is the, I wanna say world champion, because they technically hardly race at this point, but this is Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, an easy Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Champion, which they could be the world championship, but at this area you'll find there are way too many titles to keep track of anything. Yeah, we can call it the regional championship or something. Yeah, but either way,
00:09:48
Speaker
Their champion for this company that's hosting this show is in a random tag match for the title of Not in the Line. That's a little weird. Yeah, ever so slightly. But there it is. I noticed McGraw has kind of a strange outfit. It looks like he's wearing loafers and high socks rather than any kind of wrestling boot or shoe. He is, yeah. It's kind of a weird look. He's your drunk uncle who wandered in and started wrestling. Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
We start out with Bugsy McGraw against the shorter of the two masked assassins. The assassin gets the first strike with a shoulder block, but McGraw takes control from there. They go out of the ring pretty fast, but back in just as quickly, followed by the two going at it with big swinging punches. McGraw wins that, but the assassin tags his buddy. We get some of the taller assassin versus Jones next, and Jones beats up the tall assassin without much trouble.
00:10:38
Speaker
He goes for a pin at one point and the camera suddenly tips wildly so we missed the kick out. I was like, did the camera man trip there or something? What was... Very odd production. Yeah. Yeah. We noticed that several times tonight that there's all kinds of production difficulties, but I think we theorized while watching it that they told him he was done with his shot and get to another position, but didn't actually cut. But it looks weird. Yeah. Or he got into the pitfall.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah. McGraw and Jones trade off a bit, with McGraw briefly in trouble at one point, but the two largely dominating. There's even a point where an assassin tries to punch Jones in the head, but he hurts his hand. Huh? I mean, just not- I heard you, but huh? Yeah, his head is that hard.
00:11:27
Speaker
Eventually, the shorter assassin rakes Jones's eyes a couple times for the tall assassin to come in. Jones fights back and gets to McGraw while the tall assassin tags in the short assassin, and it breaks down with all four men in the ring. Jones throws the short assassin out, while McGraw fights the tall assassin, but the short assassin just comes back in and rolls McGraw up for the pin. Kind of an unceremonious ending. I will say there was one thing missing from the matry cap, Bob. Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
Leg wiggling. Lots and lots of leg wiggling. I was going to mention that too. Yeah. Jones has this weird style where he like will punch a guy and or elbow strike a guy and then he will wiggle his knees in this weird little dance and he does it constantly. Yes. That is his gimmick and he is going to do it. Maybe he hit so hard that the injury bounces back through his body and thus it makes his whole body shake. It's got old jelly knees there.
00:12:22
Speaker
Definitely a weird gimmick for a guy who goes by freight train. Yeah, that's true. I think it had some good showmanship. Yeah. Like, you know, they each had their own clearly, other than the assassins, they each had their own clearly defined role in the fight.
00:12:39
Speaker
I like your idea of him redirecting the energy from his attacks. But I thought it was actually more of spinning his wheels, getting ready to do the next thing. He's like building up power. It's his version of the, we're saying, charge up. Kind of showing off a little bit too. That little bit of pride that seems to be interwoven through many of the matches. Yeah, sure. I can see that.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the match was okay, just purely as a match. They definitely had strong characters, but yeah, the match itself didn't do a whole lot for me. I note for lots of posing, leg shaking and gyro-writing.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah. He was my favorite person in the whole match. Everyone else had costumes and stuff, but he actually did something with- Yeah, he actually had some character. Yeah. For me, this wasn't a great match. The opening with McGraw and the Shorter Assassin was really clumsy at times, especially where they tried to do some mat wrestling and it didn't really work out.
00:13:43
Speaker
Jonze, I agree, is pretty amusing. His shaky knees in kind of a dance between punches, elbow strikes, head butts and all, that was funny to watch and entertaining. It never really felt like the faces were having much trouble other than the eye rake part. Yeah. And the ending just felt like it came out of nowhere. It feels very, very sudden.
00:14:04
Speaker
That can be good sometimes, but for me, for this one, it was just kind of, wait, that's it? Yeah. You know, they just get in trouble for the first time in the match and then roll up done. Right.
00:14:15
Speaker
I will admit I think my underwhelmed reaction to this may in part be that I've I don't think seen any of these guys wrestle before so I'm not familiar with them so that it's it's possible that if I saw more I might get a little bit more of their spots but for me this one was pretty underwhelming and kind of an odd choice for an opener yeah I'm used to the later WCW era where openers are really hot matches and this one was kinda it was just there
00:14:43
Speaker
They didn't even cruise away to another decade, so we kind of had a luck. Yeah, true. I don't know what Matt you guys watched, but I thought it was amazing. They had to get to the credits. It's probably like, OK, we got all of our prompters and everything's fixed now. Let's spin. Yeah. I watched the very next show to see if anything super interesting happens. Basically, the assassins have fully given up on this, because since they won, and they are beating up Dory Funk Jr. OK.
00:15:12
Speaker
And that was, mind you, three days later. The very quick turnaround. So that one's done. Okay. Apparently. So now we get Bob Coddle and Gordon Soli welcoming us to Starrcade 83, a flair for the gold. It really does sound like this is their show intro, so it's definitely an odd start. They build up the title match and they note that Dusty Rhodes is here to challenge the winner.
00:15:38
Speaker
Bob Coddle throws to Tony Schiavone, the future voice of WCW, who looks really young here, looks like just out of college or something. He does, yeah. I think he's actually only been the company for a few months tops at this point. I think he joins them around the time of the buildup to Stargate, if I recall correctly. Tony is in the dressing room, and he lets us know that he'll be conducting interviews back there throughout the night.
00:16:03
Speaker
Our second match of the night is Johnny Weaver and Scott McGee versus Kevin Sullivan and Mark Lewin managed by Gary Hart.
00:16:13
Speaker
Sullivan and Lewin. They're all over the build-up shows, but they don't really promote this match. They're just fighting other people. The only way to really build up is that on the show before this, they attack Angel and Mosca's son, which will play in the ending of this, but not affect this match at all, or really even the thing with Angel and Mosca later. So it's kind of weird that that's so important, but also not important at all.
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, you get kind of a feeling, I guess, of there's angles for this show and there's angles for other shows that are going on. Right. You know, so it's not necessarily all focused around Starrcade at this point.
00:16:51
Speaker
Is there any relation between this heart and some of the other heart's wrestlers? No, not as far as I'm aware. Yeah, I'm not aware of this being a relation. There's Jimmy Hart later too, and I don't think he's any relation to any of them. No, although that's a weird thing because he's the first man to the heart that you have. If it's not direct to connect, that's kind of a weird coincidence. You hired a heart and put him with a heart. Maybe that's why they decided to put him together.
00:17:18
Speaker
I will note I watched the show after this. I don't have much, really much follow up to it. However, one of the jobbers is Bret Hart, but with two T's. So it is not the same guy, but it's just kind of weird. Bret Hart's on a WSW show in 1983, but it's also not him. Interesting. Yeah. We'll see the real one in what, like 14 years? 14 years. Yeah.
00:17:44
Speaker
Bob Cottle accidentally refers to manager Gary Hart as Kevin Hart, which would be a little different. A little bit, yeah.
00:17:52
Speaker
Kevin Sullivan's in this match. It was interesting to see a young Kevin Sullivan. I've seen his later stuff, and he looks much more like a normal wrestler here, rather than the crazy cult leader of the Dungeon of Doom. So it was pretty fun to see him like that. However, Gordon Sully does note that people accuse him of being a druid, so I guess even now he was doing kind of weird mystical bits with his character. It's just not quite as obvious. He doesn't have the, you know,
00:18:18
Speaker
head tattoos or paint or whatever it is that he wears later on.
00:18:23
Speaker
By the way, is that a common thing people are being referred to as like an insult, that there might be a druid? I've never heard of that and that had to be a thing before. I think on the indies, I think he actually was doing a Satanist gimmick. So I think maybe druid was a more okay for television, weird mystic angle. I don't know. That is definitely not the same thing. No, I know. It's to be clear.
00:18:51
Speaker
McGee and Sullivan start off fast with some grappling and running the ropes, and there's a nice couple of drop kicks from McGee in there. Both teams trade off a bit until McGee ends up in some trouble as Sullivan and Lewin work on his arm and shoulder. McGee does get some hope spots along the way though, including one cool bit where he breaks an arm hold by actually climbing up on Lewin's shoulder and jumping off to basically axe kick Lewin's arm. That was pretty cool actually, yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
McGee eventually fights his way to Weaver while locked in a hold, and the ref watches him fight for the tag really, really carefully, but then gets distracted and doesn't see the tag, so he doesn't allow it, except Cottle tells us that Weaver was reaching between the ropes for the tag, and that's why it wasn't allowed.
00:19:34
Speaker
You always get that spot where the ref's distracted, he doesn't actually see the tag, so he doesn't allow the tag, but it sounds like what they were actually going for here was he's reaching for the tag in an illegal manner, so the tag isn't allowed. Except the ref is watching the entire time, so why wouldn't he just say, hey man, you gotta go above the ropes? Yeah.
00:19:55
Speaker
It's almost cruel to wait for the tag and then say, nope, not legal. What's the big deal exactly with going through the middle rope? It's easier to reach people. I think it's because the person in the ring has to be standing up to be reached above the ropes. So it is harder for them to fight to it, where if you can tag between the middle or between the bottom rope or something like that, you can do it while they're on the ground.
00:20:26
Speaker
McGee eventually does make the tag, but we get a crowd shot at that exact moment, so we miss the tag. We do get to see the crowd reacting with a big pop, but yeah, WCW's not the best at camera timing at times.
00:20:42
Speaker
Weaver beats up both Sullivan and Lewin, but gets rammed into the turnbuckle. He starts getting double teamed, and McGee runs in to try and help, but that distracts the ref, so Gary Hart can get in, and he helps Sullivan hold Weaver for Lewin to come off the top rope with a knee drop to Weaver's shoulder, which gets the pin.
00:20:59
Speaker
I can see how if that was generally done that would really hurt but that's like I'm not really a knockout kind of situation. My thought was like I would get this if they ended it then with an arm lock. Sure. But he gets a pin. He hits him in the shoulder and then that keeps him down for the three.
00:21:17
Speaker
I mean, technically it was a stronger match than the first one for me. Not discounting stuff Rufus Jones making the interesting visually, but as far as an actual match and structure, it was stronger for me.
Mentorship Dynamics in Wrestling
00:21:29
Speaker
I also noticed this interesting dynamic throughout the show, thinking back on it.
00:21:33
Speaker
of older wrestler and young partner throughout this because that's what the assassins are. The assassins are older wrestler and younger wrestler. There's certain things I think Sullivan and Luin are as well and definitely with McGee and Weaver. Yeah. Yeah, true. They seem to be doing this as maybe kind of a mentorship thing, you think?
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Both teams seem to be more coordinated. You know, obviously they made a little bit more point of the tags, even if they didn't get the camera angles to show you the highlight the that interaction. I think you're right with the the point on having a.
00:22:08
Speaker
like a journeyman and an apprentice and all that. There's definitely some mentorship taking someone under their wing. You can see that the younger version does have a little bit more flair, but a lot of the same style than the other, their tag team partner. So that seems cohesive just by default.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, true. You've got Lewin and Sullivan are both kind of that brawling and abuse a particular body part style. Yeah. And yeah, you had kind of Weaver and Mickey, I think, moderately similar in style to some technical stuff going on with them and... Well, say Weaver is apparently noted as being the first wrestler to use the Superholes as finisher. Right, yeah. So I definitely point to his technical prowess in the regard. Yeah.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah, for me, it was surprisingly brisk. This one's another one that feels really, really quick and has an ending that kind of to a lesser extent than the first one, but it still felt like, oh, wait, that's the finish. You know, it was a little surprising. It's kind of one dirty trick and the heels get it rather than I'm used to matches where, you know, they'll cheat and cheat and cheat and cheat and cheat. It wasn't a bad little match. I did think it was really cool to see Sullivan in his earlier days, since I'm more familiar with the Dungeon of Doom Sullivan, like I said.
00:23:24
Speaker
There was an odd amount of focus on the shoulder. Even the final move is a hit to the shoulder, which, like we said, is like, why does that lead to a pin? I don't quite get that. McGee had some very nice moves from time to time. He had some very good drop kicks and that very cool axe kick spot. The weak link for me was probably Lewin, who didn't do a lot that interested me. He had a good kind of bully sort of look and some basic decent enough moves, but he didn't do anything that interesting to me. Yeah, I can say that.
00:23:53
Speaker
I do want to ask, they called the Bulldog move that Weaver uses on Sullivan at one point, the Oklahoma Stampede. Isn't that... Do you recall, Al? I think that same name's used later on for somebody's power slam. I don't remember who, but... That's Dr. Dusty Woods. Is it Dr. Death's? Yeah. Where he bumps him in the corner, then runs him out with the power slam. Yeah. So I was just like, oh, wait. I've heard that name before, but it's not that move. Yeah.
00:24:21
Speaker
post match Sullivan and Lewin beat up Weaver some more only for McGee to make the save but Hart pulls out an object of some kind a spike I thought Lewin charges over takes the spike and nails McGee with it starting in bleeding Angelo Mosca that you mentioned earlier who's gonna be a special ref in a later match tries to save McGee but gets stuck in the arm
00:24:42
Speaker
So, Lewin and Sullivan can beat up McGee some more. Eventually, Mosca does come back over and clear the heels out of the ring, though, and he and Weaver help McGee leave with Mosca carrying him out. He, uh, accidentally goes the wrong way out at first, though, which was pretty funny. We have blood loss and all. Yeah, yeah, everybody's bleeding. I don't know how it led up to that. It just seemed like, you know, we're gonna work this out, you know, whatever else, and then, you know, blood.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. They just, they go to town. It is weird when Lewin runs over to heart, cause he like, he runs over and grabs his arm like, Oh no, don't do it. And they just grabs the spike and goes to town on, on the guy. It's, it was a weird, uh, weird moment. I know. Yeah. I don't think it goes anywhere as far as a dissension on the team. So it's just a weirdly handled moment, I guess.
00:25:35
Speaker
We go backstage again to Coddle and Solely. They break down the ending and say that behavior was totally uncalled for. They then throw to Barbara Clary, who is with a family from Gaffney, South Carolina, which is about 20 minutes drive from where I went to college. They predict that Ric Flair is going to win the title. We then go to Tony with Harley Race.
00:25:58
Speaker
Harley says that he doesn't want to be in Greensboro any night, not just tonight. He doesn't like the situation, but he's been talking to his friends about Ric Flair's shortcomings and injuries, and he's going to use those against Flair. Nice, like, short but sweet kind of interview. He gives the basis for his character's strategy, and he lets us know that he's the sort of guy that's going to go after injuries and take advantage of anything he can to win.
00:26:24
Speaker
Definitely tells you who the good guy is and who the bad guy is in this situation, I think, just from that. Well, yeah, if you're going to go after the crowd. Yeah. He has a good, considered promo style. He's not very over the top or energetic or anything, but he's very thoughtful. He thinks things through and has a kind of threatening tone.
00:26:48
Speaker
I will say that the way the question was asked was a little weird because he's basically telling him what he needs to say in the promo by the way he asks the question. It's a little strange. He's like, insult Greensboro. And he's like, okay. It's not like, hey, how do you feel about being in Greensboro? He's like, well, as you said, I hate it. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Well, you know, Tony's new. We'll give him a little bit of a pass.
00:27:15
Speaker
Our next match is Carlos Colon versus Abdullah the Butcher.
Reactions and Promos
00:27:22
Speaker
Ali, you got some background on this one? Well, they announced it on the show before this and that's it. Okay, I do recall them mentioning something in match commentary that there'd been an earlier match in Puerto Rico that got thrown out and then banned from Puerto Rico because it got so bloody, I think. That's saying a lot.
00:27:45
Speaker
So Cologne is here to pursue Abdullah. Has he called the butcher because things get bloody around him or? I'm, I'm guessing that's the idea that he's, he's the butcher as in, I will butcher you. I will beat the heck out of you and make you bloody. He looks like a big hunk of, you know, fatty meat, if that helps me at all. And he now owns a restaurant. So maybe he's more legitimately a butcher at this point.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, you're true. You could chimp all the ribs in the back. What's the restaurant called? I think it's like Abdullah's house of Chinese food and ribs. I believe that is the case, yes. Field trip.
00:28:30
Speaker
They grapple to start and Abdullah goes right to pulling out some kind of object and hitting Cologne with it but puts it away and they brawl some more. Cologne fights back and ends up stealing Abdullah's object and hitting him with it to get him bleeding right in front of the referee. He can clearly see it. Is this a DQ? No.
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah, they never said this was a no DQ match, but apparently it is, I guess. Cologne controls from there and ends up going for a pin, but Abdullah flings him off onto the referee and goes for an elbow drop, which Cologne dodges. The ref does not dodge and gets pretty much flattened under the rather weighty Abdullah. Yes.
00:29:13
Speaker
Cologne gets the figure four leg lock on Abdullah, but the ref is out. And while the ref is out, someone, I think the announcer's called him Hugo Savanovich or something, but I couldn't quite hear it. He comes into the ring and hits Cologne, and the ref wakes up in time for Abdullah to pin Cologne for the win.
00:29:32
Speaker
It's weird that Abdullah, in what, like 10 seconds and really starts dabbing a guy. Yeah, it's right away. Yeah, I mean, it's not like, I feel like he tries to wrestle normally, it doesn't go his way, and then he starts cheating. It's just like, well, that's what dabbing you now. That's just, that's my thing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, play the big card first, right? I guess so. He does at least do a little bit better of a job of hiding it from the ref than Kallura does. Right. So I guess if you could sneak in an advantage early on. Yeah.
00:30:01
Speaker
There's some definite hygiene issues related to this match, given that Obdulla had kept that fork or knife where it is inside the top part of his outfit. He pulls it out, stabs a guy with it until it draws blood, puts it back in his tights, and then Carlos pulls it out of there and then stabs Obdulla with it and then puts it back in his tights. Yeah. He's gonna make sure that all their blood alcohol is high enough.
00:30:27
Speaker
So it's quasi sanitary. Sure. I was pretty much watching Abdul the whole time. Basically, I really don't recall too much from that match other than when he was, you know, what moves he used because he's just, he's got a certain presence. He is a big guy. I'm not just saying that, but I'm just saying like he's not, he doesn't appear to be, you know, holding back at any point.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, I can definitely appreciate that. It's just, it tells you that how quickly it goes to using a foreign object, that how little there is to really do. It feels like he doesn't really have a lot of moves necessarily and he needs to resort to the object, then kind of resorts to just clubbing blows. This matches kind of all punches and kicks, I think. And there's not like a lot of structure to it, really. Yeah.
00:31:21
Speaker
Also, does everyone do the figure four in wrestling at this point? I honestly didn't think it was that common of a hold until later on, but we see it here, and I think a few other times on this show, we see the figure four actually. Well, yeah. Valentine does it everywhere. Right, yeah, yeah.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, I found this one honestly fairly dull. There's not too much to it other than some basic brawling, a few hits with an object, and Abdullah the Butcher leaning on the ropes every chance he gets. Cologne does do a nice leg drop at one point, and it was pretty funny to see the ref just get flattened by Abdullah's elbow drop, but there wasn't really much to see here. It did feel like another match that ended kind of out of nowhere too, just one quick easy cheat by the heels and it's all over. Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
That seems to be the theme of a lot of the early matches. Yeah, I think the problem is that this is probably like the 20th or 30th match between Abdul at Butcher and Carlos Cologne, something like that. It was only one we have seen and will see, I think. Yeah. So we're seeing the later stages where they've abandoned the story and they're just gonna fight now.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, is it? Were there other matches beforehand that had something more to them? And now it's this is meant to be the emotional blow off where this is just a bloody brawl. And that is the story, you know, in which case I can kind of understand that. I will note that all the butcher's manager became a color commentator. He made a Spanish commentary team for about 10, 15 years at WWF and WWE. Interesting. So he's all over WWE shows, even though he's on the first WWE show.
00:32:54
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. Back in the dressing room, we get Tony Shafane interviewing Angelo Mosca. Tony asks Mosca, whose arm is bandaged up, if he'll still ref the match with his arm injury. Mosca says he'd do it if he had only one arm. He gets angry and shouts about how seeing the bloody McGee made him think of his own son, and how feeling the spike just got his Latin blood in an uproar.
00:33:18
Speaker
He thinks actions like that don't belong in the NWA, and he respects youth in professional wrestling. Blood is thicker than water. Tony also asked Moscow about the world title match, and Moscow predicts Ric Flair will win.
00:33:32
Speaker
I don't know about you guys, but what was hilarious to me was he's cutting this promo about being angry about what happened to McGee and having sympathy for him and thinking of his son and everything. And this whole time, McGee is seated next to him on the bench, leaned against the wall, bleeding from the head and barely conscious and not even bandaged yet. I'm like, Moscow's sympathetic, but he's not going to help you get medical treatment, apparently. Yeah.
00:33:57
Speaker
Meanwhile, Musk's arm is fully wrapped up. Oh yeah, it's fully wrapped up. He made sure he got treated. Sorry, guys, all the gauze on my arm. For you. This is a big thick arm, so, you know. That's true. The whole roll right there, yeah. He sounds eerily like Lou O'Bano as well.
00:34:16
Speaker
Kind of does, yeah. Which threw me when he first talked about his Latin blood, because I guess the one who was Italian. But I mean, hey, it's fine. Just confused me. Well, you know, they used to speak Latin in Italy. True. So maybe he just got confused and meant the Latin language. Yeah, I guess. It's romantic. After Mosca's interview, we also get some predictions from the crowd, too. They agree with Mosca. They think that Ric Flair is going to win it.
00:34:44
Speaker
Our next match is Bob Orton Jr.
Tag Team Matches and Strategies
00:34:48
Speaker
and Dick Slater versus Mark Youngblood and Wahoo McDaniel, who I think just replaced Bugsy McGraw for one of my favorite wrestler names. That's an awesome name. It is. So I'll go over this a little more later, but basically back in July, Harley raced once he realized he had a face brick flare since he won the title from him, put a bounty on him.
00:35:11
Speaker
That bounty was entered and paid off by Slater and Orton, who did some sort of pile-dart and mood to him, which seemed to take him out of wrestling. Come August, he'll do a promo saying he's never going to wrestle again, but it's clearly a lie because I'm watching the show. But also, he'd be back by September for that. So as part of that, Wild McDaniel, who's a close friend of Flair's in this, and Mark Youngblood are in this match basically because they support Flair and they're going to invent for him.
00:35:38
Speaker
At this point in the show, they start putting photos of the wrestlers along with their names up during the introductions. I guess the folks earlier weren't important enough for all that. This is all a test show. They're like, let's try putting graphics up now. It's like, hey, that might work. Next show will be all graphics. And they're like, oh, there you go. Yeah.
00:35:55
Speaker
It is interesting across this show to kind of see the slow development of their style. You do kind of get a feeling that maybe they're trying some stuff out and seeing what works with this, with the backstage interviews and that kind of stuff. Before we get started, the ring announcer says that a special guest is with us this evening.
00:36:12
Speaker
but the audio goes out during the announcement. He finally gets out that it is former world champion Dusty Rhodes. The microphone cuts out again, and it seemed like they were gonna show Dusty for an interview here, but the audio difficulties interfered, so they just go ahead with the match instead. The show has just tons of glitches. Yeah, it's weird that they cut to the guy, telling us that Dusty Rhodes is there, and then don't cut to anything else. Yeah, they clearly seem like they're gonna, but then they just don't.
00:36:43
Speaker
Wahoo and Slater start, and Wahoo takes control early on. Wahoo tags Youngblood in, who works on Slater's arm. Slater takes Youngblood down, but gets kicked out of the ring over the top rope, and Slater and Orton try to convince ref Tommy Young that it should be a DQ.
00:36:59
Speaker
Young says it was momentum that took Slater over, and it isn't a DQ. The first instance on WCW's big shows of the WCW over-the-top rope throw equals DQ rule, and it's already being subverted. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, because Slater makes the point of throwing himself out, or does this big animated protest for the back grow about him? Yeah. Hey, you should DQ it, and then the rough's like, no, I don't believe it.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, they're both gesticulating wildly. They're like, DQ, DQM, DQM, and Raph's just like, nope, momentum.
00:37:35
Speaker
But Slater gets the advantage, and he and Orton start trading off to fight Youngblood. He fights back at first, but slowly gets worn down by the two, and starts taking a beating, including a brutal double team with Orton holding Youngblood suspended on his knee for Slater to elbow drop him. Eventually they get Youngblood outside, and Orton beats him up while Wahoo tries to complain to the ref, which lets Orton take advantage by slamming Youngblood into the railing.
00:38:00
Speaker
back in, and Youngblood eventually escapes and tags Wahoo, who takes down both heals, only to get stopped with a cheap shot from outside by Orton. Orton tries holding Wahoo for a Slater jump off the top rope, but Wahoo dodges at the last second. Great timing there. And Slater nails Orton. Wahoo and Youngblood double team Slater, but Orton is back in fast, and after tossing Wahoo out, he and Slater double team Youngblood, leading to Orton hitting a superplex for the three, as Wahoo can't get there in time to stop it.
00:38:32
Speaker
I mean, I liked this one a lot to a certain degree. My only problem with the pacing was kind of weird. There wasn't a lot of back and forth with the team. There was faces would be strong for a minute and then could be never five minutes. Yeah. And then they tag out and this didn't even happen again. The stretches were just a little too long for me as far as the formula goes, I would say.
00:38:56
Speaker
There's definitely good stuff in there, though. Ord and Slater are definitely Ord and Lomod and Slater, both really good. It's clear that they have the timing and sort of finessed all these moves that they need for this. And it's not that Wally McDaniel's just dragging it down at all, but he's definitely an older wrestler at this point. So he has experience, but not necessarily the quickness and timing so much. And Youngman has the opposite problem of being younger and not having the experience.
00:39:22
Speaker
So they it's just kind of an unbalanced tag team for me, but it's the overall but still pretty good It's kind of weird. We walked in. Oh does run in there, but it's like three and one eighth So too late rather than hang it too. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's that's good It shows you didn't give up you didn't you know, he did run in and try and stop it. He just wasn't Wasn't there in time. Right? I know just for me. I think there's an idea that I
00:39:48
Speaker
it's so close to being, we'll stop at three. It's kind of confusing. There's a brief moment where they're not sure if he did it or not. True. Yeah. Yeah. They do kind of argue about that a bit. Oh, this one seemed to be a little bit more in line with my experience of how a match would go. Like there is, they have the crests of, you know, like each, each side gets a little bit of a head and then goes back and forth. I, I, I don't really,
00:40:15
Speaker
know how well the crowd is responding to it, to be honest. But it's a little bit more traditional. It wasn't one of those things where you had one person get a, not a super move, but, you know, have one trouble to immediately get penned. Which I was grateful for at this point during the show.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, this feels like more of a normal tag match. This match felt more familiar to me, I guess, a little bit than some of the earlier matches that we've had. I thought there was particularly nice heel work from Orton and Slater. Like you were saying, they kind of have the timing and they have the ability to kind of direct the match a little bit. Youngblood did a pretty nice job in peril. Sure. I did like that it took them time to wear him down.
00:41:02
Speaker
He wasn't just like one cheap shot and now he's kind of already in trouble like you were saying, John. He takes several moves and kind of keeps fighting back and keeps fighting back and then finally he just can't fight back anymore and that's when they had the extended period with him, which I thought was pretty nice.
00:41:20
Speaker
Orton and Slater work really well together. They have some good rhythm. They do some nice double teams. For individual moves, I really liked Orton's just like high angle backbreaker that he does midway through the match that he follows up by just like casually tossing Youngblood to the match like, I'm done with that one. It was a good bit of character in the middle there.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, that movie was interesting. The only one that I've seen that movie for was Heel Big Show when he goes ECW, he starts doing that as well. He would do the Cobra Clutch, where he'd do a backbreaker and then just toss a guy inside like that. That's weird as people I think of now with that move. Yeah, that was a good, like, arrogant moment, I thought for him. Oh, yeah. Really nice.
00:42:00
Speaker
There's a few awkward spots in there too that hurt it a bit for me. There's one confusing bit where Slater's tagged in, but he leaves the ring a moment later, only to come back in after a couple more moves from Orton. Even the announcer sounded a little bit confused about when exactly it was that he tagged in. Yeah. A decent match. I don't think it's going to stick with me, but it was more than acceptable.
00:42:20
Speaker
Also notable, this match featured our first overhead camera shot of the evening. Oh, yeah. Caudal and Soli are both very pleased with this camera work. Soli making sure to praise the cameraman for being 75 feet in the air about every time that this comes on. I'm not sure that the distances are right, but honestly, I can't picture that.
00:42:41
Speaker
The overhead shot in wrestling shows can look really cool when it's used with a good grappling sequence. I think Brett Owen at Mania 10 is it? I think that they frequently use that for some really complicated grappling sequence that looks really neat. I'm used to seeing that when they start doing TLC matches.
00:43:00
Speaker
They intercut that in the match and then when they released the shows on video, which I still have, you could see them just from over on camera. Oh really? Yeah. That's cool. So you can see longer sections of the match with the falls and the angle. That's pretty neat.
00:43:15
Speaker
Post-match, the heels drag Wahoo to the apron. Slater considers jumping off the top rope to hit Wahoo's arm, but decides, nah, he'll jump from the apron instead. Orton is a real man, and he jumps from the top rope. The announcers tell us that Wahoo might have a torn bicep or tricep muscle.
00:43:33
Speaker
It's kind of funny seeing Bob Ordon Jr. attack the arm, given that he's famous for getting a think of legitimate injury and then wearing a fake hat for like 25 years. Yeah, true, true. Should've sweep the leg.
00:43:48
Speaker
All these people were still around the next show and on, Ord and Slider stay around for a while. I would note that Mark Youngblood is featured in Tag Team Match and Stories later in the year, but actually with his brother, who we'll see later, not with Wahoo, but I won't get out of the context of that just yet.
Comedic Elements and Controversies
00:44:08
Speaker
We go backstage again, and we have Tony talking to Rick Flair along with Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood.
00:44:17
Speaker
Well, we're back in the dressing room with, and I'm sure I don't have to introduce these men, Nature Boy, Rick Flair, former heavyweight champion, and of course, Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood here with us. Rick, I've been over in Harley's dressing room, Harley Race's dressing room. He's been talking to his friends, he says, and he says he has something prepared, and I was wondering what you think of that. Well, I hope that he is prepared for the match of a lifetime, because myself, Rick Steamboat, Jay Youngblood, we sit here. We know that in a very few moments, we're going to be climbing into that ring.
00:44:46
Speaker
with all the marbles on the line. I've prepared myself as hard mentally and physically as I can prepare myself. I'm ready for anything and I want to take this opportunity in front of all these wonderful people that supported us to wish J. Youngblood and Rick Steamboat all the luck in the world. I know they've helped me. This is our night and we're not going to let anybody down. I'll tell you what, Rick.
00:45:08
Speaker
You've worked long and hard for it, and up to me, and I know to the people that are watching this StarCute83 are the deserving World Heavyweight Champion. I know that you've trained with Rick and myself at Rick's gym, and it's taken a toll because you've proven to everybody around the area exactly what
00:45:31
Speaker
The flair for the gold means. Now Rick and I have got a match against Jack and Jerry Briscoe, probably one of the most important matches of our entire life, Rick. Everything goes. This is our most important match. We're going for the gold for an unprecedented fifth time. We're ready. We're mentally prepared. And without a doubt, Jack and Jerry Briscoe, you will see your inevitable end coming soon.
00:45:56
Speaker
For me, oddly, he's not known for his promos really, but I think Steamboat actually comes off the best here. He keeps it short, but it's a short direct statement and it really works well. It gets the point across really quickly. Everyone seems kind of subdued tonight. It's weird to see interviews with Ric Flair where he's not losing his mind.
00:46:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'll say by the end of the Starrcade section, you'll be seeing McFlair, you know, Elwood dropping his jacket and like throwing his watch into the crowd. That's weird seeing him so calm. Yeah. And serious. It's just a very normal good guy promo from him. Yeah.
00:46:34
Speaker
I don't think he has that personality yet. Yeah, I have never been able to gather exactly when he starts doing the full on jet flying limousine riding son of a gun type of stuff. I don't know if he was doing that before this and then he became a good guy for this show so he couldn't do it for the moment or if he only actually starts that like in the build up to next year.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how much that is either. I know that this is, I think, I want to say 10 years into his career or something like that. Yeah, so it's not like he's new to wrestling. Right. Well, and also at this point, he's come up in the ranks, started as Ric Flair, and then had a series of matches against Buddy Rogers, which he won the moniker of.
00:47:16
Speaker
nature boy from him. So clearly he's done some heal stuff like that before. And he's obviously the robe and stuff is a carry over from being heal. But it's yeah, it's weird. At this point, he's very calm to date. Yeah, it's not bad. It feels weird hearing it from him. But someone else feels normal. Yeah, I don't think it would bother me at all if it weren't Ric Flair.
00:47:38
Speaker
Tony throws to some highlights of the matches, but instead we go to Barbara, who's with Dusty Rhodes. Weird. I'm wondering if maybe those highlights are removed in the WWE Network version, or maybe they just weren't there.
00:47:53
Speaker
I mean, I'm more inclined to believe the latter, given this show, but... It is WCW, so... Yeah. Unfortunately, the audio cuts out on Dusty's promo, so we don't get a word of it. Soli pricelessly says, well, if you can read his lips, you can tell what he's saying. Barbara manages to get the mic working at least a little bit and says the winner of the World Title match will have to deal with Dusty afterwards. And we just go to the next match.
00:48:20
Speaker
Yeah, I was curious because when she would talk, it seemed like it would work. Then she'd lean towards him and immediately like shut out. Yeah. Shut out. It was really strange. It kind of cuts a little bit with her. So I think it's just generally having trouble, but it is funny that look, we lose 99% of what Dusty Rhodes says. Yeah. And he's clearly cutting a barn burner of a promo too. He is full on, you know, dusty mode. You see his by language. Yeah. It's big and boisterous. Yeah. And maybe Cajun.
00:48:50
Speaker
I've never been quite clear what Dusty's accent is. I'm guessing Cajun is part of it. He's from the South. This is, you know, pick a place. Our next match is Charlie Brown from Out of Town versus The Great Kabuki, managed by Gary Hart. This is title versus mask for the NWA Television Championship.
00:49:12
Speaker
Sometimes, from months back, they had a Loser Leaves Town match, a pretty common occurrence in wrestling companies at this point. Usually when someone leaves the territory, they go somewhere else, or just to the shorthand thing. In this case, it's for storyline purposes. The Jimmy Valiant, notable for his long blonde hair and giant blonde beard, loses the match and is shot at the TV title.
00:49:35
Speaker
Within a month, suddenly a guy looked just like him but wearing a mask, known as Charlie Brown from Out of Town, conveniently with his shirt that says Charlie Brown in the front and from Out of Town on the back. In case you didn't know what his name was in full, shows up and starts giving them a part-time. Gary Hart gives out constantly about how Jimmy Fallon's violating the terms of the match contract. Charlie Brown assists, he's not Jimmy Fallon, he doesn't know who that is. Announcers just sensually play dumb because Jimmy Fallon's a good guy.
00:50:04
Speaker
Eventually he keeps doing so much that they are willing to put the tile on the line with the condition that if he loses, that Charlie Brown must take off his mask and prove that he is Jimmy Valiant. Again, as if there's any doubt of that. Yeah. I mean, he does have the gigantic beard sticking out of the bottom of the mask. It's kind of, no one else has that beard. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Unless he's trying to convince him that the beard is part of the mask.
00:50:32
Speaker
Which would be an interesting trick. I mean, it's not, but that'd be a good trick. Just like glue a beer and connect to a mask with the whole thing on as one piece. Yeah. So this one has a bit of an odd condition to it. The NWA World Television title is on the line, but only for the first 15 minutes of the match's 60 minute time limit.
00:50:50
Speaker
It actually, from the way it's announced, sounds like the mask is also only on the line for the first 15 minutes of the match too. I'm not sure that that's actually the case. It sounded more to me like it'd be title for the 15 minutes and mask overall, but the way it's worded here, it sounds more like both are only for 15 minutes and then after those 15 minutes you just win the match and yay.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure, though. It's really strange. What I don't get is why they don't just make it a 15-minute match. It's like, why does this have to be 60 minutes? But for the first 15, you can win something extra.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah, when one watching the later match in the 90s when they're doing the same sort of thing, they just make TV time match 15 minutes. Right. Yeah. And make a big dramatic thing about the countdown, how you have to you have to win. Yeah. And it's not like the match can go 30 minutes, but if you went out and meant 17, you get nothing for it. No. Yeah. It just cuts off there. Maybe they wanted a resolution. I mean, but you can get a resolution. It's just just schedule. I mean, the match doesn't go more than 15 minutes anyway. So.
00:51:55
Speaker
You could also say that if Charlie Brown doesn't win him at 15 minutes, he's forced to unmask. Because, I mean, you approach it from the idea that the match is 15 minutes long because of the rules of the title. So if he doesn't win that, by default he loses. Which means he has to get the mask up.
00:52:12
Speaker
It's a pointless complication. Yes. Kabuki's entrance gear is great. Very elaborate with robes and an intimidating mask. Very ceremonial sort of pre-match ritual. He blows green mist a couple times during it, but he won't during the match, which feels a little bit odd. I think, if I remember reading correctly, he's the originator of the green mist. He is, yes. Yeah.
00:52:35
Speaker
He's also billed as from Singapore, but he's most definitely from Japan. I've looked this up, but apparently he's just billed from Singapore. I'm not sure why. Solely notes as we get started that Charlie Brown may be from out of town, but he's downtown Charlie Brown to him. I'm not really sure what that means.
00:52:53
Speaker
I feel like that was a downtown Julie Brown reference if she was the person at this point, but I don't think she was on TV till years later. Maybe? I don't know. Unless it's a common thing I've just never heard of before her. He will say it later in the show about a totally different thing. I think it's just something Gordon Solis says. He has a few interesting comments tonight that are perplexing, but also just interesting ways of saying things. Yeah.
00:53:20
Speaker
He's a good announcer, just see every now and then he'll do something a little bit odd. Brown gets controls to start, and takes Kabuki right outside to smack him with a chair, which, again, seems like it should be a DQ, but just kind of isn't. He chucks the chair clear across the ring, and drags Kabuki into the ring post crotch first, too. Kerry Hart gets justifiably upset at all this.
00:53:42
Speaker
We get Brown trying a sleeper on Kabuki a couple times. Both times, Kabuki gets out by either clawing Brown's eyes or grabbing his nose. I couldn't quite tell which. Kabuki gets some kicks and chops and then starts going to claw holds, including some bits where he climbs up to the top rope and jumps off straight into doing the claw hold, which just looks weird. There's no impact, so it's not like jumping off the top rope adds anything, but he does this multiple times.
00:54:07
Speaker
Yeah, I don't understand this whatsoever. It's just, yeah, he jumps off, stops, and then grabs him. The best I could think was maybe Brown's supposed to stand up and doesn't in time, and it's supposed to be a, I jump off, grab you, and take you to the ground harder. Right. But it really just comes off weird. He's just like, I'm gonna jump off the ropes and then gently kneel next to you and grab your head.
00:54:31
Speaker
yeah i mean i could think of maybe if your idea was the misdirection like if you jump off and make so he's gonna cover his head but that doesn't work with this because that would be blocking what you need to do yeah if you're like jumping off stop and then kick him the stomach or something i can see that yeah with a face but
00:54:50
Speaker
Nothing is gained from jumping, landing, and then grabbing a hold. You could do on the ground without doing any of that stuff. Yeah. There is one point where he does jump off and do an actual impact move and then go towards the claw hold, but... Yeah. Yeah, the first two are not. Weirdly, going into the rules of wrestling, he has a move three times, but the third time he changes the move and it still works in his favor. Yeah.
00:55:14
Speaker
Brown does get the crowd into his various attempts to get free, and you can hear someone loudly chanting, go Charlie go, at points, especially when Kabuki tries to take off Brown's mask. We end with Kabuki getting Brown into the corner and charging in, only for Brown to dodge, so Kabuki rebounds off the turnbuckle to the ground. Brown then hits a simple elbow drop, and that's enough for the pin.
00:55:35
Speaker
Gary Hart wonderfully freaks out, going like full-on tantrum in the middle of the ring. I'm growing to like Gary Hart, actually, as we go through this. He was pretty good outside the ring, too, with some kind of smarmy jerk manager bits where he'd like to put Kabuki's photo on the ropes, and then the ref looks at him. He's like, well, I wasn't doing anything. Did you see me do something? What? What? Yeah. He's pretty decent, I think.
00:56:02
Speaker
I'd say he looks like Satan, but I guess we're not allowed to say that in any way, so he looks like, I guess, a tree spirit? Yeah, there you go. Whatever the equivalent would be.
00:56:12
Speaker
I thought it was overall pretty good. It was kind of a weird mix of being a serious match, but then also Jimmy Valiant slash Charlie Brown stuff, while consistent, is kind of over the top in a lot of ways. It's sort of mannerism the way he does moves. It's definitely, it's slightly more subdued than Rufus, Car Afraid Train Jones, mind you.
00:56:34
Speaker
if that's the bar you're going to measure would buy. But yeah, it's kind of a weird mix of it. He's fighting a super serious guy and he's trying to win, but he's also trying to win in sort of slightly goofy fashion. But it's the work for me other than the weird jumping clawhold nonsense and the somewhat abrupt nature of the finish. I watch a couple of shows. I don't recall what Charlie Brown's finisher was, but I feel like it had to be more climactic and then just double drop after you miss. Yeah.
00:57:05
Speaker
This oddly reminds me of, reminds me of Mick Foley. Like we got masks, we got claw holds. We got some craziness. So it had that nice warm feeling, you know, inside for me. Sure.
00:57:21
Speaker
Yeah, Charlie Brown, or Jimmy Valiant I guess, is very expressive, and I think that works in his favor quite well. It gets comedic, but it is also a very strong showmanship aspect to the match, so there is that. The crowd got pretty into this one at points, and Brown did a really good job of keeping them involved.
00:57:43
Speaker
I liked in particular is one bit where he's in the claw hold and he fights his way to his feet and then he like starts kind of like standing in a really odd extended position and wiggling his fingers and the crowd like erupts in cheer is that seeing that and starts chanting for him really strong so it's working yeah no whatever you're doing working yeah for me though aside from its opening and closing the match is pretty much sleeper holds and claw holds and not a heck of a lot else
00:58:10
Speaker
Like I said, Brown's selling his cartoonish, but it's still pretty good. Kabuki has a good look and some really great kicks. And Gary Hart's fun to watch as he freaks out or tries to reach in to help his guy from time to time. But I honestly found this one a little bit boring for my part. And again, how in the world are we supposed to buy that no one can verify that Charlie Brown is Jimmy Valiant when Valiant's gigantic beard is sticking straight out of the mask? Yeah. Like a foot out of his head.
00:58:36
Speaker
Right. I mean, save a duel Dusty Rhodes as the Midnight Rider. He's very damn full of body shape. But at least maybe you could think he was the assassin number one maybe. This show airs on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. The next mid-Atlantic wrestling show airs on tape on Saturday. I don't think it's alive. I think they're taping everything in advance. So
00:59:00
Speaker
Jimmy Fallon appears, because apparently his literally talent stipulation was not affected by this match mind. It was just like a timing thing. It's like he had me go on X amount of weeks or months or something. So apparently that ended three days after a match in which he risks losing and presumably being fined or punished for constantly flagrally violating the rules of the contract. You could just wait three days and just challenge him then, but I guess it's not heroic enough.
00:59:27
Speaker
It's like the stories where the guy breaks out of prison with three days to go in his, uh, yeah, in his sentence. Yeah. Like, why did you do that? I was like, I really wanted that good soup from that diner down the road. Yeah. So here's where it gets a little strange. So Jimmy Valiant appears and does have a match.
00:59:44
Speaker
on the next show and shows after that. However, they keep the ruse up that Charlie Brown is not to be valiant. It's not like how I fooled you and then he like reveals it and then I fill up the title and I get offended. Instead, they both keep appearing for the next month and a half separately. So Jimmy Brown does not appear with the title and Charlie Brown appears wearing the mask with the title until January where they just give up the story and vacate the title.
01:00:12
Speaker
I guess if he came out on that night and just pulled his mask off, you'd be like, well, you did flagrantly violate the rules of your suspension, so we are resuspending you maybe, but so he kind of like he's stuck now and now he has to. Yeah, I just think it's funny that so quickly after this is big storyline and win, it's just all for nothing. Yeah. Yeah, true.
01:00:35
Speaker
We go backstage again, and Coddle and Soli tell us they have to check with the timekeeper to see if Brown won the TV title. So we don't even get to find out about that yet, though of course, as you just informed us, he did. They then bring in a local radio guy who looks terrified, but actually does a pretty nice job on a little promo wishing Ric Flair luck and predicting his win. I was surprised. I was like, oh, this guy's got a bomb. Look at him, his eyes wide, staring at the camera. And then he got something like, oh.
01:01:03
Speaker
That was good. Yeah. Better than I would have done. Yeah, if you got to me in that situation, I would have just fully frozen up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It all occurred in the world with that. Yeah. Soli says that popular consensus so far is Flair will win, but you can't count race out, because he's won the belt seven times, and that, at this point, is the most in history. It will be shattered to a million pieces over the years to come, but seven is very impressive.
01:01:30
Speaker
Coddle builds up the dog collar match, and Soli has an interesting moment where he expresses gratitude to Piper for saving him when he got knocked down while filming a TV show. He's not sure who will win the match, but he's rooting for Piper. We go back to the dressing rooms, where Tony talks to Orton and Slater about getting the bounty for taking Rick Flair down, but notes that Flair is still here for the match. I guess, would you... should you get a refund then on that bounty? You would think so, but... It's a partial credit, yeah. Yeah.
01:01:59
Speaker
Orton says that that's thanks to Wahoo McDaniel, but that Slater and Orton have given race information on flair and race won't have any trouble. He and Slater celebrate hurting Wahoo's arm and say that the cage is set up to stop Orton and Slater from getting to flair tonight, but the race can take flair on his own.
01:02:17
Speaker
Race says he watched Flair's interview, and he's sure that Flair is watching his, and he tells Flair that he's coming after Flair's neck to eliminate him. Pretty lengthy little interview here for the amount of content that they have, but they all deliver it pretty well, I thought. Yeah. I liked it. That points, though, it seems like it's an audiobook, and he's like, you remember when we were near the camera in the other room.
01:02:42
Speaker
And the thread count of the canvas was 300. But they do have a great cadence and rhythm. Each person has their own narration, shtick. Yeah, true. Very different styles. Yeah, they sound similar, but you can tell that they're switching.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah and race again just a very considered style I think very very interesting that way. I've never I've not really heard many Harley race interviews I've seen him at various points over the years when he's like managing Vader later on and things but I've not heard too many Harley race interviews and I think they're actually quite good.
01:03:21
Speaker
So I have two notes on this. One, Pawborn Jr. sounds eerily like Sam Elliott in that promo. True. And two, it's weird that Race gives away his entire plan before the match was started. He's like, I'm going for that neck. And Rick is probably like, oh, thank you. I will protect my neck. Yes. Yeah. Maybe it's just that confident.
01:03:40
Speaker
It is also interesting. I think Ric Flair does this later as well, but Orton continues to call Wahoo McDaniel, Wahoo McDaniels. He does, yes. And I'm pretty sure Ric Flair does it frequently as well, so I don't know if they're wrong or were wrong. I'm pretty sure that they're wrong, but... I'm pretty sure they are, yes. Wikipedia agrees with me, so... Oh, okay. Well, that means everything. Yeah. I wrote that so clearly. Oh, that's correct.
01:04:06
Speaker
We go back to Barbara so that Dusty can actually cut his promo this time.
Promos and Pre-Match Setups
01:04:11
Speaker
Take two.
01:04:13
Speaker
Everyone here is watching and waiting to see the outcome of the big race flare match, but the man next to me wants to do more than watch. He wants to issue a challenge, Dusty. You know, Bubba, we're here on the biggest event in the history of wrestling, Dusty Rose, The American Dream. Anywhere that there has been a big event in the past five, six, seven, eight years, Dusty Rose, The American Dream, two times World Heavyweight Champion, is here. They have asked me many questions tonight. I'm here celebrating this. I'm partying down, challenging the winner of this match.
01:04:39
Speaker
to meet Dusty Rhodes so I can be third time World Heavyweight Champion once again. But the thing that is really pressing here is who will win this match? Harley Race, the full key role. Seven times World Heavyweight Champion, a man known all over the world with stamina and just complete drive and guts right inside him to be seven times World Heavyweight Champion. And the Nature Boy, Ric Flair, right here on his
01:05:00
Speaker
Home, home place, you understand, all these home people around him, a flair for the gold, Star K-83. For me to pick a winner, either one, I can handle the situation for the third time. I want to make that challenge right now, but I'm going to go right out on a limb, and I'm going to say just real easy that the folk hero, the legend, cannot be denied. And you know who the folk hero is, Harley Race.
01:05:27
Speaker
The man who wins is going to have to work for the belt, but he's going to have to work a lot harder to keep it. Now back to Tom.
01:05:40
Speaker
It had to be a little awkward for Dusty. I just cut this promo. Clearly I did this entire thing. He gets through the entire thing, then he has to come out and do it again. Like, hey, the mic was dead. That had to be a little awkward. I think he handles it pretty well. I didn't really get a sense from him actually of like, man, why do I have to do this a second time or anything? He's just like, okay, yeah, I'll go for it.
01:06:05
Speaker
I'm still trying to figure out multiple staminas. Yeah, I forgot that part. That's great. Yeah, he's has staminas with with staminas. Yeah, that's great. Well, I know in the wrestling games now you have multiple health bars and sort of wear down maybe means like that. I don't think so. Yeah, that was that was interesting.
01:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it was a pretty decent promo. It builds up both competitors really nicely, which is always a good thing. He gets in his challenge, but he keeps the focus on the match pretty well and builds up just the general importance of Starrcade, which definitely, like I said, this is the first time anyone's been trying this, so it's important to get over. Hey, this is big, guys. Dusty's a good choice for an energetic promo, I think, and it's always entertaining to listen to him talk. Does he go by the Man of Steel?
01:06:59
Speaker
Apparently he does at this point Dusty Rhodes should not call himself the Man of Steel. Steel does not behave like Dusty Rhodes' body behaves. Maybe gold? The Man of Pillows? Nah. Like that. Steamboat is the Man of Steel. Holy yeah, that guy has ripped. Dusty, I love, but yeah, you are not the Man of Steel, Dusty.
01:07:27
Speaker
Unless he's like the phone booth that you run into. Yeah. Otherwise, I don't know. Next up is Roddy Piper versus Greg the Hammer Valentine in a dog collar match. So, earlier in the year, Piper goes in as the US champion, but he loses a match after he's hit by a ring bell. And, excessive blood, eventually the match is stopped and less awarded to Greg Valentine.
01:07:58
Speaker
So he's ever since then, he's been having revenge. So he apparently goes to the board of NWA and asks for this match. This is all his idea. He wants this dog collar match, which is often called a special collar match, which again implies there's a regular kind of collar match. And then this, I don't know that there is, I'm pretty sure there's only one.
01:08:21
Speaker
Also notable that he doesn't mention anything about the title in this, but you kind of just assume that because he's fighting the US champion, and he's fighting it because the guy took his title from him, that the title's in the line, so. Yeah.
01:08:35
Speaker
Valentine is introduced as the man with the bionic elbow, oddly enough. That's Dusty's thing. We just saw Dusty Rhodes, and now someone else is being called the man with the bionic elbow. Maybe Dusty's doing Man of Steel now, and he'll figure out to do bionic elbow later? I just thought that was always Dusty's thing. I pretty sure was, but I don't know.
01:08:56
Speaker
Coddle nicely builds up the size and weight of the chain and says this is the most dangerous match in pro wrestling. Solely is worried if Piper should even be back in the ring yet after his injury. They do a really good job of building that from the very first point in the match.
01:09:12
Speaker
I will note that I watched a month of shows playing up to this. And on the very first show, the six-man tag match featuring Roddy Piper. So it's not like he hasn't wrestled. Yeah, I think he's more saying like, you know, in this particular type of match where the injury is. And I can understand that. It's just weird if you're going to push the idea that he wrestles at all. True.
01:09:35
Speaker
We open with a couple tug-of-war spots, and Piper gets advantage both times, whipping Valentine and starting to beat him up with the chain. Valentine comes back and starts focusing on using the chain to attack Piper's ear before he wraps the chain around Piper's eyes in a really painful-looking hold. Piper fights back, though, and wraps the chain around Valentine's mouth and nose, which looks even more painful. Those two were really nasty spots. I was wincing for them, yeah.
01:10:03
Speaker
Piper uses the chain creatively in his offense, including a bit where he wraps the chain around the ring post and uses it to hold Valentine in place for some strikes. Valentine ends up bleeding, and Piper uses the chain, chairs, and the outside barricade to beat him down some more. While Piper beats Valentine up on the apron, the Rev. Oddly tries to push him away in a no-DQ match.
01:10:24
Speaker
and Valentine nails Piper in the ear with the chain to start him bleeding too. Totally the ref's fault on that one. He shouldn't even be in the middle there. No, not at all. Valentine keeps hitting Piper in the ear and Piper reels, continually beaten down. Piper still won't go down fully though, and he manages to fight back as the crowd wildly cheers him on.
01:10:45
Speaker
Valentine eventually gets Piper in a sleeper, but Piper keeps his arm up when the ref goes to check if he's out, and nails Valentine with the chain to get free. Coddle and Solely nicely explain that the collar itself might have stopped the sleeper from getting locked in properly. Good little bit of commentary. Yeah.
01:11:16
Speaker
This one matches that if you
01:11:21
Speaker
didn't live the period where this happened live. This is one where everyone tells you this is one of the matches you have to see. There's so many, there's a lot of matches, but obviously this is any, you know, older wrestling fan is like, you got to watch this Piper Valentine match. So for me, it's like 20 years of hype anticipation. So I was curious if it would any remotely live up to that.
01:11:43
Speaker
Honestly, it kind of did. I mean, yeah, I like the match a lot. I don't necessarily agree with the 80s mindset that everything is immediately better, more dramatic if you bleed in it. That's an overall issue outside of this match, but other than that, no, I really liked it. I think this was the first time this is done at least on a major stage. So they're trying this stuff. Feels like really fresh in first time.
01:12:11
Speaker
Piper is always intense, so that's always good. Given a situation such like this, you can really deliver on that. I'm used to seeing older Piper where he's sort of turned into older cheating Piper. It's a little more playful with like, poke the eye when the ref's not looking.
Dog Collar Match Analysis
01:12:27
Speaker
And he's still intense in though, but this is younger, like, hungrier, more intense. I need to win here. Piper wins. Live fire and determination. Yes, very much so. That's his Scottish Canadian blood. This is growing through his body.
01:12:42
Speaker
It was the first color or special color match that I've ever seen. So it was very notable. I had to laugh at the beginning, even though it looked great. I was like, all the other person has to do is run towards them. Right. Yeah. The tug of war is a little weird, but especially when they start with their necks alone, it's better than playing headbutt champion. True.
01:13:06
Speaker
But no, I enjoyed the match. It was exciting. There was a lot of creativity. I mean, even by today's standards of showmanship, there was not overuse of props that were in play, so to speak. They kept it interesting. And honestly, I've always looked at Piper as a joke character, and he was not that in the ring.
01:13:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm, you know, he's always been not necessarily comic relief, but you know, like you he gets portrayed a certain way No, I I really liked it Yeah, you're used to the the smart. I like joking Piper. Yes, and this was not that Piper This was the intense. I'm gonna kick your butt Roddy Piper out for blood Yeah, I thought this was awesome. I thought this was one heck of a brutal brawl and
01:13:54
Speaker
There wasn't a lot of technical wrestling to be seen, but they got really, really creative in how they use the chain. Lots of different uses for it over the course of the match. I've seen some strap matches over the years, and some of them are good, some of them are bad. It's a similar concept for the match, but oftentimes with those, the most the strap gets involved is, you know, tug someone into you or whip them with it. With this, they're doing all sorts of stuff. They're wrapping it around their
01:14:21
Speaker
fist.
01:14:38
Speaker
I've seen Valentine later too and I've never found him that interesting. In this match, I loved his work. This was terrific. He keeps going after Piper's already injured ear. You want to see Piper kick his butt. You want to see him beat the heck out of him because he just keeps doing that. Yeah.
01:14:57
Speaker
Piper did a great job selling the disorientation and the announcers really did a good job also of building up that he's lost equilibrium, he can't stand up straight, all this stuff, you know. It just makes sense. Crowd has a great reaction to Piper the whole time. They are clearly well into this match and rooting for him the whole way. It would have been easy for this match to just be them punching each other, whipping each other with the chain and bleeding. It's not just that. There's a real story to this match.
01:15:24
Speaker
So some oddities with the ref trying to push them away from each other in an ODQ match aside, this was really, really good. Very different, very entertaining.
01:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, obviously there's a nice little bit when Piper has to break out of the hold. I can appreciate that. You know what he's gonna do, he's gonna grab the thing and hit him with it. But he doesn't just instantly grab it, coil it up and do it. He really builds up as you're watching it happen, like in real time. Like he's grabbing one coil, he's trying to get it out, he's hurrying, but he's not rushing himself.
01:15:56
Speaker
He's selling the hold at the same time, so it's like I'm getting the energy to even wind this around my fist so I can hit him. It's like, yeah, you got a strong feeling from that, I thought. Terrific moment there. Post-match.
01:16:12
Speaker
Piper celebrates, and solely tells us he's won the title, only to correct himself a moment later that it wasn't actually on the line. That's kind of a thing with Piper over the years. Yeah. Valentine gets up and chokes Piper, and decks the ref a few times as the ref tries to get him away. The crowd is absolutely rabid for Piper to come back, but Piper just can't fight back anymore, and Valentine even hangs him by the chain before finally being hustled out of the ring by the ref.
01:16:40
Speaker
We cut backstage to Caudal and Soli, who complement Piper's determination, but then a massive, massive cheer erupts, and we cut back to see Piper standing in the ring and swinging the chain around victoriously. Caudal questions if more permanent damage has been done to his ear, and Soli says Piper is a man and five yards wide. Yeah, right? What? That's gotta be an expre- I think I have heard that expression, but I have no idea what that means.
01:17:10
Speaker
I can't answer Sully's question for him, by the way. So, in the storyline from the previous match was that the match is adopted of leading is around the year. There was no actual damage other than obviously scarring lead to that. However, for all the damage in this match, he generally lost in between 50 to 75% of the hearing in that year. Wow. That's from this match. From this match? This match, yes. Oh wow. So it is from the, so yes, he did act back to get serious to enter that.
01:17:38
Speaker
Jeez, wow. So, suffering for your art. Yeah, absolutely. We go backstage again, and Bob Coddle throws to Barbara, but instead we get Tony with Ric Flair.
Building Anticipation for Tag Matches
01:17:53
Speaker
This show, I swear. Ric Flair is backstage with Tony and Wahoo McDaniel, or McDaniels.
01:18:02
Speaker
Flair says he doesn't like what Slater and Orton did to Wahoo McDaniel, and he says he wants Race to try his best to stop Flair, but he's ready. He keeps calling Wahoo McDaniel McDaniels, much like Orton did earlier, but tells Wahoo if he needs anything, Wahoo can call on Flair. In a few moments, Race won't have any help.
01:18:23
Speaker
Wahoo builds up Flair's chances and says that Flair is ready and he'd bet on Flair. Wahoo says the belt is coming back to Charlotte Flair. She wasn't even born yet. That is true. Another fairly sedate Rick Flair promo, and he actually seems to stumble over his lines a couple times on it, but different environment, I guess, or a big night. It's just rare to hear Rick Flair have to repeat himself on something. Yeah.
01:18:49
Speaker
Now we go to Barbara and she's with Don Crenoodle, another awesome name. She asked him to predict the winner of the tag title match. Don says, they're both great teams and it'll be a good match. He is nice enough to actually predict a winner of Flair versus Race. He picks Flair. I just love that. He's just like, well, it'll be a good match. It's like she just kind of moves on. Yeah. That well is dry. Yeah.
01:19:18
Speaker
Next up is Ricky or rather Rick Steamboat and Jay Youngblood versus the Briscoe brothers, Jack and Jerry. This is for the NWA World Tag Team Championship and it's with special referee Angelo Mosca. He had the wounded arm from earlier in the show and Latin blood in an uproar.
01:19:39
Speaker
So this has been an ongoing thing with these teams. They've been fighting over titles back and forth for months. They traded them at least once or twice between each other. On top of that, they did a weird angle within the last couple of shows where the Briscoes basically claimed that they were not going to show up for the show. They didn't feel like they would defend their titles there, which point Jean Crockett appears and explains that he bought out all these people's contracts, so apparently he controls them for the Starrcade show, and thus he's forcing them to be in the match.
01:20:09
Speaker
So it's kind of a weird business approach to this. Like, I own your contract so I can tell you what to do. You gotta go there somehow, I guess, which is kind of an odd, oddly litigious way, I guess, to get there. Yeah. The announcers do comment on that a few times over the introductions.
01:20:27
Speaker
It takes a surprisingly long time for the match introductions to start up. I'm not quite sure what was going on, but it's silent for a while. Jerry Brisco impressively stands straight up on the top turnbuckle the entire time, just like no wavering or anything whatsoever. That took some balance. Jack Brisco looks like Scott Bakula, which I'm okay with because I like Scott Bakula. Yeah.
01:20:52
Speaker
Steamboat is in first, with Jack and Jerry trading off every few moves, but Steamboat largely fending them off. Jack gets Steamboat in a hammerlock at one point, but Steamboat just backflips straight over Jack's head and arm drags him down. Jack just sits there in pure astonishment and then kind of walks over stunned to tag Jerry.
01:21:11
Speaker
Jerry gets a few good hits in on Steamboat, but Steamboat counters an attempt to slam him into the turnbuckle and gets the tag to Jay Youngblood. Youngblood and Steamboat trade off to keep control, until Jack drops Steamboat on his neck
Steamboat and Youngblood's Journey
01:21:23
Speaker
on the ropes, and Steamboat goes down like he was shot by a cannonball.
01:21:27
Speaker
Jack and Jerry keep trading off to keep Steamboat reeling, with Jerry hitting a beautiful underhook suplex at one point, but Steamboat keeps fighting out of their holds. Eventually, Jerry gets a key lock on Steamboat's arm and nearly gets him pinned a couple times, but Steamboat fights to his feet with a hold still on and lifts Jerry straight into the air from the mat overhead to slam him down like some kind of backdrop powerbomb. Amazing, with a huge pop from the crowd.
01:21:53
Speaker
Steamboat tags Youngblood, but after some early offense, Jack takes Youngblood down with a suplex, and he and Jerry go to work on Youngblood. Jerry complains to Mosca after a 2 count, and gets aggressive, but Mosca just shoves him down. Youngblood gets the tag to Steamboat, and Steamboat uses chops and jumping punches to take Jerry down, while Mosca catches Jack trying to interfere. A few quick tags and double teams from Steamboat and Youngblood, and finally Steamboat press Slams Youngblood onto Jerry for the 3.
01:22:22
Speaker
I thought it was really good in that they had a pretty clear story going here, which is that the Briscoes are the strong technical, albeit underhanded, tag team. They have all the technical skill to pull you down in moves and hit you with a back start and hit you low.
01:22:39
Speaker
Whereas Steamboat and Youngblood's story is that while they're technically efficient as well, their big thing is athleticism. They can sort of jump and push their way out of these moves and counter them. And ultimately their tag team continuity is more in hitting double team moves rather than constant trade-out like the Briscoes. Yeah. And that's been definitely for me. Steamboat, it's hard to find a bad Steamboat match, but yeah, that was really good.
01:23:06
Speaker
I honestly can't think of any critique on Steamboat. Actually, he's graceful. I don't know that. It's a good description, yeah. It's an effortless execution every time, just about, unless he's selling something like cookies or...
01:23:27
Speaker
tickets to the policeman's ball or whatever but I think that like I'll said it right they it's pure athleticism pure talent versus some tried-and-true Partnership that the briskos have going for them like I recognize the the brisko name I mean it reminds me like tires or something but Well, they did have a body shop and if they still do the one brother still around Jack Briscoe still runs in I believe
01:23:56
Speaker
So it might be what you're thinking of actually. Yeah. Okay. It's in the Tampa area. Yeah. Okay. So there you go. There's a reason why that name's stuck around or the, you know, they're, they are iconic in some way. So they're very technical and they work well together, but I don't know. It's just, there's just no comparison between like talent and skill. Yeah. Ricky Steamboat is awesome.
01:24:22
Speaker
He is always precise, crisp, and powerful in every move, and he does a great job in peril too. Struggling hard, but always keeping your hopes up for a comeback. He pulls off some absolutely amazing moves in this match, and just looks impressive the whole way through. Like I said, wonderful combination of strength and agility. He can pull off some major power spots, but he can also move with grace. And the crowd loves him. The Briscoe brothers are a terrific heal team.
01:24:49
Speaker
They have some very nice moves and some holds that made them look like a dangerous challenge to the faces. You buy it when they put on some kind of lock or hold. It really looks right.
01:25:01
Speaker
You really feel like people have to struggle their way free from their holds, and that's appreciated. Great timing from them, and there were points actually when they switched out so fast. I actually wasn't sure which brisket was in the ring, and they're not particularly identical looking. It's just they move so fast sometimes. Jay Youngblood was a serviceable face as well. He worked well with Steamboat and did some pretty good fast teamwork sequences with him.
01:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, really, really fun tag match. It got time to develop, but it had a good quick pace the whole way through. Although it's like this match was I think two or three times as long as the first couple of tag matches. But for me, this felt way faster to watch. It was really easy and maintained my interest just really well the whole way through.
01:25:48
Speaker
I will say I will not critique the match because it's really good. I will as a side note, it's kind of weird that we have Mark and Jay Youngblood on the same show. Yeah. But they're not a tag team together on this show. Right. So, I mean, I would definitely not want to take the team out of the match in any way, shape, or form. But at the same time, the story of the Youngblood against the Briscoe would be interesting. And I'm guessing that may happen at some point in the future with the past. Yeah, probably.
01:26:14
Speaker
But yeah, that's like the only critique a girl can give. And that's really not a critique at all. Well, and apparently Jay and Steamboat have been working together constantly because this is their fifth tag title win. Really, really great match. Just absolutely terrific. And it's always a joy to watch Steamboat work.
01:26:33
Speaker
Post-match, Jack knocks Steamboat and Mosca away and puts the Figure 4 on Youngblood. I guess everyone's doing that move now, as I said. Jerry splashes Youngblood while he's in the hold and then goes up top, but Mosca catches him coming down and they fall on Jack.
01:26:49
Speaker
Steamboat comes back in and he and Youngblood fight off the Briscoe brothers, then celebrate with Mosca in the ring to huge cheers. Mosca, I will note, doesn't quite know how to get them in position to do the holding your arms up in victory pose. It looks a little bit awkward, but the crowd loves it anyway.
01:27:05
Speaker
There's a kind of odd bit here that just must be a thing that people were doing at the time where Steve will point to parts of the crowd and everybody calls out what sounded like you over and over. I'm not quite sure what was going on, but, you know, it looked fun.
Post-Match Developments
01:27:19
Speaker
Yeah, sure. They had a good time. So I watched the Saturday tape show and Angela Moscow appears and wrestles in a six-man tag match. And if you're wondering, no, he does not have arm wrap whatsoever.
01:27:33
Speaker
So apparently that visit wound heal within two days. He's Wolverine. I guess so, yeah. If Thanksgiving Day is the high point for the Youngblood's Deanboat team, unfortunately the next major holiday is kind of the opposite. The interviewee is holding a house show on Christmas Day, so that sucks for the rest of us just in general. But it gets worse, so Deanboat goes to Jim Crockett and announces that he's going to explain to retire.
01:28:02
Speaker
Obviously that does not last because I'll see him several times throughout these shows. Yeah. But he now tells you to please plan to retire. So Jim Crockett then strips the duo of the tag teams if one of them is gone and sets up of course a tournament. Which leads to Mark and Jay Youngblood teaming together. Oh okay. I guess short title rings aren't just a modern thing. Yeah. Sometimes they happen back then too.
01:28:25
Speaker
And to be fair, I don't think the plan was to strip them the title at that point. I think Steve kind of threw that on them. But don't worry, he'll be back on the next show. So we're doing it even more sad. If he stayed gone a couple of years, it would have been better for the business, but at least it would have been better for Youngblood because he's gone for more than six years. Yeah, true. But yeah, he's back within a year or so.
01:28:48
Speaker
Next up, we get basically an extended intermission. Strangely enough, we get the credits at this point, even though there's a match left to go, and Soli praises everyone involved in the show like it's the end of the show. Soli is, of course, particularly intent on making sure that we know that the cameraman 75 feet up in the air deserves our praise. Also, much like Charlie Brown, the lighting company is downtown to Soli, so that must just be a thing that I'm not aware of.
01:29:15
Speaker
There's also a very interesting comment. Soli, thanks, I think you said Wayne McDaniel, for the slow-mo's and instant replays. Tell me if I'm wrong, because I might be just losing my mind and not remembering this stuff, but I don't remember seeing any slow-mo's or instant replays at all on this show. No. Unless they make it in the final video package, and in this case he's praising them in advance. Yeah, that'd be weird.
01:29:44
Speaker
And again, maybe it's a WWE Network version thing, but to me, it feels like Soli is praising the guy for something that no one's actually doing, which is weird. Yeah, it's just kind of odd to have the closing credits for the show well before the actual end of the show. Yeah, my best guess at the time was maybe they figured people aren't going to keep watching after the match, which if that was the case, you don't run as long as they do after the match with stuff.
01:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, with this and them starting the show just unceremoniously in the middle of a match, it's kind of an odd structure to it.
Character Segments and Promos
01:30:24
Speaker
We go to Tony back in the dressing room, and I notice that Flair now has his sparkly robe on. It's blue and silver, a nice one. Tony calls Charlie Brown over.
01:30:37
Speaker
Charlie energetically runs up, kisses Tony and says that he did it for the people for Jimmy Valiant and himself and runs off screaming. All right. All right. Um, certainly energetic. Yeah. I do like, like you said, he's, he's clearly maintaining the, uh, perception that he and Jimmy Valiant are different people. Yes. Sounds like it.
01:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's the original Mr. America. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. After Charlie Brown, Piper comes over. Charlie Brown from out of town, certainly a very happy man, and this man's a very happy man, but he's also a man that's very, very cut and very bruised this time, Roddy. Come here, look close. Come here, have a good time. Is that the best you can do, huh?
01:31:23
Speaker
You say, you say your strategy wants to take away all my hair and you say what you forgot is you got one more year to go! I'll beat you fast, Chris! Starrcade 1983! The next thing Valentine, that United States heavyweight final brother, Ataman! I thought the one more year to go line was great. That's classic Piper. That is classic, just brash, hero talk Piper. That's really, really good.
01:31:54
Speaker
Speaking of Piper, you're wondering, because his title match against Greg Valentine, that doesn't happen because he jumps immediately to WVF in 1984. Less than two months he's out of here. He's literally injured and he lost more than half his hearing in that one year. So they keep him out of actually wrestling for at least a few months. They bring him in, he manages people. That got totally broken into business. He was a manager initially.
01:32:21
Speaker
back in the 70s. Did not know that. Yes. I watched documentaries, very interesting. Okay, so he was a heel manager for a bunch of people. One of them is notable for being Dr. D. David Schultz, arguably fighting Rufus R. Freight Train Jones for long and most confusing names. The least is in different order.
01:32:42
Speaker
Dr. D. David Shultz is notable for being backstage around the first WrestleMania, so about a year and a half from now. I think it's December 84 when this happens. John Stossel is back there working for a news agency about how other wrestling is real or not. He receives you tell Shultz that wrestling is not real, whereupon Shultz slaps him twice in the side of his head, right against his ear, and he falls down.
01:33:07
Speaker
Stasa would proceed to sue him, apparently take a settlement of $425,000 because he had, quote, eight weeks of pain in his ears. Wow. Which I could live with for that much money. I don't know. I could buy enough aspirin, I think, to live with it, honestly.
01:33:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's sad that we don't get a follow-up on Piper versus Valentine. That's actually, after seeing that match, I would love to see another match in that feud. That was super intense and really, really good. I could see them having a good follow-up, but unfortunately, it is not to be in part because that match was so intense, I think. Yeah. And it was given his longevity. Do you think he jumped to WWF because they didn't give him a shot?
01:33:55
Speaker
I don't believe that's the case. What Vincent Mann was doing is throwing money around like there was no end to it, which is that's how he basically ended the end away as a powerful organization. He go to the AWA, it's a who's your biggest star. Oh, it's this Terry Hulk Hogan guy. I'm going to buy his contract up. And now he's gone. And they slowly fade away because they lose like they use a couple of people. I think you start to slaughter as well. He goes, he goes. I think Mr. Perfect is originally from there. Yes, he was AWA champion. That's true.
01:34:24
Speaker
And he would just go company to company doing so. So one of the places he went was Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. He went to Piper, paid much of money. Well, Piper, we'll come back to WCW. We'll see him in about more than a decade from now. Yeah. But yeah, there's no immediate follow-up. There's no lengthy US title run that follows this, or that matches Darkade. It's just the pure intent of it for Atlanta 96. That's a real shame on that front, I think. Yeah.
01:34:50
Speaker
We get one more interview, Jay Youngblood and Steamboat come in, and Jay says that they took the title for the record fifth time and they'll take on all comers. Steamboat calmly explains that a good wrestler has to adapt to different styles, and they've beaten all different combinations. They can adapt, and that's why they came home with the gold.
01:35:08
Speaker
I think, again, Steamboat comes off pretty good here in promo ability. It's surprising because I've never known him as a particularly decent promo guy, but he does a good job of kind of a reasoned approach to their victory, and it makes sense.
Promotional Decisions and Flair's Role
01:35:23
Speaker
Not particularly energetically delivered, but, you know, it's fine, I think.
01:35:28
Speaker
I think the problem long term for Steamboat is that most people when they think of promos for him, promo battles and interactions, it's him and Rick Flair. True. When he's at peak Rick Flair-ness or even later in his career, you'll see him in 93-94 when it's young up from Steve Austin, who while he's not stunk cold, he is still very much the Steve Austin you expect. True. 90% of that.
01:35:53
Speaker
So, them being really energetic and really passionate maybe makes him look worthwhile in comparison, which is unfortunate because he is actually really good. Yeah, I can see that where this night is people are fairly sedate that you'd expect to not be. But yeah, I think he does a respectable job with his promos. I'm just trying not to make puns about him running out of steam.
01:36:18
Speaker
It's the main goal, and I think I accomplished that. Okay, until this moment. Yes. Any Steamboat Willy jokes you want to make? Nope. Okay, let's check them. We go back to Cottle and Sully, and they recap what we've seen a bit, and build up Steamboat, Jay Youngblood, and Piper, while mentioning that the Briscoe brothers might have a rematch clause. They say that they'll go back to Barbara, but she's not there yet. This show.
01:36:44
Speaker
Yeah. Kottle and Sully have to talk a bit more, so they quickly wish Caribbean fans well, and talk about Abdullah and Cologne a bit, then about Dusty's earlier promo, and then they're interrupted as Barbara is ready now. She's with Dusty. Dusty asks some fans who they think will win the world title match. They predict Flair, and Dusty says, whoever wins, they're gonna have to meet Dusty Rhodes, the Man of Steel. Once again, no.
01:37:11
Speaker
cadmium, maybe. Dusty says that he's gonna pick a winner, but then says he won't tell us who it is. Didn't he already pick race? He did. He picked race. You don't get to tell us you're not gonna pick the winner if you already told us your choice. I also like how he's somewhat dismissive of the lady's call. Yeah. Because they're like, quick player. And he's like, well, whoever it is, you clearly don't believe them for some reason.
01:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. It's just like, yeah, they're like, Rick flair, Rick flair. One of them seems to still be trying to talk when he jumps in. Yeah. He's like, well, whoever I said, whoever it is, it's like, okay. Dusty arguing against flair. But yeah, another like just nice, energetic little dusty, dusty segment. He's always good for some fun. Maybe the audience is voting who will, who will win. They haven't decided at this point.
01:38:05
Speaker
Um considering the show is named a flare for the gold I highly doubt that they haven't decided that this point but although it I didn't before but It's a flare as in a signal. It's it's FL a re. Yeah, not so I The one I don't know why it's called that not a flare for the gold. Yeah, it is odd Maybe they thought it was too obvious. They're like, well, you can spell flare differently. Can't you? Well, you can spell it FL EHR, which is how it plays actual last name is built. Yes, but they didn't
01:38:36
Speaker
No, no. We go back to Coddle and Soli, and they finally explain that there's so much talking going on because the crew is busy setting up the cage around the ring to prevent interference and prevent anyone from trying to escape during the title match. Then we get the National Anthem, kind of an odd place in the show for that to happen, but okay. It's by James Tiny Weeks.
01:38:57
Speaker
The lights go out, which I thought was a technical glitch, but maybe it's just to spotlight the flag. Though they also seem to have some trouble getting a spotlight on weeks, so maybe it was a glitch after all, and they just covered it with the spotlight on the flag. Final match is Ric Flair versus Harley Race in a cage match for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship with Special Referee Gene Kieniske. I probably butchered how you say that.
01:39:24
Speaker
That's close enough. Keninsky? Keninsky? Keninsky, I think it's Keninsky. Yeah, something like that. Back in June, Ric Flair's first title run ends at a house show to Harley Race. In July, Harley Race, knowing he has a future title match against Ric Flair, decides he needs to avoid that at all costs, because he's a seven-time world champion. It's not a tough fight, but you know, he needs to pay people to beat him up so he doesn't have a match at all. That's just the kind of guy he is.
01:39:54
Speaker
So he does, and then it works for about two months, and then Ric Flair comes back.
01:39:59
Speaker
Weirdly, the last thing you see a flare on the TV show four days before this is Rip Flair does an in-ring training segment where he's in his gym clothes and he sort of spars with three other wrestlers. It's not a match. It's like a friendly sparring with wrestlers three different sizes to show how round and versatile it is. It's interesting, but it's just weird that it's not a Big Rip Flair promo and it's not a Big Rip Flair match. He doesn't fight.
01:40:29
Speaker
like Slater or Orton to show we can take them out or something. It's just, here's me training in the middle of the ring, just for fun guys. Interesting. Yeah, it's not bad, it's just kind of confusing.
01:40:41
Speaker
We didn't mention it before, but so they had talked about having a Starrcade show in the buildup to this, obviously. However, they do a big press conference thing about a month and a half before the show actually airs, where they fly all the NWA board of directors for each territory to a lovely High Regency nearby Tampa. Still a lovely hotel, I'm sure. I think the hotel is also in Punisher, but I'm not sure in that one. I feel like it was.
01:41:08
Speaker
And then announced that Jim Crockett motions won the right to host the end of the world title match, which means they are hosting Starrcade. Okay. Good for them. Yeah. It's just a weird little business thing to it. This is the biggest show of the year. We're going to announce which territory gets to host it.
01:41:27
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I guess honestly in this era, that probably was a pretty big announcement. It doesn't feel like it to us now because there's, you know, really one territory, the WWF, and then a few that are kind of trying to start up and, or keep themselves going. But yeah, I would imagine actually that might've been something where like people were like, Oh, where was, where's it going to be? Who's, who's going to be in control of it? You know, with, with all the different NWA territories at the time. Sure.
01:41:58
Speaker
The lights go out again, and we hear the sunrise fanfare from Strauss's also Sprock Zarathustra. Flare, and only Flare, gets entrance music on this show. He also gets a disco ball, and some pyro.
01:42:13
Speaker
The arena is almost totally dark, though, and it takes a while before we see Flair due to some of the pyro. The lights finally come back up to fully show him in his blue and sparkling silver robe. Definitely gives the feeling that this is the most important guy on this show. Oh yeah. The crowd cheers mightily for Flair, and then erupts in booze as race appears in his more traditional sort of boxing robe, though it is a little bit strange how it's half red and half blue. Yeah.
01:42:38
Speaker
not quite sure why but it doesn't look bad it's just no it's a weird design one of the little miscue because we get this big pomp and circumstance just without the song pomp circumstance for brick players entrance and then it pans out to where i assume race was to come out through the door but it's like slightly overhead and he's already just standing there waiting for his key to walk further so he's just kind of already there
01:43:01
Speaker
I don't know. That may be intentional, but it didn't feel intentional. Yeah. Well, I think him standing there for a little while is intentional. It seems like, you know, the crowd's booing and he's just kind of like soaking it up and looking at all of them all. He slowly walks down to the ring and stares Flair down before he finally gets in. We get some more audio glitches as the ring announcer introduces Flair, race, and special ref, former world champion, Gene Knitsky.
01:43:26
Speaker
On the last show before, they announced that Harley Race had a similar request that they have a special ref, because this match is so important, and they picked their previous former world champion, who unfortunately ain't fully escaped me now. Not that important, because on the same show within an hour, they then announced that they discovered a conflict of interest between said former champion and Harley Race, and that apparently the two of them own a restaurant and a ranch together.
01:43:52
Speaker
Which is a weird combination of things to own. So they announced, well we'll tell you who the new ref is later. And later they meant right before this match started. You gotta get the food for the restaurant somewhere. Yeah. It makes sense. They're managing their own supply chain. Yeah. Dressing. Yeah. Oh, assuming they grow the vegetables at the ranch and then they ride the horses to deliver them. No. Sure? Yeah, you're eating trick or ill. Sorry.
01:44:22
Speaker
Solely builds up that race has been pro wrestling since he was 17, but Flair was an amateur wrestler in high school and in college, so they have different but equivalent levels of experience.
Flair's Championship Match and Victory
01:44:33
Speaker
Flair dominates early on, and the crowd cheers loudly. Flair works a headlock, but race rolls him into a pin attempt. They fight over the headlock, and Kanisci accuses Flair of choking race, but Flair says it's on the chin.
01:44:47
Speaker
Race takes control and starts going after Flair's head and neck, including leaning hard on Flair's throat with his knee. One punch in particular gets a great, oh god, reaction from Flair. Really, really loud. Flair selling for the 73rd row there. Or maybe the cameraman. That's 75 feet in the air. He wants to make sure he hears it. Thanks, Brooke.
01:45:09
Speaker
Race hits the pile driver on Flair, but doesn't immediately go for the pin, hitting an elbow drop instead. The announcers note that he's not going quickly to pins after big moves. Race goes to using the cage as a weapon against Flair, and Flair can't fight back, rolling around on the ground and holding his head between the blows. He gets brief comebacks when Race argues with Kinesky, but Race keeps taking control and gets him bleeding badly after more cage shots.
01:45:35
Speaker
Finally, after a whip to the turnbuckle, Claire is able to take back control, and show race how it feels to hit the cage head first, getting him bleeding too. He hits some big moves, including a pile driver of his own, and the announcers note that he goes for pins very quickly after each move, intent on putting race away.
01:45:52
Speaker
The match goes back and forth, and both competitors continue using the cage in the face of warnings from Ganitsky. Flair's face is a mask of blood, but he gets the figure 4. The overhead camera angle looks great here. Race turns it over, and Flair manages to turn it again, but they end up in the ropes and Flair has to break. Solely tells us that he's only seen a successful reversal of the figure 4 once before. Keep watching man, you'll see it in almost every Flair match from now on.
01:46:20
Speaker
Race takes back control, but the figure 4 has done its damage, and his leg gives him trouble. Both Race and Flare are slow to recover from every move. Eventually, Race nails Caniskey with a headbutt. I wasn't really clear if it was accidental or not. And he throws Flare into the corner, but Flare uses elbows and chops to push him back, climbs up top, and dives off onto Race, rolling through, and covering Race for the three as Caniskey wakes up in time for the pin. The crowd shrieks in joy at that finish.
01:46:50
Speaker
I thought it was really good. They had the pacing and clear division of the match pretty well. It's kind of like what I had with the origin slater, wahoo, and youngblood match, but I thought it was a little more balanced. It was weird because you think with four people, you could trade that off easier, but two people managed to do it better, so go figure.
01:47:11
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, the story is pretty clear as they mentioned in the commentary you mentioned here, that race is overconfident and sort of, I must say, he's definitely aggressive, but he's vindictive is what I would say. Because he'll hit a move and once you suffer, and maybe he hopes you kick out rather and don't get pinned.
01:47:31
Speaker
so you can do more damage to you and keep attacking you. Whereas Flair's goal is, I gotta take this guy down, I gotta win the match. And that's a very face thing to do, it's a very good thing to do. Because obviously he has hatred in his heart for Harley Race, try to take them out of the sport.
01:47:50
Speaker
But he doesn't get so aggressive with that that he forgets his goal. Right. Yeah, it goes really well with what Ray said in his promos that I'm going to hurt you. I know where you're hurt. I'm going to make use of those injuries. And with him saying, I want to eliminate Ric Flair. Yes. He's not trying to win the match alone. He's trying to make sure Flair never comes back. Exactly.
01:48:12
Speaker
I will say it's weird that the ref is constantly like questioning the hold and questioning this and that. When they're in a cage match, there are no rules. See, I think that's kind of the thing is they don't actually ever say that this is a no DQ match. They say it's a cage match, but I think all the buildup around the cage match is just this is a cage match to stop there being outside interference.
01:48:36
Speaker
I'm not sure that it's a cage match in the traditional cage match sense where it's also definitely an ODQ match. I actually kind of liked the constant asking in part because even if it makes the rules a little questionable to me,
01:48:52
Speaker
It does a good job of building up how badly flair wants this that there's points where he gets asked by the ref Hey, are you choking him or gets warned? Don't know close fist flair or gets yelled at for using the cage as well And it takes like in every case race is doing something bad first But it shows you flair getting increasingly aggressive as the match goes on and it really builds that up I think and
01:49:17
Speaker
Another thing I was going to say is that the breath goes down, looks like he's down on his knees.
01:49:25
Speaker
and then race is standing right next to him for Flair's cross body. And I just assumed that race would trip over the ref, we'll take the move. That's why he's standing in the exact position. So they just sort of fall over next to him and they're up to get there and they're like, oh, I'm fine now. Yeah, that was a little odd. I don't know if that was a missed cue or they just, I assumed a spot was meant to be there and it wasn't, but all signs pointed at that spot and there's no payoff to it.
01:49:50
Speaker
Yeah, it feels like that should be the spot because otherwise there's no real reason the ref has to go down. Yeah, so true. Yeah
01:49:58
Speaker
I'm going to go back a little bit further. They talk about new interference. I don't remember them mentioning anything about it being a no holds barred. Yeah, that's possible. Yeah, that's just the assumption with a cage match because that's normally what it is. But in this case, I think the idea is it's not necessarily no holds barred.
01:50:20
Speaker
Well, the champ that's defending his title, I think there's some actual desperation. Like, even if it's, you know, part of the narrative or whatever, maybe he really wants to hold on to the title, at least subconsciously. Yeah. Like, you know, maybe after winning it so many times, you know, he can see Flair's this other rising star and he's got other people cheering for him. And Dusty's saying, no, no, don't.
01:50:47
Speaker
Don't give it away, you know, or don't build the hype too much. Maybe he sees this as a point where he has to step down. I can see that. Not just as, you know, for this match, but as an overall narrative. I can see that. And, you know, kind of, I'm going to go out. If I'm going to go out, I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory, show off all my stuff, make it look good.
01:51:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, but prolong the match because this might be the last time I've been event like this for. Yeah, I don't know with with race. I know he's he does things later, but I yeah, I don't know if he ever is at the top of the card again after this point. I might know some things. OK, well, we'll get to that in a bit. Yeah.
01:51:35
Speaker
But yeah, I think this was a pretty good match. It feels very, very intense. It feels very brutal at times. Maybe not quite as brutal as the Piper and Valentine match, but there's very few things that are as brutal as the Piper and Valentine match. Thank God, yeah.
01:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, Flair is a very good babyface in the match, but also has that complexity to his character, I think, of him wanting the match and him wanting to beat Race and him being increasingly incensed by Race slamming his face into the cage time and again. He starts doing that back and you get this kind of vengeful side to him in the match too, which I thought was a really interesting thing.
01:52:17
Speaker
Flare is particularly great at selling in this match. He just looks exhausted at points, and there's one point in particular that I loved, where he's down on the ground, and Race grabs him and starts to lift him up, and Flare tries to punch him, and he just, he has zero power in his arms. He just has this really slow, kind of like moving through liquid kind of punch that
01:52:46
Speaker
It just looks perfect for this. I want to fight, but I just can't fight. It just makes it clear Rick's a master of his craft.
01:52:55
Speaker
The ending was a little bit awkward, like you said, Al. I'm not sure why the ref bump was necessary, unless, like you said, maybe it was that they were supposed to go end over end over Caniskey, but just a little bit awkward. Flair's crossbody off the top seemed like it was aimed maybe a little bit off, too, that he kind of hits him half crossbody and half leg scissor takedown, which looks a little bit weird, but it still works.
01:53:21
Speaker
It is really weird to see Ric Flair of all people win with a top rope move. Yeah. Considering what will go on to happen for most of Ric Flair's career when he tries to go up on the top rope, it's always his, oh no, I'm getting slammed off the top rope spot. So I guess maybe that's why he keeps going up is I won my second title that way. Yeah.
01:53:42
Speaker
I really want to call out also how really, really good Gordon Soli was during this match. He's a good announcer anyway, but he really shines here. He makes sure to build up how the match is wearing the competitors down, how their injuries are piling up, how they're interfering with their moves, races injured leg after the figure four, Flair having trouble seeing through the blood.
Celebration and Closure
01:54:02
Speaker
I thought that was a great point. Things like that really make the match feel so much more real, and they help viewers understand why each move matters.
01:54:11
Speaker
Post-match, Flair celebrates, exhausted, as Angelo Mosca comes in to lift him and carry him around. Lots of other wrestlers from across the show come to celebrate with Flair too, with Ricky Steamboat helping Flair put the title belt on. Flair's wife joins him in the ring for a hug and a kiss, and the crowd does the you chant again, led by the wrestlers in the ring. I guess that's just the thing at this point. Flair gets the microphone to thank the crowd.
01:54:39
Speaker
Jesus. Thank you. I don't really know how to begin. Thank you very, very much.
01:55:09
Speaker
To try and explain what a major part all of you have played in this. To try and explain what a major part all of you have played in this would take a long time, but I want you to know that each and every one of you that are here tonight, each and every one of you that were out in the closed circuit locations, this is the greatest night of my life, and I can't thank you.
01:55:49
Speaker
It's a short promo, but for me it felt wonderfully genuine. Flair has tears in his eyes as he speaks. It's touching to see this night has clear meaning for him. I think this is one of those points where for me it felt like you got to look behind the curtain for a little bit and saw the the real Ric Flair. Yeah. Not the character Ric Flair thanking us, but or thanking the fans. This is the real Ric Flair thanking the fans.
01:56:01
Speaker
Thank you very, very much.
01:56:15
Speaker
There's very few moments like that over the course of wrestling, but they're always really special when you get to see the actual emotion, the actual feelings of this guy. It felt like a pure moment. I liked it a little bit where he guesses the wife and then she has to wipe his blood off her nose. Yeah. The announcers even point that out for a moment. I don't know if I would like that part.
01:56:40
Speaker
I think it's a funny little bit of realism to that because- Yeah, yeah. I think she's thinking that was gonna happen and then she's like, oh wait, if I hurt the bottom of my face. Well, why did she leave though? Did she just have to be somewhere else or? She goes back to the crowd. She sits down in the crowd again, but I don't know exactly why they didn't just keep her in there. That was kind of weird.
01:57:02
Speaker
So in the immediate aftermath of this, Rick Flair becomes sort of the face of the end of the way. His job is to go territory to territory, you know, show up, lose a match, and then find a way to heed the title and move into territory. You, you know, you pay the extra money to get him to hang around for a month at your shows. It's notable that from being his first title reign, which ends to properly set up this match,
01:57:30
Speaker
uh... to say that it's a long stretch it's you know between june and november how are between a second and third officially and unofficially it's actually not quite that long brace doesn't come back to us and why he takes some time off however they do a national tour and trying to follow this across the globe in a jones style with the map the dot yeah i think so they do a house show event
01:57:58
Speaker
and New Zealand, which Ric Flair loses the title to Harley Race. That is in March, I believe. Yeah, I think I've heard March.
01:58:08
Speaker
And about a week later, they're in Singapore, home of Greg Kabuki, apparently. Okay. Which, Rick Flair went back the title. Huh. Now, I mentioned there being official and beneficial wins because this apparently was not a visually sanctioned win by the NWA. Ah. The way it worked back then, the NWA had a board of directors. Even if your local guy, your regional guy, had the title,
01:58:35
Speaker
The board director decides, basically decides how long your title reign is, like if they think you're drawing, if they think, you know, you coming to their territory is helping them or not. And anytime someone goes, hey, I think someone has to win the title, the NWA board directors will then vote. So while you win the title of the ring, you mostly win it in a boardroom among a bunch of guys in suits you'll never meet.
01:58:58
Speaker
So that's sort of the background for this. They decided to do a title swap to sort of build up how important the tour is, but the NWA does not recognize the title, title switch rather. And apparently WWE still doesn't officially list this as one of its title reigns. I guess if the official body at the time said it wasn't, then there you go. But that's part of the Ric Flair 16 time world champion in giant air quotes. Yes. That comes from
01:59:25
Speaker
The other thing is that, in May, while also a champion, having got his title back, Rick Flair goes to World Class Championship Wrestling, or WCCW, in Texas, with unfortunately the most unlucky family in the world, the Von Erics, who started out with five sons as great possible harassers. Ultimately, there's only one of them left, unfortunately. It was a rough several years for them. They unfortunately started a sad tradition of holding tribute shows every time one of the kids dies.
01:59:55
Speaker
And as part of that, this was for, I want to say it was for, because David Von Erich. They had to reach out for him in May. Rick Flair goes and loses the title to Carrie Von Erich. However, that is an official title win, and they're at a loss rather. And he wins it back 18 days later, another show. And his time then continues through to the next show. Okay.
02:00:18
Speaker
So it's weird, there's an unofficial title swap and official title swap, all within a sixth month period of his second glorious title win. Huh. Yeah. Weird little asterisks there. Yeah. So there's still like 14 minutes left in the show. Yep. But there's no more matches. Nope.
02:00:39
Speaker
Instead, we get an assortment of recaps and interviews. We get a celebration in the dressing room for Flair winning the title, in which Flair thanks everybody, especially Steamboat, and everybody pours champagne on Flair's bloody head. I'm not convinced that Jim Crocker Promotions' medical crew is properly trained. Tony also gets splashed, which is pretty funny. He's all must-up later for the rest of his appearances on the show. To be fair, you put alcohol in a wound, so? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:01:08
Speaker
Dusty interrupts to congratulate Flare and to challenge him personally. Flare acknowledges the challenge, but he wants to celebrate tonight for now.
02:01:17
Speaker
Coddle and Sully then have to stall a bit before they can throw to Barbara for a brief interview with Race. They amusingly spend several minutes talking about what Race will probably say and their impressions of Race as a former champion and how he's a proud man but will be unbowed and yada yada yada because they're clearly stalling for time because Barbara is not able to get there yet. They kind of go on for quite a while and then we do get a brief interview with Harley Race.
02:01:46
Speaker
Race says that he's been champ seven times and only Flair, Rhodes, and those of that caliber can stand in his way of taking the title for the eighth time. Race says he's going to make Flair's life hell until he gets another shot. Good kind of dejected but unbroken interview from Race. Yeah. Though there's lots of audio problems on this one. It feels like they get really close to losing the promo. Yeah. But managed to keep it going.
02:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, race again, for me, kind of impressive on promos. He's never super energetic or anything, but he's always got this very calm but driven kind of style that I think works well. It feels legit. Yeah, I can see that.
02:02:29
Speaker
Also notable, Barbara, I think ends this interview the same way she ended the interview with Dusty Rose, where she says, work hard to get the title, but work a lot harder to keep it. She's used that line several times tonight. Yes.
02:02:44
Speaker
Following this, we get Flair, Steamboat, and Jay Youngblood posing with their belts, which looks pretty cool. They congratulate each other, and Flair takes the time to note the record number of title wins for Steamboat and Youngblood. I think it was nice having him acknowledge that, that he won the world title, but you guys just did something really important too, so our new world champion highlights how important that fifth win is. Yeah, it's a nice touch. I thought that was kind of cool. Yeah.
02:03:08
Speaker
Finally, Coddle and Soli wrap us up and look forward to Starrcade 84. Soli looks like he's going to get one more line in, but he gets cut off and just says, hey. What a great opportunity it was for them to see and to watch this event as it was happening. No question about it. From Walla Walla Washington to New York City to Miami, hey.
02:03:34
Speaker
It just kind of gets cut off there, I think. It sounds like he's about to go into something else, but he doesn't. You just want to say hi. Yeah. He's very chill. Also, why Walla Walla Washington? It's just fun to say, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. Some Bugs Bunny thing. It's like with Lakuchi. Bless you. Florabrasca.
02:03:56
Speaker
We get a short video package then of moments from the main event over a really nice 80s guitar-rock theme that frees frames on Flair holding the belt while he's standing all bloody in the ring. Good ending shot. Yeah, these were kind of nice and all, some nice moments in the interviews, but for me, just way, way too long. It's like 14 minutes of this stuff after everything important has happened on the show.
02:04:23
Speaker
I know this is not how it was back then, but what this feels like is something you would get, like this would say 1988. And you know, you watch, you know, whatever show it is, what this WF show or WCW show. And then it would end with the title win, you know, Ric Flair promo and you leave the cage. Then, you know, six months later you go, go to your local blockbuster, RIP blockbuster, except for one location.
02:04:47
Speaker
when it's still holding on and you would rent it and you'd be like, here's a Coliseum exclusive home video. Here's all these interviews. I could see you filming them, but I don't see why you have to stall the ending of the show so much other than to quickly edit a video package together.
02:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, it feels like they are stalling for time because they're going to do a video package for the main event, highlighting the main event. And they couldn't obviously put it together until the main event was done. So they need time to get this together, but it just feels like too much time. A lot of this stuff would have been great, like on the next TV show or something like that to me. That and the credits. I wonder if they roll the credits early so that people will actually know what's going on rather than just walk out after the event. Yeah. Yeah, true.
02:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, for me, I think I would have ended it on the celebration and then pouring the champagne on Rick. That would have been a great ending shot. And then you can do other interviews or things the next TV show. Hmm. I can see some variation of that. I can see you winning in the ring. Stay in the wide shot as they ever exit as well. Yeah. You can thank them for the replays in slow motion. Yeah.
02:05:59
Speaker
Yeah, maybe the replays bit meant the video package, but there's no slow motion in there, I don't think so. Oh well. There was the punch through water though, that one blow you were describing is... Yes, true. There's the slow motion. Maybe that was normal pace and that was the hidden slow motion. You have to act it out. Frame rates were just crappy back there.
02:06:24
Speaker
What are your thoughts on the show? John, what's your thoughts on Starrcade 1983, just as a show overall? Other than bowling alley billboards behind the announcers, I think it kind of defines that era. I mean, I'm not going to say it's like the Golden Age of whatever, but it definitely had
02:06:46
Speaker
The hair, the type of words they were using. You knew it was the 80s, no doubt. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yep, early 80s all around. Very few people really escaped that sort of looking dated. Maybe Steamboat, but even his casual wear is very dated 80s. Yes, yeah. His look in the ring, I think, is sort of timeless. Same with Flair when he's wrestling, but yeah, other than that, everyone's pretty dated across the board. True, yeah.
02:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely looks like the kind of stuff my dad wore in the first few years of my life for that general look. I noticed your dad probably pandered his mustache after Harley race. I don't think so. I didn't say he achieved it. I didn't mean that was the goal.
02:07:33
Speaker
I can definitely see John's point on that. It definitely is very air defining in terms of the way it looks. I think that does go both ways though, because there's stuff that was sort of a carryover from late 70s into the 80s. Like with stuff with Bugs McGraw and the Assassins, the whole like, loading your mask for headbutts thing, and the look of a lot of stuff.
02:07:57
Speaker
But at the same time, you also get the stuff that either becomes timeless, like Piper with Valentine and all that, or something that would come to define the rest of the 80s in a good way, like Flair as world champion, Ricky Steamboat performing, stuff like that.
02:08:15
Speaker
It's a good mix of good and bad. It's one of the shows where it starts out not terrible. I've definitely seen worse WWE shows even at the start, but it starts out somewhat lackluster, but definitely builds and builds up until two really good climax, I would say.
02:08:36
Speaker
For me, this started out not a particularly good show. It was very underwhelming in the early going and while I found certain things that I kinda liked or was entertained by, the opening matches were pretty dull for me. They don't really make an impact and they don't feel that important. They're not bad, it's just, you know, they don't seem like they really mean something. The last three matches helped the show a lot. Yes.
02:09:05
Speaker
Piper versus Valentine is really intense. Steamboat and Youngblood versus the Briscoe Brothers is a really energetic tag match, very well performed. Ric Flair versus Harley Race is something I could really get into for its importance to Ric Flair and it was worked really well and hard-wought.
02:09:22
Speaker
Though I say that they helped the show, I'm not sure that I go as far as saying this is a good show in the end. There's a lot of stumbling around, there's a lot of technical glitches, there's way, way too many interviews.
02:09:38
Speaker
There's shots of the announcers just kind of talking and talking and talking, and while I like parts of all of it, it feels like the show drags. You get the same points over and over, particularly Dusty Rhodes' challenge. We're told he's challenging Flair. He cuts a promo to challenge people several times. He comes in at the end of the show to issue his challenge again. You know, it's like constantly mentioned over and over and over again that this is happening when really one time would do.
02:10:07
Speaker
Admittedly, part of that is when audio glitch interrupts at least one of those times, but still. While it's cool to see all the audience and wrestler predictions about the main event over the course of the show, I think that would have been better served as one package rather than, oh, we're with these fans now. Oh, we're with these fans now over and over again that interrupts the flow of the show.
02:10:30
Speaker
Still, it was a decent watch, and it was definitely fun to see where it all began. And I'm not gonna honestly go too hard against them on any of the stuff I just mentioned, because it's literally the first time anyone has ever tried this. They deserve some grace for that, to be honest. So, you don't expect them to get it all right from the beginning.
02:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like an inaugural event and it's something that's first of its kind, so there's always going to be a bunch. It's easy to sit back and say, oh, you could improve this, improve this, because you have all that span of time from then and now to draw experience from. So fantastic bowling venue.
02:11:16
Speaker
I think the people at that time probably thought it was pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean you watch the first WrestleMania, the very first match the first WrestleMania is Tito Santana against the Executioner. True.
02:11:29
Speaker
That's yeah, if you're gonna find a show had two years of Starrcade to look back at it's also true Yeah, this was live right like yeah. Yeah, I believe they I believe it's even said I think they always do their recording in in Jim Crocker promotions live to tape So there's like there's very minimal editing of the show
02:11:47
Speaker
And that's probably why they need to pad so much because there's no, I mean, when you'd have that closed circuit, I don't think you're running commercials, are you? So you, you know, you have to fill it with those interviews in order to set up the next match. Right.
02:12:01
Speaker
Let's do a match on the night in MVP. Hal, you want to go first? Sure. It was a tricky one. The last three were constantly fighting for me over it. I think overall, I'd probably go match the night to the Steamboat Youngblood vs. the Briscoe's match. As great as the other two matches are, there's no issue with the finish for me, whether it's
02:12:24
Speaker
Suddenly there's no title swap like they're with the Piper Valentine one or that or the I'm not quite sure if this fish was done correctly bit with how with phrase and Blair and it's not taking away from them and it's just I think the most complete package of the three beginning middle and solid story big payoff on the show is the Steamboat match with young one them. Okay, I
02:12:48
Speaker
That said, MVP, it's tricky again. I mean, I wanted to just call it easy and say Steamboat. Part of me really wants to give it to Piper though, just because he was in a situation where he could have taken the easy way out. And as people say now, a walk and brawl kind of thing. You should walk around, punch each other or you don't wrestle. There's no story, but the ooh and ah of the violence covers everything for him.
02:13:14
Speaker
But he literally put his body on the line and put himself through hell to make a match so much better than it had to be. Title or no title. So I think just because of what he did there, I have to, even though I didn't pick his matches match the night, I probably still would Piper's MVP just nearly edging out Steamboat. Okay.
02:13:33
Speaker
John, match of the night and MVP. Match of the night is clearly Piper versus Valentine. Okay. Um, first, first time I've seen anything like that. And, um, you know, I hope that I can't really think of any way to improve it. It was very interesting. You know, what a way to go out for Piper. Uh, you know, this is the last time he's going to be with him or, you know, I mean, for a big event. So, you know, a great match easily, easily my favorite for the night.
02:14:05
Speaker
And MVP, I'm going to go with Steamboat. I'm just doing a reverse aisle here. It's the first time I've seen Steamboat 2. This Starrcade was probably a little bit more exciting for me just because there's a lot of newness to it. And Steamboat just did a peerless performance, I thought.
02:14:26
Speaker
you know, definitely flipping great. Literally. I was just surprised by that. So, and that kind of stuck with me for the, like, why isn't flair flipping around and why isn't it? Yeah. You know, so. It stands out.
02:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So for a lot of the same reasons, I'm choosing totally the opposite of Al. Yep. There you go. My match of the night is Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood versus the Briscoe brothers. Really, really narrowly edging out Piper versus Valentine. Both are really, really good, exciting matches. They have good match stories. I think Piper versus Valentine has the edge in emotion.
02:15:10
Speaker
But a few really, really cool spots from Steamboat and the general excellent heel tag work of the Briscoe brothers gave the tag title match the win for me. Really on another night, I could probably have reversed that easily. Sure. So at my MVP is Roddy Piper.
02:15:30
Speaker
he narrowly edges out Ric Flair in my case. Both Piper and Flair do an excellent job of selling the injuries and exhaustion from their match tonight, but Piper had a better if short interview and the creative work that he did with the chain in his match really stood out. I really appreciated just the
02:15:48
Speaker
kind of innovative stuff that they put into that match and like you said this could have been a walk and brawl and the emotion of the match probably still would have carried it in that case but he worked really really hard and credit to Valentine too worked really really hard to make that a unique and very entertaining contest. Also honorable mention to Dusty Rhodes for being willing to put up with all the technical difficulties and still deliver some great promos.
02:16:16
Speaker
he's the man of steel yep yeah maybe yeah maybe that means his temperament i don't know i'm curious to see how the next one see if it builds off of this is it if it fixes the problems from this one if it creates new problems or if it's perfect i don't know we'll see
02:16:33
Speaker
I'm really curious for next year to see how developed Ric Flair's personality will be. Will he be already the full fledged Ric Flair that we know and love from later? Or will we see the developing Ric Flair at that point? That's going to fascinate me, I think. I'm really looking forward to that.
02:16:52
Speaker
I'm hoping for Ric Flair trying something totally different and just not working. It's possible. It's possible. I think we're going to be stepping towards regular Ric Flair at least from what I know about Starrcade 84, but yeah, I don't know. It's possible.
02:17:14
Speaker
That'll do it for our review of Starrcade 1983, A Flare for the Gold. Many thanks to Pro Wrestling History for attendance figures this week. We'll be back next month with a look at Starrcade 1984, The Million Dollar Challenge. This is Bob Moore for Alec Pridgen and John Mullins, signing off. Good night everybody! Hey!