Happy Saturday Everyone!
We continue the trend of one match shows this week with WCW Starrcade 1993, as Ric Flair Vs Vader is amazing and the rest of the card is…less so. However, hopefully there’s SOMETHING on the undercard that makes it worthwhile (I think there is to be fair).
If you’d like to see the card, you can do so by clicking below;
https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1570&page=2
The SmarK Rant for WCW Halloween Havoc 97 – 10.26.97
Gotta say, the build on Nitro has kinda made me want to revisit this one, main event aside. Plus I hear there’s a pretty good match on it somewhere.
The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 10.20.97
In the cold open, the lesser members of the nWo have been laid out by someone, someone who has conveniently left a Roddy Piper t-shirt on the floor as a calling card. Of course we don’t SEE the attack because that might get someone over.
The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 03.30.90
Taped from Miami Beach, FL
Your hosts are Jim Ross & Gordon Solie
The SmarK Rant for World Championship Wrestling – 03.14.87
Well since I jumped ahead and finished off 1989 on the Network, I might as well go back and pick up where I left off in 1987 again.
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 99 – 12.19.99
As you might imagine I have blocked this entire period out of my memory and I literally only remember the main event. So this should be interesting.
AAAAAAAAAH! SCARY SPIKY LOGO IS COMING AFTER ME!
The SmarK Rant for NWA Starrcade ’86: Night of the Skywalkers
(Hey great, so now I have Covid. Thank god for sick time at work. Carrying on with the Starrcades in the meantime. This was written in 2016.)
What the hell, let’s do it. People have been bugging me to do the full version on the WWE Network forever now anyway, and since we’re at that point in the Observer Flashbacks now is as good a time as any. As a note, I would once again like to compliment the amazing production department of the Network for cleaning up the master and making it look pristine again. Given what they frequently have to work with, they do an astonishingly great job.
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 1995
(I was asked by a reader to hold off on the Starrcade 85 repost until Monday, so we’ll move back to the 90s again with 1995 instead. “Vox populi” or whatever the hell it is that Elon Musk is saying on Twitter.)
Live from Nashville, TN
Your hosts are Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan & Dusty Rhodes
The SmarK Rant for NWA Starrcade 84 – 11.22.84
True story: Some guy actually went to the trouble of finding my home number and called my house in 2004 asking me to review this show. I didn’t have a copy of the tape back then, but now there’s the Network and I’ve been on an old school territorial kick anyway, so the time is right!
Live from Greensboro, NC, drawing 16,000 in the building and a shitload of people on closed circuit.
Your hosts are Gordon Solie & Bob Caudle
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 94 – 12.27.94
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound with these I guess. Here’s another one I haven’t watched in more than 20 years. And there’s good reason for that.
Live from Nashville, TN, drawing a sellout of 8200
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 93 – 12.27.93
Been a hot minute since I’ve reviewed this show. WCW was in a bit of a tumultuous state at this point, to say the least.
Live from Charlotte, NC, drawing 8000 for a legit sellout.
Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & Jesse Ventura
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 1992 – 12.28.92
Tonight! The 10th annual Starrcade ’92! Well, at least they understand the concept of an anniversary. Oh, also, the graphics in the opening video package have Barry Windham and Brian Pillman mixed up. Because they apparently look SO MUCH alike.
Live from Atlanta, GA, drawing 8000 people and a 0.5 buyrate.
Happy Saturday Everyone!
I felt like watching a couple of matches on this one because I’ve never seen them before, hence the review. The Main Event is an atrocious 3 ring 60 man battle royal, with the winner becoming the WCW Champion.
However, on the under card we’ve got Ric Flair Vs Sting (And even WCW surely couldn’t ruin that one once it gets in the ring) and a match that should excite the Joshi Boyz here on the Blog with Bull Nakano and Akira Hokuto teaming up.
So that’s at least two matches which should be good, which I’ll take, with anything on top of that being a nice bonus. WCW had already started Nitro by this point, but they wouldn’t start clobbering Raw until the Summer of 1996, so the battle was still relatively even at this stage.
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 91 – BATTLEBOWL THE LETHAL LOTTERY – 12.29.91
The subtitle sounds like a bunch of Taylor Swift fans fighting over a ticket to her show.
(Reposting this one that I did a couple of years back because apparently y’all forgot about it already! Redo of Starrcades 91 and 92 likely coming later this week as well.)
The SmarK Rant for NWA Starrcade 89 FUTURE SHOCK! – 12.13.89
I don’t know why this one is hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles lately but let’s get it redone so you’ll kindly shut the hell up. Which I mean in the nicest way possible.
The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 03.23.90
Taped from Columbus, OH
Your hosts are Jim Ross & Gordon Solie
The SmarK Rant for WCW Starrcade 90 “Collision Course” – 12.16.90
Don’t have to ask me twice to do old WCW PPVs.
The SmarK Rant for NWA Power Hour – 03.16.90
Taped from Rockhill, SC. Were they struggling to come up with a name for the city and just started putting nouns together? There’s a city in Alberta called Carstairs and I often wonder if they used that same method. They should change it to RAW KILL, because that sounds more badass.
Your hosts are Jim Ross & Gordon Solie
The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 10.13.97
OK, time to give Monday Nitro some attention instead of RAW all the time. We’re about a month ahead with the WWF now anyway.
WHEN WE LAST LEFT OFF…
https://www.blogofdoom.com/2020/08/19/the-smark-rant-for-wcw-monday-nitro-10-06-97/
Technically that one was written 15 years or so ago in the WWE 24/7 days, but I want to get these caught up to RAW again so we’re moving on.
LIVE from Tampa, FL, drawing 12,000.
Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!
I’m afraid I’ve lost the Stinker Hat with all the reader requests, so if you want to post some in the comments section I’ll make note of them just so I have something in reserve in case I can’t find the hat again. It’s my Miami Dolphin’s hat too so I hope I find it!
This week’s show is the first pay per view of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara’s disastrous first run in WCW, where they took a company that might still have been salvaged and tanked buy rates to the point of no return. But hey, the ratings ever-so-slightly improved, so that was worth utterly destroying the pay per view business and essentially throwing millions of dollars out of the window wasn’t it.
Halloween Havoc was only partially built up by the Gruesome Twosome, so it ended up doing WCW’s last somewhat decent buy rate and then buy rates plummeted from that point onwards, as Russ-Ara were more interested in wacky skits and crash TV, none of which made fans actually want to buy the pay per views.
This show has a number of bad matches on it, and was a jarring switch to a more WWF/E styled product, which WCW fans didn’t want as they (gasp) LIKED the fact that WCW was actually DIFFERENT from the WWF, as it gave them an ALTERNATIVE to watch instead of WWF-lite. Sadly this was a lesson the Russ-Ara duo would never learn.
Let’s see if this show really is a Stinker or whether time has been kind to it.
