[1995-12-27-WCW-Starrcade '95] Sting vs Kensuke Sasaki

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes, which sees Sting secure the win for WCW, giving them the World Cup. I really like the idea of this show, but the way that it was promoted was completely wrong.

[Matt D]

How could it have been promoted to better appeal to the hybrid core WCW/Hogan audience

[Loss]

More Crockett Cup-like, and less about evil Japanese people. Hogan was the top star, but I wouldn't call the WCW audience a Hogan crowd at this point, based on how much they hated him. I'd still call it more of a Flair crowd with JCP hangers-on making up most of their fanbase.

[Matt D]

The ratings were already up into 95-early 96, pre NWO (though it was Flair/Savage that seemed to pop things, and maybe even the Luger stuff which was pretty compelling in early 96). They had to get those people from somewhere. Do we have Hogan merch figures from 94/95? or any idea of them? I know they pushed his stuff over everyone else's but was anyone buying it? I feel like you could spot the foam fingers in the crowd, at least.

 

I think that by the end of 95 you had lost some of the traditional core WCW/JCP audience due to the Hogan stuff and it had already been partially replaced. That's what I was trying to express there.

 

Regardless, I wonder if something more Crockett Cup-like would have done better or worse than blatant xenophobia.

[Loss]

I think there's some truth in that. The foam fingers were handed out by WCW for free, along with other Hogan merchandise. They would tell fans if they would hold it up and wave it, that they could be on TV. I'm sure Hogan merchandise sold decently, but I think that's the reason WCW audiences looked so red and yellow by that point.

 

And yeah, the JCP audience had been dwindling since Turner bought the company (Really, since 1987), so I don't mean to imply that they stuck around. More that of the remaining people watching WCW, I think that was the bulk of their fanbase, and why Hogan didn't connect. The reaction Flair was getting toward the end of the year when they reunited the Horsemen and started pushing him back into the title picture was easily the biggest reaction of anyone in WCW. Flair, and to a slightly lesser degree Sting, were the only guys who consistently got a superstar crowd reaction on every show by the end of 1995.

 

Luger's jump I think helped because for years, WCW had been unable to hang on to top talent, which was a big factor in how they were perceived compared to the WWF. So WCW raiding a top star helped their perception. That continued with Hall and Nash, but the Luger signing got the ball rolling in that direction.

[Matt D]

I think Xenophobia in 95 wasn't a terribly bad way to go. It was just piss poor execution. The fact Bobby Heenan "sold" a part of Worldwide or whatever was a joke. The fact that Sonny Onoo's name was a bad pun was a joke. The fact that there was never anything really on the line made it pointless. I remember going back and watching a bunch of PPVs on Video in 98 or so and Starrcade 95 really stood out as being different in the Hogan era, but I think my favorite thing then was the triangle match anyway.

 

My main argument is that I don't think some tournament or more sports-feel reasoning behind the PPV would have necessarily done better than blatant xenophobia all things equal, but that the execution of the xenophobia angle was really bad.

[Loss]

That I can agree with. Maybe a Crockett Cup-style presentation, maybe Hogan and Flair having matches in the cup and maybe taking an extra 3 months or so to introduce the Japanese guys to the American audience. Maybe also using guys like Muta who already had a following. Maybe showing clips of WCW guys on New Japan shows on American TV. Sasaki, Chono, Tenzan, etc. weren't guys the WCW audience really knew, so it fell short.

 

I think a few years later when fans were more accustomed to international guys on TV, they could have done a three-promotion one, also including AAA, but I can only imagine the booking headaches surrounding jobbing associated with that.

[FLIK]

So WCW raiding a top star helped their perception. That continued with Hall and Nash, but the Luger signing got the ball rolling in that direction.

Eh, I don't know about that. Guys always switched back & forth so I never got the feeling WCW was incapable of stealing WWF talent. Before Luger they got Hogan & Savage, before that they got Flair back and a bunch of other guys in between.

 

The foam fingers were handed out by WCW for free, along with other Hogan merchandise.

Reminds me of a funny story Meltzer told on one of the radio shows a while back. Apparently Hogan had such a great merch deal and WCW was so stupid that at one point if you did the math between what it cost to make a shirt, what WCW was selling them for and how much they had to pay Hogan that WCW was losing money on every sale.

[Matt D]

When talking about Luger, I meant the intrigue. I think they underestimate how much people tune in to see "what will happen next" these days. The huge thing about the Monday Night Wars was always "Who will jump next." Having Crush suddenly show up on a Nitro was just part of the draw to it all. On a more micro level, it was all about Who Will go NWO next? For a while at least.

 

With Luger there was the whole "What side is he on?" thing in late 95, early 96, and I think it was a ratings draw on some level. It's surprisingly compelling to go back and watch it now.

[Ditch]

I don't think 'oh no evil random Japanese people' was going to be much of a draw in late '95 unless they put in the kind of effort Vince did for Yokozuna. And even then, Yokozuna's size and ability are what made that work, not PEARL HARBOR NEVAR 4GET. Loss points out most of the problem. In general it felt like a bunch of nobodies trying to jump a huge organization; the feud felt like an extended squash or something. The initial three-man nWo was much more intimidating.

[Matt D]

I don't think 'oh no evil random Japanese people' was going to be much of a draw in late '95 unless they put in the kind of effort Vince did for Yokozuna. And even then, Yokozuna's size and ability are what made that work, not PEARL HARBOR NEVAR 4GET. Loss points out most of the problem. In general it felt like a bunch of nobodies trying to jump a huge organization; the feud felt like an extended squash or something. The initial three-man nWo was much more intimidating.

Wasn't the issue not Pearl Harbor but "Japan is buying up Times Square" or whatever? That was pretty relevant until a couple of years later when the crisis hit. Granted, I'm not sure how much that'd sell to Mobile or Charlotte.

[Tim Evans]

Why was Benoit on team WCW? He would have been better on team New Japan.

[El-P]

Why was Benoit on team WCW? He would have been better on team New Japan.

He was a Horsemen and had no visible tie with New Japan, really.

 

This show really looked apart in the Hogan era, but also predated the upcoming international cruiserweights-heavy era with matches like Benoit vs Liger, Kanemoto vs Wright & Eddie vs Ohtani. And at the same time, the whole World Cup thematic reminded older Starrcades, much like the Luger vs Flair vs Sting dynamic. Interesting show.

[BruiserBrody]

I found the booking to be a bit odd as New Japan headliner Chono is beaten (by submission no less) in a matter of minutes and then Mr, Saito gets a protective DQ loss. Saito and Badd was much better than I was expecting.

[PeteF3]

Good action down the stretch with a far more lively crowd, and Sting eventually gets the submission to a monster pop. The other babyfaces and Luger come out to celebrate, and despite the lousy buildup they do an admirable job of making this victory seem like a big deal. Even Benoit is out, though he makes sure to keep his distance from everyone else.

[flyonthewall2983]

Benoit coming out to congratulate Sting was a weird touch.