Where the Big Boys Play #31

[JerryvonKramer]

Where the Big Boys Play #31 – Starrcade 88: Part 2

 

 

Chad, Parv, Scott and Justin wrap up their review of Starrcade 88. In this episode: thoughts on Bam Bam Bigelow’s career, why did Crockett wait so long before giving the Road Warriors the belts?, another assessment of Paul Ellering, who would Jim Ross rather sleep with Lex Luger or Steve Williams?, as Justin has to step out Scott, Chad and Parv take an in-depth look at Flair vs. Luger, NWA booking philosophy vs. WWF booking philosophy, Meltzer ratings and end of show awards.

[Loss]

Just listened to Part 2. Good show. Just so you know, I kept trying to talk to you guys while listening. I like you guys and thought you were pretty open-minded. I wish I could say the same for your guest, who seems like a nice guy who I would probably be friends with if I knew him. But we would argue about wrestling all the time. The Luger "not giving a shit" talk and Road Warrior Hawk criticism made me want to shout, but everyone is entitled I suppose. I'll let him live for now.

[Loss]

I actually think Flair saying he'd never have a match with Luger again backfired when you get into early '89 TV. By not giving fans a rematch, and making that such a key point, they were in effect building anticipation for a rematch. It's a match they could have returned to in fall of '89 with the roles reversed, and it would have been a big success, because it would have been completely fresh. I think that was the plan at one point, and it got away from them.

[Loss]

The NWA booking philosophy was actually that by keeping the belt on heels, they were giving the babyfaces something to shoot for. There's a reason movies don't focus on the happily ever after. The path there is way more interesting. There always needs to be some type of challenge for babyfaces to overcome, to keep them interesting. Vince disagreed, and the WWF philosophy worked for them. I think the NWA philosophy could have worked as well if Flair was seen as more unbeatable and less lucky.

 

I agree that they needed to start re-thinking this approach when they were on national cable TV, and when selling PPVs became secondary to drawing a house.

[Loss]

Dave knew Steamboat was signed. It wasn't a secret. He had been negotiating since November and it was reported in the WON.

[soup23]

Thanks for the thoughts Loss.

 

One thing I have learned is that even among the "smark" fans community there is still a lot of differences of opinions and how they view wrestling. Here I think most of the general posters at least see can see eye to eye on a majority of the issues. But branching out, you have other prevailing opinions like at F4W where you had dozens of people there call the 1/4 dome show at worst a "great" show and Dylan, Joshi Rob, and myself taking a tougher stance as the only voices on the other side of the coin.

 

Scott also has wide differences of opinions on some of the show in regards to Luger and this is opinions that has been common stance fo a while from people that have been predominately WWF guys there whole life. I certainly wanted to be diplomatic on the show even if I disagreed but at the root of Scott's hypothesis I believe is that Luger wasn't really ready for this moment and being able to take the title and lead a promotion. I kind of happen to agree with this also. Luger at the Clash 4 seemed more squeamish in front of the camera than Austin does at many times in 1990. In history looking at the elevation of break through characters (Hogan in 1983, Austin in 1996-97, Rock in 98-99) they have a supreme confidence in themselves that helps them overcome any shortcomings they may have in other facets of becoming a breakthrough wrestling star. So my final argument in regards to Luger is that he gave a shit but didn't know how to put himself completely out there without being subconscious about himself. In some ways he gave too much a shit about what other people would think at times.

 

That is interesting that Flair denying Luger a rematch actually clamored people wanting a rematch more. 1988 is also really transitional in Crockett. I think changes were discovered to be inevitable which is why you saw the leaving of Arn/Tully and phasing of Dusty. With this you also see the seeds of Flair being touted as the best champion of all time start to rise. He is really becoming more a legacy competitor as the year progresses. I can't wait for 1989.

[soup23]

Loss, that was a gaff on my part as I went back and listened to Clash 4 and when Parv talks about what meltzer was saying, he mentions Steamboat coming in. I forgot about that when we were discussing it in the Starrcade show.

[JerryvonKramer]

Meltzer didn't know about Steamboat 100 percent till the January 16th 1989 edition of WON. The very next one after he reviews Starrcade.

 

If Steamer is mentioned before that it's in the form of a rumour only. He didn't know for sure until the 16th. That's why he doesn't mention him in the incomings he talking about in the January 2nd 89 edition and why his predictions in the edition for the coming year are so dire, he doesn't mention Steamboart once there. Loss, go back and read those issues you may be confused. I do a pretty thorough job of going through them before each show.

[Loss]

He wasn't confirmed before then, but he was rumored enough that it wasn't really a huge surprise that he was eventually signed.

 

Dave didn't mention him because while the Flair/Steamboat series was pretty great, he didn't really do anything except have great matches. And while Flair and Steamboat had great matches many years before, I don't know that everyone expected the '89 series to be so good in advance. Dave's point was more of a State of the Business point than a State of the Quality point.

[JerryvonKramer]

Loss, I'll quote you the relevant bit of the January 2nd WON that suggests Dave had no clue if or when Steamboat was going to sign:

 

The last time the NWA put on a megashow like this one was March 27nd, and they managed to ride that momentum for nearly 10 days before going into their normal pattern of self-destruction. ... But when you look at the January bookings and the organization (nobody even seems to have a clue at to what is on top for Clash of the Champions on 2/15 from Cleveland or a PPV event on 2/20 from Chicago) of future events ...

It's difficult to believe that he would have written that if he knew Steamer was signing in a few days.

 

In the next edition (Jan 16th), he knows about Steamboat and that he's going to headline Chi-Town Rumble.

[goodhelmet]

I disagree.When Steamboat was last on TV, he was jobbing at WM IV. There is no reason to assume he was going to be automatically pushed to the top right away.

[JerryvonKramer]

RE: Scott's opinions on Luger (and on AWA in part 1 of the Starrcade shows), he doesn't post on this forum and is not here to defend himself (but Justin is here and is free to jump in). I'll say that to an extent he's an un-reconstructed old-time fan from Connecticut so, again to an extent, you have to expect him to have some of the views he does.

 

The positive view of Luger is in some respects a revisionist one, and PWO is a revisionist board. That general point of view is put over on the show every week by Chad and to some extent me (my views are far too eccentric and idiosyncratic to be representative of anyone else, but in the overall scheme of things, I'm closer to the PWO view than the wide-world of the internet).

 

We've generally had guests on who represent a different viewpoints, because that makes for a more interesting review.

 

I don't agree with much of what Scott said, but he did make an interesting point: that Luger was still quite immature in 1988, and now he's said it I can see it. That said, I do think Luger is one of the most misunderstood and unfairly ragged on wrestlers in the industry. He comes across very well in his shoots, and I don't believe a lot of the stories I hear about him. He just wasn't one of the boys.

[JerryvonKramer]

I disagree.When Steamboat was last on TV, he was jobbing at WM IV. There is no reason to assume he was going to be automatically pushed to the top right away.

He knows in the Jan 16th edition that he will be headlining the Chicago show. Go and have a look.

 

The other factor here is George Scott, he's brought in as booker and Meltzer knows he made money with Flair and Steamboat back in the 70s and immediately thinks that he'll try to do that again.

[Loss]

I know what the WON says. I was merely pointing out that it was in the WON in November that they were talking to Steamboat about coming in. He later came in. Therefore, it wasn't that much of a surprise. It wasn't this well-kept secret.

 

It's more likely that he just didn't consider Steamboat when talking about 1989 because it wasn't on his mind, not that he didn't know there was a possibility he might show up. Steamboat was coming off of a long absence and hadn't really been a challenger for a World title in a very long time. Steamboat had great matches with Savage, but hadn't exactly been setting the world on fire otherwise since 1983.

 

I'm going to pull a jdw on Luger revisionism. It's not so much that liking Luger is revisionist. It's more that liking Luger is something people stopped doing because he never met his potential as a headliner, to a point that people forgot how much potential he had at that level once upon a time. He is a flawed performer for sure, but a guy who got a ****1/2 rating in the WON for a PPV main event he had in 1988, who is fondly remembered by some people who post here, is not revisionism. Revisionism would be Dave calling it a disappointing match at the time, and us watching now and loving it, leaving us to wonder what he was thinking. Regal/Arn at SuperBrawl IV is revisionist. Luger is more remembering what was later downplayed or forgotten.

 

The last thing I would say is that I don't think PWO is a monolith. When you talk about the opinion of this board, you're talking about the opinions of a pretty diverse cross-section of people. What we all have in common is that we like pro wrestling more than the average bear. Most of us probably like it more than the above average bear too. I have had debates over just about everything with you, jdw, goodhelmet, SLL, Dylan Waco, Nintendo Logic, MJH, ohtani's jacket, FLIK, Tim Evans, soup23, tomk and others that I'm sure I'm leaving out. There are probably things the majority of us agree on, but I wouldn't call PWO a board that has an opinion. Corporations aren't people, my friend.

[soup23]

Ross again says Tommy Young is a 6 time referee of the year in our next show. Does anyone know who was giving him this award or was Ross just making shit up?

 

Also, what was the reasoning for Matsuda being made the manager of Flair and the Yamazaki corporation as a whole?

[Loss]

I think the Referee of the Year thing was legit. Joe Higuchi of All Japan won it quite a few times too, IIRC.

 

JJ Dillon quit with very little or no notice to take the WWF office job. I think someone with power liked Hiro and wanted to give him a payday/something to do, so they tried this. I don't know that there was more thought put into it than that, but yeah, it bombed.

[JerryvonKramer]

Chad - from what I've read it's a combination of JJ Dillon suddenly leaving as Loss says, and Matsuda was tight with someone in the office or even on the roster (I want to say it was Eddie Gilbert, but can't be sure), so they brought him in.

 

I know what the WON says. I was merely pointing out that it was in the WON in November that they were talking to Steamboat about coming in. He later came in. Therefore, it wasn't that much of a surprise. It wasn't this well-kept secret.

 

It's more likely that he just didn't consider Steamboat when talking about 1989 because it wasn't on his mind, not that he didn't know there was a possibility he might show up. Steamboat was coming off of a long absence and hadn't really been a challenger for a World title in a very long time. Steamboat had great matches with Savage, but hadn't exactly been setting the world on fire otherwise since 1983.

Even so, Meltzer makes it clear that once Steamboat is back to full ring fitness he'll be, and I quote, "pushing Flair, Windham and DiBiase as the best worker in the country" (WON, Jan 30th 89, p. 2).

 

Meltzer definitely KNEW a Steamboat move was on the cards in November 88 and you're right it wasn't this big surprise (don't think I said that on the podcast either), but the evidence suggests he didn't know about the timing or specifics of the move until the January 16th edition. If I recall correctly, there's also a question mark over Steamboat's possible schedule which was one thing that potentially scuppered his move -- he'd left WWF because he didn't want to work all the dates, even after he's joined NWA, Meltzer is unsure if he's going to work a full schedule.

 

I'm going to pull a jdw on Luger revisionism. It's not so much that liking Luger is revisionist. It's more that liking Luger is something people stopped doing because he never met his potential as a headliner, to a point that people forgot how much potential he had at that level once upon a time. He is a flawed performer for sure, but a guy who got a ****1/2 rating in the WON for a PPV main event he had in 1988, who is fondly remembered by some people who post here, is not revisionism. Revisionism would be Dave calling it a disappointing match at the time, and us watching now and loving it, leaving us to wonder what he was thinking. Regal/Arn at SuperBrawl IV is revisionist. Luger is more remembering what was later downplayed or forgotten.

This view I can accept and think it is broadly correct. But I also think that a certain generation of "smark" fans got a whole bunch of received wisdom on Luger from shoot interviews and Scott Keith reviews and all the rest of it, as well as continually being buried on the WWE outputs like the 27/4 roundtable. Luger's the one guy it was ok for bury for years.

 

"Revisionism" might not be the correct phrase, but being positive about Luger is sailing against a received view of him that became dominant.

 

The last thing I would say is that I don't think PWO is a monolith. When you talk about the opinion of this board, you're talking about the opinions of a pretty diverse cross-section of people. What we all have in common is that we like pro wrestling more than the average bear. Most of us probably like it more than the above average bear too. I have had debates over just about everything with you, jdw, goodhelmet, SLL, Dylan Waco, Nintendo Logic, MJH, ohtani's jacket, FLIK, Tim Evans, soup23, tomk and others that I'm sure I'm leaving out. There are probably things the majority of us agree on, but I wouldn't call PWO a board that has an opinion. Corporations aren't people, my friend.

Absolutely the board has a group of people with wildly divergent views, but I think almost all of its members are united by this refusal to accept received opinion -- for example, about a guy like Luger, or for example, about the idea of Shawn Michaels as a GOAT contender.

 

This puts PWO in a 1% sort of category. Sure, there are all sorts of different views here, but in the overall scheme of things taking every single wrestling board and wrestling fan out there, all of the guys you name have a lot more in common than any one of them and any one average wrestling fan "out there". That's not to say any of us will ever agree on everything (or indeed anything ), but I do think that's the reality of it.

 

My general point is: we shouldn't be surprised if we still hear people who are way down on Luger or even way down on the AWA -- that's not even necessarily to say that such views aren't possible on PWO, just that they'd be coming from a different place.

[SteveJRogers]

I listened to this for a bit last night. I'm not trying to be harsh . The bit where you guys were talking about the commercials needs to stop. I want to listen what you have to say about the wrestling. It's a wrestling podcast.

All due respect, it adds to the time capsule nature of the past show review. Kind of helps getting a bigger snapshot of the era by seeing what advertisers were being used by TBS back in the day for the Clashes.

[Loss]

I'm going to split this into a separate topic for each episode of this and the other podcasts that have threads on this board.

 

Please start a new thread every time there's a new podcast, so going back and reading the discussions about them is more manageable.

 

Link to the new forum here.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm so used to people thinking Luger's '89 heel run was good that I kind of assumed it was accepted wisdom by now. Luger was definitely a guy you were taught sucked when I first discovered message boards a hundred years ago. I don't know that it was revision with Luger, more like a flat out mistake.

 

I'm kind of on the fence about whether Luger was ready at say Starrcade. It may have been good but it would have denied us Flair's '89, which was a tremendously great year.

[shoe]

I listened to this for a bit last night. I'm not trying to be harsh . The bit where you guys were talking about the commercials needs to stop. I want to listen what you have to say about the wrestling. It's a wrestling podcast.

All due respect, it adds to the time capsule nature of the past show review. Kind of helps getting a bigger snapshot of the era by seeing what advertisers were being used by TBS back in the day for the Clashes.

 

 

Maybe it's a different strokes for different folks thing. Or it might be I watched the damn thing live. I don't need to hear about those same commercials I watched when I was younger. Now as a capsule it would be great to see them and discuss. Getting a discussion about them means nothing unless you have a working knowledge of them. Either way I'm curious about hearing about Starcade 88 part 2.

[shoe]

I love the fact that these guys are discussing big shows from the NWA/WCW. I enjoy the podcasts. I don't want to get the rap as the commercial hating guy, as it's not fair.Just like this podcast shouldn't be changed from Where to The Big Boys Play to the We Hate Lyle Alzado Fan Club.

[SteveJRogers]

Interesting comparison for how different the booking of both promotions were. Lets see how many times the Heavyweight title changed hands on the biggest show of the year:

 

Starrcade;

1983 Ric Flair as a face

1987 Ric Flair as a heel

1993 Ric Flair as a face

1995 Ric Flair as a heel

1997 Sting as a face

1998 Kevin Nash as a face

 

6 times. Okay, 4 times a face has been booked to win, then again the last time Nash would turn heel soon after and the Fingerpoke of Doom switch with Hogan would happen. Ditto the Sting change where shenanigans caused the title to be held up. But other than 1983 it never seems to be used as the "star making vehicle" or major blowing off of a wrestler finally getting the best of his opponent that Wrestlemania has been. Yeah there have been more Wrestlemania's than Starrcades, but even when Starrcade was still around the WWF was using it differently:

 

Wrestlemania;

1988 Randy Savage as a face (title tourney of course)

1989 Hulk Hogan as a face

1990 Ultimate Warrior as a face

1991 Hulk Hogan as a face

1992 Randy Savage as a face

1993 Yokozuna as a heel

1993 Orange Goblin as a face

1994 Bret Hart as a face

1996 Shawn Michaels as a face

1997 Undertaker as a face

1998 Stone Cold Steve Austin as a face

1999 Stone Cold Steve Austin as a face

2001 Stone Cold Steve Austin turns heel at the match finish

2002 Triple H as a face

2003 Brock Lesnar as a face

2005 John Cena as a face

2010 John Cena as a face

 

And to be complete about it, the WWE World Title (which has it's heritage from the WCW's Big Gold Belt)

 

2004 Chris Benoit as a face

2005 Batista as a face

2006 Rey Mysterio, Jr. as a face

2007 Undertaker as a face

2008 Undertaker as a face

2009 John Cena as a face

2012 Sheamus as a face

 

A heck of a lot more "send the fans home happy" title changes and character defining moments it seems than Starrcade had.

[soup23]

Even beyond that Starrcade just seems to get lost in the shuffle a lot of times. For some reason they always threw out gimmicks for it whether it be Battlebowl or WCW vs. the World. Add to that some disappointing years where you had The Butcher and the Black Scorpion nonsense of 1990 and Starrcade as a show with an overall history gets greatly diluted.