WCW Starrcade 1990: Collision Course 

 

December 16, 1990 

 

The last major show of 1990 is Starrcade. From St Louis, Missouri at the Kiel Auditorium. The building is famous for having multiple NWA title changes take place here. Lou Thesz won his second world title here in 1956. Pat O’Connor won his first title here in 1959. Gene Kiniski won his first title here in 1966. Harley Race won his seventh world title here in 1983. Ric Flair won his fourth world title here in 1986. This being the USA, the building was closed and demolished in 1992. Starrcade 1990 would be the last time a major wrestling event would take place in this historic building. Hosts are Jim Ross and Paul E. Dangerously.  

 

Run time on this show is 2h49m. Which, by 1990 standards, is a long show. I know some of the Mania shows ran longer but even so, that’s a lot of time to spend in the company of Ole Anderson’s booking.  

 

The hardest part of any show that you think you might struggle with is clicking play to begin with. It’s always darkest before the dawn. 

 

 

They introduce Sam Muchnick to the crowd to kick the show off, which is a nice touch. There’s a case to be made for Muchnick for the greatest American promoter of all time. Born in the old Russian Empire in 1905, he came to the USA aged 6. He began his career as a sportswriter and served in World War II before helping to found the National Wrestling Alliance. He ran his first show in the Kiel Auditorium in 1945. He was NWA president for the entire of the 1950s and his show Wrestling at the Chase was a revolutionary broadcast.  

 

When he retired, in 1982, the mayor of St Louis made it Sam Muchnick Day in the city. His St Louis Wrestling Club, a legendary territory, was absorbed by Jim Crockett into what would become WCW in 1985. I’m not saying he is the greatest American promoter of all time but he’s certainly in that conversation. He’s also the reason the NWA title was considered the top title in the entire world from the late 40s until the mid 80s. A time of tremendous change in the world.  

 

A lot of promoters were successful in their own areas like Eddie Graham, Bill Watts, Don Owen and Vince McMahon Sr but to be a unifier, an organiser and to essentially control wrestling via a union; there was no one who could match Muchnick. I’m sure you could argue about Verne Gagne, Vince Jr’s expansionism, Jim Crockett Jr, Paul Heyman, Eric Bischoff and Tony Khan but, for me, Muchnick is hard to beat. 

 

14 matches on this card. All of which are being sent LIVE to our beloved troops, currently in Saudi Arabia on Operation Desert Shield. The codename for the buildup to the Gulf War of 1991.  

 

Beautiful Bobby vs. Z Man 

Or Bobby Eaton vs Tom Zenk, if you’re not a child. Eaton had a family to think about and a lucrative contract so he couldn’t afford to just quit like Jim Cornette and Stan Lane did. Jim Ross interupts early on here to tell us Ric Flair is injured and out of tonight’s match with Doom, to be replaced by Barry Windham. Huh. If that doesn’t seem somewhat fishy, you’re not a wrestling fan.  

 

This match is what would now be the “hot opener”. Two guys out to prove something, putting on a good match. Amazingly Eaton would remain in WCW for the entire decade. Eaton is so smooth and clinical. His offence is great, his bumping is great. The crowd know it and love him. Zenk is a dork. The crowd know that too. Interesting to hear Jim Ross use the term “superkick” here. Never heard it before this in the majors. Zenk misses off the ropes and Eaton rolls him up for the duke. Very solid pro wrestling here. **¾ 

 

Video Control takes us to Tony Schiavone who has Dick the Bruiser. He’s the referee for tonight’s main event.  

This is what a real man looked like in the 1980s. Extremely tan, blading scars, huge hands.  

Right, the next four matches are the quarter-finals of the Pat O’Connor tag team tournament. I’ve taken the screenshot from the ramp so you can see what a gorgeous building the Kiel Auditorium was. You can feel the history of it. Imagine watching a show in this motherfucker? Sensational. The winners will be the “champions of the universe” according to Gary Michael Capetta. The nations are USA, UK, Soviet Union, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, Canada and Japan. USSR and Japan both get booed.  

Here’s the bracket. Yes, they are doing the entire tournament at Starrcade. What a brilliant idea.  

 

Colonel de Klerk & Sgt Krueger vs. Steiner Brothers 

The Steiners take on the evil South African duo. The Steiners come out to the AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM. If you missed my Clash 13 review, the South Africans are Ted “Rocco Rock” Petty and Ray Apollo, who would go on to be one of the Doinks. Rick eats heat for all of 10 seconds before WALKING across the ring and tagging out. Rick is thrilled to be working three times tonight. Frankensteiner finishes in about 2 minutes. Petty did get a dive in during that, but it was no sold.  

 

USA, USA, USA!  

 

Chris Adams & Norman Smiley vs. Rey Mysterio & Konnan  

The UK team includes NorMEN Smi-LAY, who’s from Tobago. Why not just announce him from where he’s from? Northampton. Chris Adams, from various Texas concerns, uses the superkick as a finisher, which is where Ross got it from on the call earlier. JR calls Rey “Rey Mysterk”. HAHAHA. He’s immediately corrected. This is Rey Sr, not Rey Jr.  

 

I’m suprised WCW didn’t just sign Adams after this. He’s great. He superkicks Rey out of the ring over the ropes. Smiley looks good too. His strikes, mostly lifters, are ace. Unfortunately, both Mexicans SUCK. Imagine having a rich population of lucha talent right south over the border and coming up with Konnan. More worryingly, he’d become their main talent acquisition guy, thus rewarding himself with a permanent deal and would remain in the company for the second half the decade.  

 

The crowd is fucking dead btw. They just don’t care. Which shows why they should have just done the finals here. Konnan pins Smiley to win and the referee kindly ignores that Konnan manages to pin himself in the process. It’s also wild to hear Rey Mysterio’s name getting pronounced wrong by everyone. “Rey Mysterioso” according to GMC. Konnan was awful here*.  

 

*a sentence I will surely use again, and again, and again in the future.  

 

Video Control gives us Michael Wallstreet and Alexandra York with her computer. It’s predicted Wallstreet will beat Terry Taylor in less than 8:30. OPTA!  

 

Royal Family (Rip Morgan & Jacko Victory) vs. Mr. Saito & Great Muta 

Royal Family? That’s UK lads. Youse don’t have a royal family in New Zealand. Heyman makes an interesting point that Black Scorpion might have been Muta. Holy shit, that’s better than the actual unveiling. Pull his hood off and have him mist Sting and roll him up for the belt.  

 

Anyway, the match is terrible because both Kiwis are awful. Neither of them have any idea how to work with Muta. They both flatback stuff and hope for the best. Rip Morgan really sucks. Muta ends up hitting a German suplex on Victory for the win, caused by a miscue. Victory helpfully looking around to see where Muta is before backing up into the hold. Jesus. That’s 0/3 on the tournament by the way. Heyman interviews Saito after the match and he says bad things about the Steiners, so you know these are the tournament heels. 

 

Danny Johnson & Troy Montour vs. Salman Hashimikov & Victor Zangiev 

The Soviet team are Antonio Inoki’s boys. The Canadian team won a tournament in Canada to qualify in an “upset” according to JR. I don’t know either of them. Hi, I’m Troy Montour, you may remember me from….this match? Big Dan Johnson was a WWF jobber guy. He’s tall. Montour is 6’5”! Given that WCW signed Bryan Clark and Master Blaster Iron in 1990, you have to think if Montour had an ounce of ability, they’d have signed him up.  

 

Zangiev gets a belly to belly, and Johnson has NO CLUE how to land it and lands on his face. Heyman tries to big Hashimikov up as a potential challenger for Sting, but he’d literally never get booked again after this. The referee fucks the finish up with a terrible count. Hashimikov is all “what are you doing?” Anyway, they advance. We get a replay and Montour clearly kicked out. Canadians getting screwed around here. This sucked because both Canadians just weren’t good enough. 

 

Sting promises to find out who the Black Scorpion is tonight and put an end to this CHARADE.  

 

Terry Taylor vs. Michael Wallstreet 

Two bores in action here. We get the 8:30 clock counting down onscreen to see if Miss York’s system is bullshit or not. York starts punching information into her tiny little laptop as the match progresses. OPTA! The computer obviously suggests that Rotunda just work a bunch of rest holds, until Taylor falls asleep and then he can be quietly pinned. This is SO fucking boring.  

 

JR reminds me that Taylor calls his finisher the “Fivearm” because it’s better than a forearm. He’s so lame. He might be the lamest person to ever wrestle. The fivearm, predictably, looks even worse than the superman punch, which is saying something. Stock Market Crash (Samoan drop) finishes with 1:41 left on the clock. This was not good. Wallstreet tanked the whole angle by jumping to the WWF anyway. Oddly enough, Taylor is the guy taking his place. One bore replaces another.  

 

Big Cat & Motor City Madman vs. Skyscrapers 

Skyscrapers haven’t teamed in over a year, at Clash 9, but this is a one-night reunion. Sid and Spivey both remained in the company, so I don’t know what happened. Likewise, Bryan “Nightstalker” Clark was supposed to be in this match, but someone decided he wasn’t good enough. Whoever it was, they were correct. The Scrapers get Motor City Madman up for a powerbomb he clearly doesn’t want to take. That’ll do it. What was the point of this? Dan Spivey yells about how the Skyscrapers will team whenever they feel like it. They literally never teamed again. I guess, they just didn’t feel like it?  

 

Tommy Rich & Ricky Morton vs. Fabulous Freebirds 

The never-ending run of Freebirds matches on PPV continues. Robert Gibson is ringside on crutches. Morton looks lost without him. Freebirds still have Little Richard Marley as their roadie. This is basically the end of his career. The fans are into this as the Freebirds get their asses kicked all match. The finish is more of the same as the Freebirds miscue, with Marley tumbling into Garvin, courtesy of Gibson’s crutch. The faces leave as the Freebirds kill off Little Richard Marley with a double DDT. This was more about the story, but it was a peppy little match with a decent angle attached.  

 

We return to the Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament 

 

Rey Mysterio & Konnan vs. Steiner Brothers 

Wait, no, it’s Rey Misteric. My mistake. Fucking WCW, man. “Konnan is noticeably limping” – JR, just as Konnan slingshots into the ring and lands feet first off the top rope. Konnan fucks up the opening spot here. KILL HIM, RICK! Kill him! They have to drag Konnan through a few spots afterwards and he still foward rolls out of Scott’s control into a tag. He’s so shit, lads. So, shit. Rey tries some takedowns on Scott, and he is NOT INTERESTED in taking those, sir. Rick finishes with a powerbomb. Boy, did this ever suck. The Mexicans were both terrible and the Steiners decided to be jerks about it. 

 

We get clips of the angle where Doom took out Ric Flair this afternoon. Were they in the Black Scorpion conspiracy too? The clips don’t show any actual violence.  

 

Salman Hashimikov & Victor Zangiev vs. Mr Saito & Great Muta 

GMC welcomed the Russians in the “name of glasnost” earlier after the FLAG got booed at the top of the show. Why not just have the Steiners beat both teams back to back? Who really cares at this point? The whole thing is only on PPV in the first place because the Nasty Boys jumped to the WWF.  

 

Muta vs. Zangiev is very nice, actually. The Japanese are better equipped to deal with the Russian’s penchance for shootstyle. Hashimikov does the overhead belly to belly and Muta knows how to take it. It’s a pretty fun little match but the crowd don’t care, and Saito wins with a backdrop driver on Zangiev. Oh well.  

 

United States Championship 

Stan Hansen (c) vs. Lex Luger 

They switched the belt at Halloween Havoc and in doing so, have somewhat painted themselves into a corner. Luger can’t get the big clean win here that he needs to catapult himself into the upper echelons of WCW. Why? Because Hansen is the AJPW Triple Crown Champion and won’t do a clean job. I guess they could have sent Luger over to job in Japan in return and just not told anyone about it.  

 

Instead, we have the “bullrope” match, also dubbed a “Texas lariet (sp)” match here. Yeah, they really spelled lariat with an E. Generally, these ‘touch all the corners’ matches are totally unsatisfying. This match is better than their first one with Luger hitting a lot harder and them genuinely clicking. It’s still a match with the odd ricket. A ‘german suplex’ from Hansen on Luger is downright lousy.  

 

After a hard-hitting, well executed match they go and ruin it all by having a ref bump. Luger wins as the referee is bumped. Nick Patrick runs down to referee and watches Hansen collect the buckles and declares him the winner. However, Randy Anderson recovers and announces Luger as the actual winner. Jesus. Why even bother? Luger had a good showing here but the finish, designed to appease All Japan ends up helping no one. **½ 

 

World Tag Team Championship 

Doom (c) vs. Four Horsemen (Arn Anderson & Barry Windham) 

This is no DQ, no count out. “No rules!” as GMC announces. An early iteration of the street fight. Barry has his street fighting leather chaps on. Arn has kneepads over his jeans because he’s sensible. This is one of those matches that was hot at the time, and I might be more blown away by the wackiness if I’d not already seen All Japan women’s do it for years or Memphis. But yeah, it’s a chaotic, bloody brawl.  

 

There’s a really clumsy spot where Butch is going to come off the buckles and Windham just walks away from him. Leaving Reed to climb down from his wobbly high spot and double axe him in the back on foot. They litter the match with big spots and near falls. Which are more acceptable because there’s usually a guy there to make the save. Simmons clocks Arn with a big clothesline and Windham rolls up Reed at the same time. It’s a double pin.  

 

WCW and their inability to book a finish here takes away from an energetic contest. I don’t think it’s aged well. Meltzer went 4 on this. Scott Keith went 4.25. It’s nowhere near that. I do like it for the excitement and near falls, but the finish sucked. Mainly because of how out of position Butch Reed was, so it delayed everything and made Arn look like a chump for jobbing to a basic move after all the crazy spots. ***½ 

 

Pat O’Connor Memorial Tag Team Tournament Final  

Mr Saito & Great Muta vs. Steiner Brothers 

JR makes fun of Heyman for being a liar and accusing him of a lack of honesty. “I don’t believe there’s value in it” replies Paul. Hmm. Saito is out here punching Rick and JR decides he’s doing “karate moves”. Haha. You’re Japanese, you know karate, right? Wax on, wax off? Paint the fence? No?  

 

Following the street fight this feels tentative and sluggish. They probably should have run them the other way around. Or maybe not run this stupid tournament on PPV. Muta, a bit of a wildcard, takes out Rick with the ring bell. Several moves in this match look like they come from the WWF Smackdown games when you press the wrong button. Rick is down and Saito leans over and starts choking him. No, the pin button, the pin button!  

 

Heyman asks JR if he knows what “domo arigato” means and the silence is LOUD from the Oklahoman. It means “thanks” Jim. While we’re getting linguistic lessons Rick catches Saito with the sunset flip for the underwhelming conclusion. This was fine but it never really got going and it felt like they wasted Muta here. The Steiners have been brilliant this year though. A good showing here could have got them tag team of the year. However. 

 

WCW do a nice little trophy presentation to make this whole thing feel like it was a big deal. They bring out Jim Herd. BOOOO!  

Go back to Pizza Hut! Scotty cuts a barely coherent promo about THE TROOPS. Scott’s brain went too fast for his mouth at times, but he still managed to turn it into a great promo style…eventually.  

 

World Championship 

Sting (c) vs. Black Scorpion 

You’ll notice all the branding with NWA has been totally removed and the titles are not called NWA this or NWA that, but also they’ve not yet switched to “WCW” in front of the titles. This is in a cage and the referee is Dick the Bruiser. I don’t remember a ‘special referee’ that’s ever managed to do the job properly, but WCW just don’t seem to care. 

 

They bring out a bunch of Black Scorpion’s here so the crowd can’t focus too much on the participating one before the match. “I don’t understand what’s going on here” says Heyman. You and me both brrrrrrrother. There’s no expense spared here as they do a bunch of magician bullshit.  

God, this is the dumbest shit imaginable. This is the main event of the biggest show of the year mind you.  

Weight: unknown. The scales are broken backstage. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by pointing out that the Scorpion here is Ric Flair. The idea behind getting Flair to do it was that ‘hey, if anyone can fix this mess…” The trouble with Flair is he’s very recognisable. So, he has to hide everything about his usual work.  

You’ll notice they’ve covered up his trademark beak. The crowd has no idea who he is, which leads to several issues. Firstly, there’s no heat on this AT ALL. Nobody gives a shit. Secondly, while Flair tries to conceal his identity, it makes him very boring and generic. What they could have done, was just unmask him early on, and just, yanno, have a match where Ric Flair is able to be Ric Flair.  

 

With Flair working such a generic style it also makes Sting look like a total failure for not being able to get anything against him. This is one of the most boring, heatless main events in wrestling history. Dick the Bruiser breaks up Flair’s cheating and Flair cannot react to it because it’ll give away that it’s him. This whole match is so utterly pointless. The one thing Flair can’t hide is his bumps. He can’t take a flat back because of the plane crash injury. He tries HARD to flatback here.  

 

I’m not kidding when I say I am SO bored watching this. It’s tedious. Flair just running through a bunch of the most generic shit imaginable. The cage doesn’t help because they can’t even brawl around the building. They could potentially have done something interesting by doing that and switching Scorpions during the match. Multiple times if necessary. Instead, we have this…thing. It’s 11am on a Thursday as I write this and I’m considering going back to bed. 

 

Sting pulls the mask off but there’s another underneath. This time we do have a huge clue though, some blonde hair poking out at the bottom. Flair has now started making vocal clues with little screams. You can tell it’s him. Sting wins with a clothesline off the ropes. More Scorpion’s come piling into the ring and Sting and Dick the Bruiser fight them off. The Horsemen jump in there to really give it away. With PPV time running out Ross is screaming time cues into the ring. We don’t even get a good reveal shot of Flair getting unmasked and Ross has to yell his identity on comms or the viewers at home would have no clue.  

 

God, this sucked. Like, it was really fucking deplorably bad. The whole angle was just awful and to force Flair into this boring match is a crime. Plus, it turned Sting into a complete goof. His whole first title run was derailed by Black Scorpion nonsense. There are dozens of ways they could have done this better. Let’s face it, the angle was already dead in the water. Might as well throw someone in there who could give Sting a good Starrcade match. Or just unmask Flair at the start of the match and have them fight. Awful, awful booking. ½* 

 

As soon as the bell rings Jim Herd pulls out his phone and texts Ole Anderson. “ur fired lol”. I’m kidding, of course, as this is pre-mobile phones (unless you’re Paul E). He probably sent out an inter-departmental memo announcing it yesterday.  

 

The 411: 

A long pointless, failure of a show. At least it didn’t have a weird theme like some previous Starrcade’s, which detracts from it being the biggest show of the year. However, the card is a mess. The Pat O’Connor tournament shouldn’t have taken place here. At most the final could have been on this show. It just took up time and nobody cared anyway!  

 

The card is full of pointless, shit matches and bad feuds. Luger-Hansen was ok but the finish sucked. Doom vs Horsemen was ok, but the finish sucked. Big shows tend to live or die based on the main event and the main event sucked. It sucked dog dick. It sucked donkey balls. This is the second time I’ve seen it. The first time I was microanalysing Flair’s performance. This time, I was just bored.  

 

The ultimate legacy of Starrcade 1990 is the immediate need to switch gears. Ole Anderson was fired as head booker and they took the belt off Sting and put it back on good old reliable Ric Flair. Good old Ric, NWA to the core. He’ll stay here forever. We can just treat him however we like. Right? Right?  

 

1990 is the year where WCW tried to copy the WWF with all the cartoonish gimmicks and outlandish storylines. Not realising that this wasn’t even working for the WWF in 1990 and their popularity was on the wane. Had WCW provided a genuine alternative they could have eaten in the early 90s. The WWF won’t be any good now until 1997. It’s a run of the company at a creative low ebb. Meanwhile, WCW was trying to copy that. Predictably they were dreadful for the next six years. Needing the New World Order and massive spending to finally turn the corner.