Category: Wrestling PPV Musings

NWA Starrcade 1984

If I could find a Cornette Face circa 1984, I would… because it’s the only thing that could justly depict my reaction to this show.

So once upon a time, there was a thing called Wrestlemania and it was touted as a big deal. The following year, they had a thing called Wrestlemania 2 and the only thing people remember about that one was that it was held in three arenas on the same night and the card was largely bad.

Going a bit further back, there was a thing called Starrcade and it was touted as a big deal… and it was, seeing Ric Flair defeated NWA World Champion Harley Race to win his seond world title. The following year, there was another Starrcade event… and the only good thing to come out of that show was a pretty good match between reigning TV champion Tully Blanchard and Ricky Steamboat.

Other than that, the show was complete and utter trash.

Rarely do I watch an old show from the WWE Network that I had to STRUGGLE with in order to keep going. There were multiple points where I just wanted to stop outright because the show was so BORING. A whole bunch of short, shitty matches with a lot of downer endings because it’s mostly heels winning. This isn’t a case of different times; Starrcade 83 had some downer stuff, but it also had some really good shit and there were a couple other shows from the early days that I thought were pretty good for the most part… if only because there was one or two matches that made the rest of the show worth sitting through.

Starrcade 84 is not one of those shows.

There’s a bunch of titles being defended; Junior Heavyweight, Florida Heavyweight, Brass Knuckles Heavyweight, Mid-Atlantic title, TV title, US title, World title… I think if you look hard enough, there might be a Coal Miner championship being defended somehwere on the card. Outside of the aforementioned TV title match, none of these are any good. Yes, the main event is Dusty Rhodes challenging Ric Flair for the World title, with the winner getting an additional one million dollars to sweeten the pot, but even that match sucks, with Flair punching Dusty a whole bunch of times before guest ref Joe Frazer stops the match. For fuck’s sake, the main event to your biggest event of the year – the Thanksgiving Day tradition at the time – and THAT’s the fucking finish you give the people?!

I could just find the results on some random Wikipedia page somwhere and copy-paste the bastard here to save some time… and I ended up doing just that. What the fuck can I say about each one other than some variation of “This was a thing that happened” or “This match sucked.” This is as bad as sitting through one of those AWA shows from the 80s, except those have slightly better production values – probably the only time I would say such a thing in regards to those PPVs.

I am only doing a write-up on this show to fill the gap and despite appearances, I really, REALLY wanted to give this show a fair shake… but something to consider here; anyone who says I am too harsh towards WWE in my various musings, at the very least, I’m willing to share some thoughts on the matches featured, even if it’s a quick blurb or two. I couldn’t even be bothered with this one. THAT’s how painfully dull this show was and that’s saying quite a bit.

So yeah, don’t watch this show, everyone. It sucks.

Results (courtesy of Pro Wrestling Wiki)

Denny Brown defeated NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion Mike Davis to win the title (5:38)

Brian Adias defeated Mr. Ito (4:00)

NWA Florida Heavyweight Champion Jesse Barr defeated Mike Graham (11:43)

The Assassin and Buzz Tyler defeated The Zambuie Express (Elijah Akeem and Kareem Muhammed) (w/ Paul Jones) in a Tag Team Elimination Match (5:26)

Manny Fernandez defeated Black Bart (w/ James J. Dillon) to win the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship (7:35)

Paul Jones defeated Jimmy Valiant in a Tuxedo Street Fight Loser-Leaves-Town match (4:35)

NWA Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion Ron Bass (w/ James J. Dillon) defeated Dick Slater by disqualification (9:12)

Ivan Koloff and Nikita Koloff defeated Ole Anderson and Keith Larson (w/ Don Kernodle) (15:28)

NWA World Television Champion Tully Blanchard defeated Ricky Steamboat to retain the title and win $10,000 (13:17)

NWA United States Heavyweight Champion Wahoo McDaniel defeated Billy Graham (4:18)

NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair defeated Dusty Rhodes to retain the title and win $1 million (12:12)

The Wrld On GCW (Jan. 23rd, 2022 PPV)

Another year, another Royal Rumble… that I haven’t watched yet. But I did see that big Game Changer Wrestling show from the Manhattan Center that took place the week prior and so I’m going to share some brief thoughts on that. This is my first GCW show and… well… how diplomatic do you want me to be?

For the record, there are a lot of folks on this show that I’m largely unfamiliar with, so I’ve had to look up some of these names for the sake of not having a whole bunch of briefs being “this guy beat that guy” or some similar bit of vagueness. There’s more than enough vagueness that goes along with these things in the first place, so… here we go.

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WWE New Year’s Revolution 2006

Last year, WWE debuted a new PPV to the calendar; New Year’s Revolution, which was the first WWE PPV held in Puerto Rico. A year later, WWE would hold their second annual New Year’s Revolution in the exotic land of… Albany, New York.  Well, it certainly is exotic.

Fun fact: I have never watched this PPV before. I have seen a couple matches from it by virtue of DVD compilations and such, but never the full show.

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WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005

So let’s dive back to 2005… which began with WWE needing to crown a new World Champion on their RAW brand… except they really didn’t because… well, we’ll get into the background in the actual musings, but with WWE’s New Year’s Day PPV having come and gone, I figured it’d be a good time to revisit their brief run of PPVs that weren’t the Royal Rumble.

I’ve already talked about this show years ago and I’ve provided the above link for the sake of context and comparison.

The first New Year’s Revolution emanated from Puerto Rico, which marks the first time WWE held a PPV in that country. You’d figure that would be a neat annual tradition to hold a PPV there every year, but the following year’s edition would be held in some random American city. Oh well.

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WWE Day One (January 1st, 2022 PPV)

And so here we are. A new year is here and who better to kick off the year with a bang than WWE with their New Year’s Day PPV?

Allegedly the brainchild of CEO Nick Khan – responsible for such wonderful WWE moments such as Miz getting eaten by zombies, Vince McMahon’s egg stolen by Austin Theory, as well as the near hundred releases due to “budget cuts” during their most profitable months ever – the idea is for WWE to hold a PPV on New Year’s Day going forward.

But before we get that far, let’s check out this show first, which is billed as a “premium” live event instead of a PPV. Yeah… “premium.” Whatever you say, pal.

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NWA Hard Times 2020

How about that? Turns out I had one more ready to go… I guess. Took me a while, but I got around to seeing Billy Corgan’s NWA’s Hard Times PPV from January 2020, which turned out to be the last PPV event that the NWA ran before the world went to shit. I saw this some time ago and started on the musings, but never really finished it until now.

So let’s look at the last pre-prevailing circumstances-era NWA PPV called HARD TIMES.

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