Wrestling PPV Musings – Page 41

Starrcade 1983: A Flair For The Gold

1983… the year the Granddaddy of them all was born.

This is my first time watching the inaugural Starrcade. I have seen bits and pieces of it via DVDs and online clips, but never got around to watching the whole thing until I got access to the WWE Network. In fact, a lot of the old NWA stuff is new territory from a bygone era that I was never that widely exposed to.

This is a point worth mentioning because it can certainly color my perceptions of the matches and all that stuff. Another point worth re-iterating when it comes to these musings is that they are just that; random thoughts, brief thoughts, observations, and just general impressions. Don’t take this to be some kind of critical review because that’s not my intention. (They’re labeled MUSINGS, not REVIEWS, which should be very distinct from each other.)

Continue reading “Starrcade 1983: A Flair For The Gold”

WCW Starrcade 1996

I debated between watching this show and the 97 version for today’s slot and after a bit of personal reflection, I opted to go with this one and save the 97 show for next month. This had “less” stuff going on compared to that other one and I wanted to watch a Starrcade that wasn’t complete shit for once. And while this might not be great, it was at least good enough… but that’s jumping ahead here.

Continue reading “WCW Starrcade 1996”

WCW Starrcade 1993

Warning: The above image never appears on today’s subject matter, since by this point, the Hollywood Blonds tag team has long since split and went their separate ways.

Another Warning: The above parody turned out to be not an accurate portrayal of old Ric Flair, who nowadays looks like a living skeleton. On the up side, at least he’s still alive and kicking… so good on ya, Ric.

All “kidding” aside, we go back to 1993 where we have Ric Flair putting his career up on the line against Big Van Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. This was a last minute change from the originally-intended main event that would’ve seen Psycho Sid Vicious Justice Guy beat the Mastadon for the title… but then Arn Anderson and a pair of scissors wished Sid the best of luck on all his future (softball) endeavors and we got this match instead.

And for what is essentially a last-minute booking job, they did a rather fine job of building to this main event throughout the show, as cameras showed Ric Flair leaving his house, taking a rather somber limo ride with Mean Gean, and other backstage bits to somewhat give the impression that this could very well be the end of a long career… that wouldn’t come along until a decade and a half later, but I digress. The point is that this is a wonderfully told little backstory that did enough to get you up to speed on the stakes of this show’s main event.

But first… we have the rest of the card to blow through.

And blow we shall…

Or rather, blow the show shall while we witness it fall way the fuck apart.

Continue reading “WCW Starrcade 1993”

WCW Starrcade 1999

Oy, oy, oy… maybe continuing onwards wasn’t such a good idea…

So we jump ahead to 1999 and by this point, WCW was teetering on the edge; their glory days feeling like a fleeting memory. Eric Bischoff, the man who brought WCW to new heights, had been turfed and in his place was a man named Bill Busch, whose first big move was to hire former WWF writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara and have them steer the WCW ship. Seemed like a good idea at the time; the guys responsible for planting the seeds to the WWF’s rise to prominence would surely be able to replicate the same results here.

Well, that didn’t quite happen, now did it?

Continue reading “WCW Starrcade 1999”

WCW/nWo Starrcade 1998

WWE recently announced the return of “Starrcade” as a live event in Greensboro… so why not celebrate the occasion by spending a week revisiting old Starrcade events from the WCW days… because I haven’t seen any of the NWA era shows beyond brief snippets here and full-length matches in compilations there… though, for the sake of fairness, I might look at one of those along the way because that’ll be fun to experience.

Unfortunately, today’s foray into Starrcade revisitation is the show from 1998… the one that some would argue was the first bullet in what would eventually be the downfall of a once prominent wrestling organization… though others would argue that first bullet came the year prior, but we’ll go with this one since the aftermath was slightly more damaging.

Continue reading “WCW/nWo Starrcade 1998”

WWF Survivor Series 1997

This PPV took place twenty years ago and apparently features an incident of some importance in the professional wrestling/sports entertainment context. And this trivial event apparently merits a revisit for whatever reason.

I live in Montreal. I was born in dee Montreal. I spend my living years on this planet in dee Montreal. However, I didn’t see this show live, as I didn’t start following WWF until mid-98ish. And because I wasn’t following the product at the time, I was oblivious to the whole Bret Hart fiasco – though I can recall some rumblings about Bret jumping ship, I never gave it much thought. When I did get around to watching this show, it was on VHS thanks to a rental from the local video store and it was mostly due to wanting to watch the rematch between Stone Cold and Owen Hart; the first such match between the two since the Summerslam encounter and the piledriver that almost ended a career.

Even watching the show, the whole controversy eluded me until I eventually saw the Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows documentary on A&E, where the significance of the event became more apparent. Naturally, it’s something that gets discussed and talked about over the years and while some feelings were mended and more things are put out in the open, this is something that has its place in wrestling lore, for better or worse. And as much as we want to trivialize this event, it really did have a hand in planting the seeds to the rise of WWF and the slow, sad decent of Bret Hart’s career.

So here we are; twenty years later and watching this show again for the first time since… well, that one time I rented the VHS tape from the local video store. The WWE Network seems to have the whole show in one piece, so we might as well check it out…

Continue reading “WWF Survivor Series 1997”

WWE Hell In A Cell 2017

Oh lookie, another WWE PPV I completely forgot about.

But it’s not my fault. I blame Discovery. Hey, did you know this new starship has spinning saucers? It further lends credence to my theory that this was intended to be a pizza cutter or something, but I digress.

Won’t be long with this one. In fact, I’ve so little to say about this show that didn’t interest me in the slightest that it changed the way I watch PPVs from this point forward.

Continue reading “WWE Hell In A Cell 2017”

WWE No Mercy 2017

Full disclosure: I did not watch No Mercy live on the WWE Network… because Star Trek: Discovery just debuted and new Star Trek will always take top priority over a B-level WWE show. Saving my thoughts for another time, but I thought it was a good start. There were some bits I didn’t care for, but there was enough for me to like that I’d be willing to give this show a follow and that’s as far as I’ll go.

In any event, I watched this over the span of two days; this packed B-show with two high-caliber matches that will end up be pretty disappointing no doubt… let’s get on with it.

Continue reading “WWE No Mercy 2017”

WWE Summerslam 2017

Another year, another Summerslam, another marathon of shit.

As per the case with these things, I don’t watch the pre-show. But apparently, Neville won back the Cruiserweight title he lost on Monday and the Usos won back the Smackdown tag titles they lost to the New Day last month or so. Also, Shawn Michaels found a new job dressing up as some old guy. Other than that, nothing of note happened.

So, let’s begin, shall we?

Continue reading “WWE Summerslam 2017”

WWE Battleground 2017

Where were you on the night of July 23rd, where the 2017 edition of WWE’s Battleground PPV took place?

I’ll tell you where I was… not watching the show. Instead, I was on a road trip to Terrebonne on a nice Sunday aftertoon enjoying the outdoors and spent the evening doing some cleaning and eventually settling down to play a rubbish fighting game on the Xbox for the purpose of gaining future review material. It would only be until later that night that I even remembered that there was a WWE PPV going on that night.

Maybe this wrestling stuff isn’t for me anymore… or maybe I need to look elsewhere… but that’s perhaps a discussion for another time.

So that’s the haphazard reasoning behind the lateness of this musings. Fortunately, this being posted on the WWE Network, I can watch the show at my leisure… and instantly regret doing so. Seriously, there is so many other shows on the On Demand side of things I would rather be watching, but because there’s some sense of “duty” that people seem to think I have, I might as well share my musings on this show…

Continue reading “WWE Battleground 2017”