Diamonddust

One or two surprise/nostalgia entrants are good, since obviously you're not going to book them to win. From a kayfabe/promoting standpoint, it makes sense to bring in some outsiders to fill out a 30 man match. It also helps from a pacing standpoint like when you have someone going on a monster run, and then the "legend" comes out for a few minutes. It can either jump start the crowd for a big stretch, or it can bring them down during the middle so they won't be burned out during the ending.

Making Starrcade 91 and 92 nothing more than an insignifcant battle royal was a stupid idea by Dusty. Sting had a six-day reign as WCW World Champion from March 11 to March 17. This was during a tour of Europe. For whatever reason, WCW had some strange fascination of making the biggest show of the year a display for some gimmick heavy card - The Iron Man tournament in 1989 The Tag-Team tournament in 1990 Battle Bowls The WCW/NJPW series

There should be a roundtable discussion about the territories this month as well. Also, we get to see Jerry Lawler bring RVD to Raw as "Mr. Monday Night". The Owen/Holly match is pretty good as Owen put Holly over since the show was in Mobile.

It was part of Watts' attempt to make things look legit and like other professional sports. He was all about trying to make things look as realistic as possible.

Some of those made sense geographically and theme wise... Baltimore was a good location to host The Great American Bash as was Daytona hosting Bash at the Beach.

I always wanted to write a script like this - a past his prime perfomer doing indy shows on the weekend while flashing back to when he used to be on top. When I moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for college, Robert Gibson was running a wrestling merchandise store down here. I visited it with some friends, and he had a wall of polaroids from back during his heyday. Things like Halloween parties, hanging out with other wrestlers, etc. It was pretty interesting to see.

Wasn't Ted already the Million Dollar gimmick before Gino's death? I think if he went to the WWF, he would've had a Ric Flair type role, from what I've seen from him in his WCCW stuff. Gino died in February '86. The Million Dollar Man debuted in late Spring/Summer of '87. Either way, I just can't imagine anyone else playing the Million Dollar Man role any better then Ted DiBiase. I still love the fact that they convinced DiBiase to take the job by saying, "If Vince could wrestle, this would be the gimmick he'd use." I love how they had convince DiBiase to take a gig where he'd be an immediate main eventer and get more perks (first class flights, limos etc.) than any other wrestler in the company (barring Hulk Hogan). Talk about a job selling itself. They wouldn't tell DiBiase the details about the gimmick until after he signed, which is why they said the line about Vince using the character if he could.

Wasn't Ted already the Million Dollar gimmick before Gino's death? I think if he went to the WWF, he would've had a Ric Flair type role, from what I've seen from him in his WCCW stuff. Gino died in February '86. The Million Dollar Man debuted in late Spring/Summer of '87. Either way, I just can't imagine anyone else playing the Million Dollar Man role any better then Ted DiBiase. I still love the fact that they convinced DiBiase to take the job by saying, "If Vince could wrestle, this would be the gimmick he'd use."

Unfortuneately it looks like they're not going to show that special 2/7/86 NWA show they were hyping with all the Championship Challenge Series matches. That's the downside of it not being an episode of World Championship Wrestling. It was the same feeling when we had all those shows a couple months ago hyping Starrcade '85, and it wasn't on the schedule. It would be a nice touch if they would match up, however, they'd then have to do the same with the Monday Night Wars and even the ECW shows starting relatively soon... although, that wouldn't be a bad thing.

My parents would always make sure I knew it "wasn't real", especially when I was younger, but they didn't discourage me from watching it.

A lot of people liked Solie because of that - he had a serious, non-cartoonish way of broadcasting. It added a huge amount of legitimacy to the product.

I loved Heyman and Ross together... Paul E. getting under J.R.'s skin, even back when they were doing WCW events, was a treat.

Exactly... In the long run, does it really matter if you call all the moves correctly? It's not radio where the people can't see what's happening. As long as the announcers are calling what needs to be called - important points of the match, storyline aspects, required heat, etc. - I'm fine.

The WWE will never ever be bringing back Cyrus/Don Callis, that guy had more heat than anyone ever. He was hated by damn near everyone including guys like Taker... He was disliked so much, Matt Hardy told the story..Where he'd dress in his car. So one day..they broke toothpicks off in the locks of Cyrus car so he couldn't do that or get to his stuff. Anyone know why he had so much heat? Did he not shake Taker's hand on his first day in, if so then damn him, damn him straight to hell. Doing things like dressing in his car didn't help, which apparently he was doing from the start. I've seen the Matt Hardy interview where he talks about this, and I got the impression that Callis just carried himself completely wrong in terms of ticking people off. It's pretty funny because Bradshaw was the one that came up to Hardy, who was new at the time, and told him about the toothpick thing, seeing what Matt and Jeff would do about it.

I agree. The WWE/F Championship was an afterthought most of the year. It was kind of a side effect of having Taker in the World Title match at Wrestlemania since everyone knew he was going to win, but Austin/Hart was the big money feud. They hit Summerslam and had to have something for Taker to do - so they set up Austin/Owen and Hart/Taker. Austin/Owen was understandable from the Canadian Stampede PPV, but Taker/Bret was kind of just thrown out there. They couldn't put the belt on Austin as it was obvious at this point his first World Title reign was going to start at a Wrestlemania. Then it got even worse when Bret won the championship, but he was then stuck in a feud with The Patriot, while Shawn and The Undertaker were tearing things down in September and then October with Hell in the Cell. Then... November happened...

I don't know if they were so much praised, but they were beating Raw senseless in the ratings. They rode the incredible momentum they had in the 2nd half of 1996 all the way into 1997. Raw was countering with an awesome storyline and characters, yet they couldn't make a dent in things. Basically the first half of 1997 didn't accomplish anything other than the DDP/Savage feud, which carried two PPV's. The end of 1997 picked up slightly as this guy named Goldberg came around, and they started the final push to Sting/Hogan before screwing up that one. We also got that great Eddie/Rey match from Halloween Havoc '97 as well. The writing was on the wall for WCW in late 1997. The WWE was left for dead after Montreal, and WCW thought they were going to drive the final nail in the coffin. They botched the Hogan/Sting match, lost a boat load of viewers the night they tried to change things to NWO Nitro (Which happened right before Starrcade). The next month... the WWE started their Wrestlemania, AKA "The Formal March to the Austin Era" with the great Austin/Tyson scuffle. It was also the time "The Rock" really started to catch fire as a heel. A few months later, McMahon closed the gap, and WCW didn't know what to do other than hot stuff multi-million dollar matches for a one night victory.

But several of the "tough" nominations have excellent grappling skills to go along with striking/fighting skills. And which nominations would they be? Danny Hodge for one - excellent amateur wrestler plus boxing skills Haku has sumo training, which would help with takedowns. If Stu Hart ever got anyone down on the mat, it would be extremely difficult for them to escape.

But several of the "tough" nominations have excellent grappling skills to go along with striking/fighting skills.

When I went to Charlotte over the summer and a friend called, I answered, "I'm live in Charlotte... WOOOOO!!!!.... North Carolina." Also, when football games go into the 4th quarter and everyone holds up four fingers... I break out my Nature Boy strut.

Production values were the biggest thing that separated WCW and WWF/E in my opinion.

Harley Race would be another addition to the list.

Hayes would be my first choice, but I see where it might be a logistical problem.

Agreed... As much as people hated the character, I love the J.B.L. gimmick. Call it because of my fascination with "Dallas" and The Million Dollar Man if you want, but I got a kick out of the character, and he had the right amount of charisma and microphone skills to pull it off.

Paul Orndorff would highly disagree about Vader.

Agreed on Mad Dog... a great amateur wrestler and someone that always ranks on top or near the top of "Toughest Wrestler Ever".