After the success of the initial Starrcade in 1983, a sequel was inevitable. “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes, had all but guaranteed as much at Starrcade ‘83 when he challenged “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair to a championship bout even before Flair had actually won the title. In the one year between the two mega-events, Flair had firmly established himself as the preeminent wrestler in the NWA. He had defended the title numerous times throughout 1984. Now, technically speaking, Harley Race recaptured the NWA title from Flair, on March 20, 1984 in Wellington, New Zealand and Flair would win the championship back from Race just three days later in Kallang, Singapore. Depending on what source you look at, these two title changes are not really recognized as an official reign for either Race or Flair. WCW recognized it for a time but that did not carry over once WWE acquired WCW. Still, it shows that the Race vs. Flair rivalry had one final curtain call before it was finally resolved.
Flair did, however, drop the NWA Championship to Kerry Von Erich on May 6, 1984, at WCCW’s David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas. That event, a tribute to David Von Erich who had tragically died in Japan on February 10, 1984, was a supercard in its own right, albeit not quite on the same level as Starrcade. To honor David’s memory, Flair dropped the title to his younger brother, Kerry. Von Erich’s title reign, however, did not last long as Flair would recapture the title just 18 days later in Yokosuka, Japan.
It would be more than two years before Flair would lose the NWA Championship again.
Nevertheless, Starrcade ’84 would serve as the true launching pad for the biggest rivalry in pro wrestling for the next two years. Rhodes and Flair had met before, but never on a stage as large as what would take place on November 22, 1984, originating for the second straight year from the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. For the main event, the NWA World Championship match between Rhodes and Flair, $1 million was going to be awarded to the winner, in addition to the title. With that as a backdrop, 18,000 people came to Greensboro to see what would happen. Similar to the event a year earlier, Starrcade ’84 would again be broadcast to hundreds of thousands of other pro wrestling fans by way of closed circuit television.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with sequels, the follow up was not quite as good as the original.
Here are some promos from some of the competitors leading into Starrcade ’84:
Gordon Solie and Bob Caudle handled the commentary, just as they did for Starrcade ’83 and you can’t complain too much about these two. They were not as smooth as they were the year before, and they had to deal with all sorts of technical difficulties the whole night through. Still, they try to truly sell the event as being better than the previous years…but you can tell by the end that they don’t really believe their own bull shit.
One thing about Starrcade ’84 that was much more apparent than it was at Starrcade ’83 was just how regional the NWA still was at this point in time. Several regional championships were on the line at Starrcade ’84 and while this added depth to the card, it also created some confusion and might have actually disrupted the flow of the event in general.
The first match of Starrcade ’84 was for the NWA Junior Heavyweight Championship with the champion, Mike Davis, defending the title against Denny Brown. This is a pretty good match. Both men hit some moves and the action is fairly quick and entertaining. At the end of the match, Davis sets up Brown for a belly to back suplex. Both men have their shoulders on the mat after Davis executed the move and as referee Earl Hebner made the three count, Brown raised his shoulder at the last possible second. There is a lot of confusion in the ring after the match and it seems like Davis retained the title. Even Solie and Caudle are confused. It quickly becomes apparent though what happened and Brown walked off as the new champion. It’s not a great match, but a fairly fun way to begin the event.
If you are looking for help from the technical staff here to see what exactly happened, you will be quite disappointed as the replay cuts off before you ever see the three count. It is a recurrent theme throughout the card and some of the technical issues that persist throughout the broadcast on the WWE Network really detract from the overall enjoyment of the event.
You can skip the next match and go right to the third match, the first regional championship match of the card. In this one, Mike Graham challenged Jesse Barr for the Florida Championship. This is a really good match. Both men are quick and crisp with their moves and there is no shortage of action in this one. Near the end of the match, Graham locks Barr in the Figure Four, but Barr gets to the ropes. Graham connects with a Sunset Flip, but Barr escapes defeat again. Hebner gets knocked down momentarily, but long enough for him to completely miss Graham pinning Barr with an inside cradle. Both men exchange rolling reversals, with Barr heelishly trying to hold Graham’s trunks to get the win. Graham connects with an Atomic Drop sending Barr face first into the corner. As Graham comes in to finish things, Barr executes a double leg takedown and puts his feet on the ropes to cheat, get the three count, and retain the Florida Championship. A very good match and one of the best ones of the entire card.
We then get a brief video interlude showing Black Bart, Ron Bass, and Tully Blanchard beating the holy hell out of Dick Slater and Ricky Steamboat to set up some matches that would take place later on in the card.
You can safely skip the next match as well and whether you want to watch the interview Tony Schiavone conducts with Rhodes really depends on how big a Dusty fan you are. It is a fun interview but Rhodes jumps around topics quite a bit in this one. Still, it adds to the tension and anticipation of the main event.
The next match worth watching is the so-called “Brass Knuckles” Championship match between the champion, Black Bart, and the challenger, Manny Fernandez. Now correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t brass knuckles supposed to be made out of, I don’t know…brass! But at Starrcade ’84, there is no brass to be found, just taped fists. This is an OK match but very lacking as far as technical wrestling skill is involved. Both men bleed early and in large quantities. Near the end of the match, Black Bart tries to get his rope from his manager JJ Dillon. As Dillon throws Bart his rope, Fernandez rolls him up for the 1-2-3 and the Championship. A bloody good brawl but nothing more and nothing less.
The next match is a Tuxedo Street Fight between Paul Jones and Jimmy “Boogie Woogie Man” Valiant, with the added stipulation that the loser leaves town. Because of the regional nature of the NWA, leaving town really just meant leaving a territory for a little while. This match really is not that good unless you want to see Jones get bloodied and stripped down to his black trunks and dress shoes. Jones take s a pretty good whipping and Valiant does a pretty pathetic imitation of Hulking out whenever Jones tries to execute any sort of offense. In the end though, with the ref distracted, JJ Dillon gets in the ring and blasts Valiant in the head with a pretty large foreign object. Jones crawls on top of Valiant and pins him for the win in a match the crowd was amped for but which is quite forgettable in the grand scheme of things.
Schiavone then conducts an interview with Flair and the Nature Boy seems far more focused and makes much more sense than Rhodes did earlier in the night. Even at this relatively early stage of his career, Flair was a master as far as cutting an awesome promo.
The next match is another regional championship match as Ron Bass was defending the Mid-Atlantic Championship against Dick Slater. There was obvious heat between the two men as evidenced by the video footage earlier of Bass, Black Bart, and Blanchard triple teaming Slater and wrapping a rope around his head and across his mouth. This is another good, albeit not great, match. There is lots of brawling to be found and some curious interference by the referee on occasion. Bass frustrates Slater early on by continuously bailing out to the floor. Bass, with some timely interference from Dillon, gains an advantage as the match reaches its conclusion. Slater reverses an Irish Whip into the corner and begins to beat on Bass repeatedly. The referee tries to intervene and gets shoved to the side for his trouble. Slater executes a belly to back suplex, which brings Dillon into the ring. Slater beats him down and through the ropes and returns his attention to Bass. Slater clearly has Bass beaten but the referee taps him on the shoulder and raises Bass’ hand as Slater has been disqualified. It is a terribly unpopular decision but, as Solie and Caudle noted, the correct decision based on Slater’s actions. This is a fun match and probably a bit underappreciated as far as Starrcade ’84 is concerned.
For the next match, it helps to remember that this takes place in 1984 when tensions between the USA and USSR were still quite high and the end of the Cold War was still a good seven years off in the future. Naturally, anytime there was a USA vs. USSR confrontation in the sports world or entertainment world, emotions would run high. The US Olympic hockey triumph in 1980 heightened that and the Soviets had just re-asserted their dominance in Olympic Hockey at the ’84 games in Sarajevo nine months earlier, even though the rematch between the USA and USSR never took place. The US and their allies boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and the Soviets and their allies returned the favor by boycotting the 1984 Summer games in Los Angeles.
Thus the stage was set for the battle of good vs. evil between the USA and the USSR as Ole Anderson and Keith Larson, with Don Kernodle in their corner, took on the Soviet tag team of Ivan and Nikita Koloff. This is one of the rare times you will actually see Ole Anderson as a baby face. It is obviously a role that does not suit him in the least. Kernodle and Ivan Koloff were actually the tag team champs earlier in 1984 but once Nikita arrived on the scene, Kernodle was on borrowed time. Ivan and Nikita would beat up Kernodle and leave him with crutches and a neck brace, both of which he sported during the match. This is also Nikita’s first appearance on a stage this large and it shows for much of the match. Still, this is an excellent encounter between two really good teams.
Anderson and Larsen spend a lot of time working on Ivan’s arm while Nikita spends a lot of time bear hugging anyone he can wrap his arms around. Near the end of the match, things degenerate into an all-out brawl with all four men in the ring. Nikita blasts Kernodle outside the ring, which grabs Anderson’s attention. Referee Tommy Young is distracted with what is going on between Nikita and Anderson and never sees Ivan clobber Larsen with his chain. Young turns around to see Ivan covering Larsen and he makes the three count. All hell then breaks loose when Ivan is about to do further damage to Larsen and Kernodle jumps into the ring and beats the Soviets off with his crutch. A highly entertaining match all the way around.
The Soviets would become a much more dominant team in the months to come as Nikita would make significant strides and progress quickly. This would be one of the few times some vulnerability would be seen by the Soviets for quite some time.
The next match, for the NWA World Television Title between Ricky Steamboat and the champion, Tully Blanchard, is by far and away the best match of Starrcade ’84 and is the match that steals the show. The NWA TV Title had been hotly contested for much of 1984, culminating in Mark Youngblood beating Dick Slater in a tournament final to capture the belt.
Here is some footage of Youngblood’s tournament title victory:
Blanchard would then win the title from Youngblood on March 7, 1984 and had become a master at using the Champion’s Advantage to retain his title, so much so that he was essentially stripped of it for his match with Steamboat. Steamboat, however, was selling a supposedly serious injury to his ribs and he did a masterful job of this the entire match. Both men put up $10,000 of their own money for the match with the winner taking the title and the money, a recurrent theme at Starrcade ’84.
There are so many little things to love about this match, things that would go largely unnoticed but once you are watching for them, it adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the match and how a great story can be told in the ring. Steamboat sells the injury to his ribs so well for most of the match that he actually alters the way he usually wrestles. Blanchard shows expert ring psychology by stalling and frustrating Steamboat, taking advantage of this frustration, and then focusing on the ribs every chance he gets. It is something we just don’t see enough of nowadays. Steamboat dominates the early part of the match, which was not too surprising. Blanchard getting busted open was similarly not so surprising. Blanchard does an expert job of picking his shots and Steamboat does a great job of maximizing the impact of his moves when he has the opportunity to do so. It is just an excellent match from start to finish.
Steamboat uses Blanchard’s moves against him as the match nears its apex and comes close to winning the title on a couple of occasions. Steamboat goes for a belly to back suplex from outside the ring into the ring but Blanchard has some sort of object in his hands and he blasts Steamboat in the head with it. Blanchard follows this up with a cross body press and gets a near three count. Blanchard goes for a superplex but Steamboat kicks him away and connects with a huge splash from the top rope. Somehow, Blanchard kicks out. Steamboat goes for a sunset flip and Blanchard braces himself. Tommy Young gets low to count the shoulders and Blanchard reaches into his trunks and pulls out the object again. He clobbers Steamboat in the head and covers him for the 1-2-3, retaining the TV Title in the process. It is just a tremendous match and, by far and away, the best match of Starrcade ’84.
Here is some footage of the Blanchard vs. Steamboat match from Starrcade ’84:
All told, Blanchard would hold the TV title for 353 days before finally losing the belt to Dusty Rhodes on March 16, 1985. Blanchard’s reign would go down as the longest in the history of the Television Championship.
From here, we get the United States Championship match between the challenger, and former WWF Champion, “Superstar” Billy Graham, and the champion, Wahoo McDaniel. The US Championship had been the subject of a great deal of controversy in 1984 and McDaniel had been at the center of it. He had beaten Steamboat for the title but had a ton of help from Blanchard in doing so. Because of Blanchard’s interference, the title was vacated and a tournament was held to crown a new champion. McDaniel, however, would defeat Manny Fernandez in the tournament final on October 7, 1984 to legitimately capture the title. This set the stage for the match at Starrcade ’84.
On paper, this one looked like it could be a classic confrontation between two of the best of all-time. What we got was not nearly so good…and that might be an overly kind statement. Graham was fully immersed in his karate renaissance and he bore very little resemblance to the flamboyant and charismatic champion of old. McDaniel came out to a somewhat mixed reaction due to all the issues surrounding his winning the championship in the first place. The match itself is pretty bad. McDaniel beats Graham in a test of strength early on, which, of course, makes no sense at all. The match comes to a surprising end when McDaniel hits Graham with nothing more serious than a chop as Graham comes off the ropes. Shockingly, this is enough to defeat a man who was able to defeat Bruno Sammartino at one point in time. It is terrible booking and just a pathetic outcome for a match that held such potential.
Only one match remained and that was the main event for the World Heavyweight Championship between Rhodes and Flair, with former boxing Heavyweight Champion, “Smokin” Joe Frazier serving as special referee. Now, WWE Network has done some interesting stuff with entrance music for these old NWA pay-per-view broadcasts and this is painfully obvious as Rhodes comes down to the ring with music that makes Eric Rowan’s current entrance music sound like Beethoven’s 5th Symphony by comparison. It is music one might find in a terrible porn movie or a bad 70’s love scene.
But even that could not compare to the horrid job Frazier does as the referee in this match. For much of the match, Frazier actually acts like he is the referee of a boxing match and he frequently interferes with the action. It made the job Gene Kiniski did at Starrcade ’83 look masterful by comparison and if you read the first blog post, then you already know what I thought of Kiniski as a special referee. The match itself is not long, just over 12 minutes to be exact. And much of that sees Rhodes in command with Flair taking frequent trips outside of the ring.
The end of the match begins with Rhodes slamming Flair off of the top rope but missing with an attempt an an elbow drop. Flair catches Rhodes in a sleeper but Rhodes is able to dump Flair outside the ring. The two men exchange punches and Rhodes grabs Flair in a headlock. Flair then shoves Rhodes headfirst into the ring post. As was often the case in any match involving Rhodes and Flair, Rhodes comes away from this a bloody mess with a nasty gash over the right eye, but not nearly as bad as some cuts we have seen before or since this match.
Flair starts to work on the eye and Rhodes keeps fighting back. Frazier keeps trying to intervene to examine the cut. Ultimately and inexplicably, Frazier stops the match because of the cut, Flair retains the World Championship, grabs the check for a cool million dollars and he gets the hell out of dodge. This is one of the shittiest endings to a match you will ever see equaled only by the similar God awful finish to the Lex Luger vs. Ric Flair match from the Great American Bash in 1988. Rhodes is understandably irate and tries to get to Frazier. Flair’s attitude is more or less, “Yeah, it sucks to be Dusty…but I’ll take the win any way I can get it.” After the credits roll, Frazier tries to explain his actions but this fails to diminish the fact that his actions prematurely ended what was shaping up to be a classic Rhodes vs. Flair confrontation.
Here is the travesty that was the Main Event at Starrcade ’84:
FINAL THOUGHTS
Starrcade ’84 was not a bad event, but it was not all that good either. Unlike Starrcade ’83, which had several fantastic and noteworthy matches, Starrcade ’84 had one great match (Steamboat vs. Blanchard) several good matches, and then quite a few matches that just stunk, including the main event between two Hall of Famers who would go on to headline many house shows together with matches that were so much better than what we got at Starrcade ’84. It is hard to truly verbalize just how disappointing a card this was, especially when you look at the card on paper. The only way to rationalize the ending, at all, is to assume that the NWA wanted to truly make Flair a heel and needed some sort of crappy finish to get the job done. To that end, the event succeeded on a few levels.The WWE Network’s version of the event does a good job at trying to fix some of the production issues, but even that is not enough to make the event any better than it actually was.
Overall, I would rate Starrcade ’84 as a 6 out of 10.
Still, it was clear that Starrcade, in general, was a successful venture and Jim Crockett Productions knew it had a winner and potential cash cow on their hands.
What Crockett could not have foreseen, however, was what was about to happen, and how everything would change, just four months later. The WWF/WWE was catching lightning in a bottle and its name was Hulkamania. Hulk Hogan had captured the WWF Championship from the Iron Sheik in January of 1984 and this served to launch the WWF to levels of popularity never before seen or imagined. Adding to the momentum for WWF in 1984, Roddy Piper showed up in at about the same time that Hogan did, originally as a manager.
Later in 1984, Sgt. Slaughter and the Iron Sheik would begin a bloody and brutal feud that would fuel interest in the WWF even further.
Sgt. Slaughter and the Iron Sheik go to war in 1984:
Greg Valentine followed Piper to the WWF and captured the Intercontinental Championship from Tito Santana.
Greg Valentine and Tito Santana engaged in one of the best feuds of 1984:
That same night, Piper broke the neck of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka and began calling himself “The Legend Killer” long before Randy Orton ever did.
In 1984, Piper’s Pit made its debut and this gave Piper a platform from which to work. And work it he did…masterfully. In one segment, Piper had Valentine on and they actually mentioned their history with each other. It was something rarely seen in WWF programming during the 80’s. Another segment had the famous incident where Piper smashed a coconut over the head of Snuka.
The infamous incident where Roddy Piper smashes Superfly Jimmy Snuka in the head with a coconut:
But it would be Piper’s feud with Hogan that would set the stage for the birth of one of the biggest pop culture phenomenons in the world today: WrestleMania. The first ever Road to WrestleMania began in July of 1984, during The Brawl To End It All, broadcast on MTV. This was the night when Wendy Richter, with Cyndi Lauper in her corner, dethroned the Fabulous Moolah, ending Moolah’s 27 year reign as the Women’s Champion. Hogan would defend the WWF World Title against Valentine that night, although only the Richter vs. Moolah match was televised. Still, that one match drew a phenomenal 9.0 Nielsen rating, the most watched program in MTV history.
Wendy Richter ends the 27 year title reign of the Fabulous Moolah at The Brawl to End it All:
In February of 1985, The War To Settle The Score would push things even further. On that night Hogan defended the belt against Piper and prevailed when Piper was disqualified. Paul Orndorff and Bob Orton would get involved in the match, as would Mr. T, who was sitting at ringside. During the chaos after the match, Piper kicked Lauper in the head and thus the stage for WreslteMania I was set. The Rock and Wrestling Connection, a joint venture of sorts between WWF and MTV, had been a huge success during 1984 and 1985 and pro wrestling was about to truly enter uncharted territory.
Chaos ensues at The War To Settle The Score and sets the stage for WrestleMania I:
In the NWA, Flair and Rhodes would continue to feud over the World Championship. In September of 1985, Flair would break Rhodes’ ankle during a melee after a steel cage match between Flair and Nikita Koloff at The Omni in Atlanta. Ole and Arn Anderson would assist Flair greatly in this. This was the beginning of the birth of the Four Horsemen and also signified the true onset of Flair as the “Dirtiest Player in the Game.”
In summary then, 1984 was a very important year in pro wrestling but it really served as a springboard, of sorts, to a much more important year, 1985. Starrcade ’84 was a microcosm of this in many ways. 1984 is an important year to revisit simply for historical perspective. But nothing that happened in 1984 would compare to just how radically things would be forever altered in 1985.