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  The Snowman is a genius Follow @TheDocLOP Annually, wrestling fans flock back to WWE’s product in droves during a time of the year that has affectionately become known as “WrestleMania Season.” From the hype for the Royal Rumble all the way to the stadium-held extravaganza in late March/early April, we expect the best. After all, the most memorable and enduring moments in most of our respective fan histories are WrestleMania-related. Yet, I want to take you back to a different era, when Mania was a sports entertainment brand in its infancy and when there was another event that could lay claim to the title of professional wrestling’s “Granddaddy of ‘em All.” 1988 - The year that this story concludes and a more familiar one begins. The end of the National Wrestling Alliance as it was once proudly known; the beginning of World Championship Wrestling as we knew it. On December 26th, Starrcade ‘88 marked the night of the very first pay-per-view presented by WCW. The Starrcade franchise was no longer produced under the Jim Crockett Promotions-led NWA banner. It was owned, as it would be until WCW ceased to exist in 2001, by Ted Turner. Sadly for Crockett, his greatest creation finally cashed in at the box office…approximately one month after he had already sold the company and its flagship show. It was also a critical hit. For my money, it was the best Starrcade of all-time. Though it lacked a second classic match to pair with the main-event – as was the case in ’83 and ’85 - I would struggle to name a more entertaining card from top to bottom not just in Starrcade lore, but in the entire special event history of NWA/WCW. Yet, for all that went right on that evening, so much had gone wrong in the year leading up to it. Before we get to Crockett’s demise, let’s celebrate Starrcade ‘88. It was very well-rounded, featuring stellar work from the mid-card. The Varsity Club, a forgotten stable of relevant talents, starred throughout the first half of the show, with “Dr. Death” Steve Williams and Kevin Sullivan setting the tone in the curtain jerker against the horribly underrated Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers) and the completion of Rick Steiner’s split from the group creating an NWA/WCW benchmark for how to properly execute a successful secondary title switch. The battle for Midnight Express supremacy, with the better-known NWA adaptation of “Beautiful” Bobby and “Sweet” Stan (accompanied by Jim Cornette) facing the original, Tennessee territory version of “Lover Boy” Dennis and Randy Rose (accompanied by a young Paul Heyman), was also quite entertaining. The Four Horsemen once again provided the back bone of the card, with their members offering two of the top three billed matches. In 1987, Lex Luger had replaced Ole Anderson in the group, but by the spring of 1988, the National Wrestling Alliance realized that it had a budding megastar on their hands that they needed to break free from the dominant personalities of the most celebrated stable of all-time. JBL, on WWE commentary in the present day, often likes to say that Randy Orton is the perfect representation of what an ideal sports entertainer should look like. In the late 1980s, the same thing could have been said about Luger. He was an incredible athlete. Only a handful of wrestlers have ever had a better physical appearance – who have looked the part of the pro wrestling icon more than Lex. Luger's time with the Horsemen had been well spent. He had joined them as a blue chip prospect and they had guided and molded him into a talent with breakout potential. By the time he was finished with them, he was, indeed, “The Total Package.” The manner in which they ousted him from the group was classic in its execution. After disagreements with the members led to the disassociation, Luger and Barry Windham formed a duo that ultimately won the Tag Team Championships from Horsemen staples, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, at the very first Clash of the Champions. In a surprise turn of events during a rematch soon after, Windham turned on Luger, taking his place in what Ric Flair has called "the best version of the Horsemen" - the version that was enshrined in WWE's Hall of Fame in 2012. Windham would go on to star as the United States Heavyweight Champion and would battle Bam Bam Bigelow in a very good match at the 1988 “Granddaddy of ‘em all” that you should add to your Starrcade playlist. Luger, meanwhile, classically gave chase to Ric Flair’s NWA World Heavyweight Championship, culminating in my personal favorite – and what I believe to be the very best – Starrcade match ever. Flair vs. Luger was a 30-minute showcase in all that made the Nature Boy legendary and the Total Package an exemplary option for the future of the NWA. WWE would later borrow the creative ideals from Luger's babyface turn and subsequent feud with Naitch when Triple H's Evolution faction dissolved. Unfortunately, a second straight year of significant mistakes doomed the NWA long before the wonderful show that was Starrcade ‘88. Crockett was devastated, emotionally and financially, by the previous year’s Starrcade being strong-armed out of the majority of pay-per-view markets by Vince McMahon’s threat to the providers that he would pull WrestleMania if they aired his competition’s show. The first Survivor Series was a massive success while the first Starrcade to air on PPV was a colossal failure. In January 1988, Crockett tried to make up the losses by producing the NWA’s second PPV, The Bunkhouse Stampede, at the Nassau Coliseum in New York – right in McMahon’s backyard. WWE proceeded to air the first Royal Rumble event for free on the USA Network, cutting into the potential viewership for Crockett’s show. McMahon smelled blood in the water and was as relentless as a Great White. Desperate to throw a counter punch, Crockett targeted McMahon’s biggest cash cow – WrestleMania. On the same night that WrestleMania IV aired on PPV, the NWA presented The Clash of the Champions for free on TBS, drawing a 5.8 rating with a 7.8 final quarter hour during the Sting vs. Flair main-event - a monumental accomplishment for Crockett. However, television companies / PPV providers were not too happy about the tactic because it cut down on the potential earnings from their piece of the Mania pie (60%). R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, in The Death of WCW, said that the major issue was “the universe for PPV had doubled [in 1988], and even though (WWE) set a purchase record, the feeling was that the show would have done substantially better without the competition. [Crockett and] Turner were told never to allow something like that to happen again.” It was too little too late for Crockett, anyway. He was spending extravagantly, offering a private jet and limousines for his top stars, as well as holding lavish parties on a semi-regular basis. “People le their egos get in the way of good business decisions,” said Jim’s brother, David Crockett, one of JCP’s executives at the time. “We bought a jet, we bought Dusty (Rhodes) a Mercedes, spending with no regard.” JCP also bought the Universal Wrestling Federation for several million dollars when they could have picked up their various talents – pretty much the only UWF asset – on the open market once it had closed down (no one else reportedly offered to buy it). The biggest expenditure, though, was national expansion. Jim Crockett was running some of his major events for smaller gates, while simultaneously taking for granted the fanbase that had proven it would pay handsomely to watch the NWA product. In debt up to his eyeballs, he sold Jim Crockett Promotions to Ted Turner. Jim Cornette, one of the top on-air characters for the NWA, but later a respected creative mind and booker, had this to say about the situation: “If Jim Crockett and Dusty Rhodes had decided, ‘Let’s just keep running Virginia and the Carolinas and forget about expanding nationally,’ we could’ve blown Vince (McMahon) out of there with dynamite. WWE wasn’t drawing in the Carolinas, yet; (NWA) was all people wanted to see. We could have still been in business, but the company got in over the small staff’s head. That’s where the downfall came.” There is striking irony in Vince McMahon’s relationship with Turner’s Superstation. He bought a primetime spot on TBS in 1984, but instead of it enhancing his budding national brand, it started a rivalry with Turner because he failed to hold up his end of an agreement to produce an original show. The media mogul fired back a decade later and nearly put WWE out of business in “The Monday Night War.” The terrible ratings that WWE drew on TBS in ’84 and ’85 also forced Vince to sell the time slot to Jim Crockett, which gave the NWA their own national platform to help them stay reasonably competitive. Turner and Crockett are indelibly linked in their struggles for wrestling industry supremacy with McMahon. If it were not for WWE fumbling the TBS opportunity, then McMahon may have never crossed paths, competitively, with Turner. There may never have been a Monday Night War. If it were not for Crockett’s efforts in the mid-1980s, Turner might not have seen “wrasslin’” as a business worth investing his money. Crockett would not have been able to legitimately compete with WWE after WrestleMania in 1985 if it had not been for McMahon selling him the TBS slot – the same TBS slot that drove the NWA’s profits and ultimately made Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) an attractive purchase for Turner. As entertaining as the ironic perspective can be for fans to review in hindsight, the final chapter of the Crockett rivalry with Vince McMahon’s WWE is a cautionary tale. As an event, Starrcade ‘88 was one of the best since the concept had been introduced in 1983. Yet, it was also symbolic of the inherent danger in defining our success by comparisons to our peers. “The activity of comparing one's self with others is a major trigger for a plummet in self esteem, a shame reaction,” says Dr. Jane Bolton, Doctor of Psychology. “Shame fills the gap between what- ideally- we would like to be, do and have, and what we see ourselves as actually being, doing, and having. The bigger the gap, the greater the pain. The trouble is that when we enter the state of comparison-making, our seeing is distorted. We become blind to our own value, while devaluing or dismissing the real worth we have.” Jim Crockett had a thriving wrestling promotion, popular throughout the Southeastern United States. The NWA had it all – a world renowned champion, the biggest drawing tag team in modern lore, a bevy of young stars to build for the future, and numerous veteran wrestlers and personalities. They drew strong ratings on a national cable television show. Rather than concentrate on maximizing the potential of the brand that he had, though, Crockett over-expanded his enterprise to catch up to McMahon’s WWE. A series of mistakes in rapid succession proved to be his undoing. By the fall of 1988, JCP had lost so much money that it didn’t matter how much money that they were making; Crockett had to sell. He reaped what he’d sewn. Dusty Rhodes, who had been through it all with Crockett during the 1980s and who was as synonymous with the NWA product behind the scenes as Ric Flair was on-screen, got his comeuppance, too. During Starrcade ‘88, Rhodes called for a nasty blade job in a Tag Team Championship match with the Road Warriors, despite an edict being laid down from Turner’s camp that there was to be no more blood on NWA/WCW broadcasts. If the intention behind his defiant act had been to get fired, then it worked well. Rhodes was relieved of his duties and went to work for McMahon as a parody of his once proud character in 1989. It was a fitting conclusion for Rhodes. Their first several years as owner/promoter and head booker had been innovative and highly successful, but their final year together was a colossal failure. Dusty’s heavily criticized creative blunders did Crockett no favors during the downfall of the NWA. Starrcade, under the direction of Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, bared little resemblance to its predecessors after 1988. Gimmicks like the Iron Man Tournament and the Battle Bowl replaced basic pro wrestling storytelling values that had built Starrcade’s foundation under Crockett’s NWA. With the exception of a few critically celebrated matches (Sting vs. Vader in ’92, Flair vs. Vader in ’93, Eddie Guerrero vs. Shinjiro Otani in ’95, and Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon in ’96) and one box office smash (Sting vs. Hogan in ’97), the rest of Starrcade’s history largely paled in comparison to the original events from 1983-1988. Let Crockett’s story be a lesson, ladies and gentlemen. You don’t need to keep up with the Joneses. Crockett became so consumed with catching McMahon that he nearly went bankrupt. Forge your own path. Be equal parts ambitious, humble, and thankful. Wrestling history is littered with stories of promoters learning how to succeed and fail through stunning reversals of fortune. The prelude to the Monday Night War was no different; neither was the Monday Night War, itself. So, celebrate the memories that the National Wrestling Alliance provided via Starrcade in the 1980s, but heed the warnings presented by its demise.
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