This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video Here.
Every time I visit the WWE Network, yes, we still have it over here, their Best of WWE compilations catch my eye. To date, they've produced over a hundred of these, and they come out about monthly based on events or anniversaries that are coming up, or even wider cultural events. I once heard a man named John Carlan, who worked for WWE for 23 years in various roles from acquiring video libraries to being an instrumental part of the early WWE Network, give a fascinating interview on the Wrestlenomics podcast (link in the description), where among other things he explained that these started life during the pandemic as a way to sell older content to sports broadcasters who were struggling for programming while no live sports were running. Since then I've also seen these specials as DVD releases in shops, so they still must be making some money off them. In this video, I'm not going to be addressing too much of the stories around the matches as some of these are rabbit holes in their own right. I'm going to go through all the matches with the mindset of does each one belong on a "best of" compilation? Did they miss any glaring matches out, and are these worth your time? I'm also going to try and not spoil too much in case you want to watch any of these matches for yourself.
The most recent Best Of that WWE released was on November 17th called Starrcade Spectacular. Starrcade in it's Jim Crockett Promotions years was a thanksgiving tradition, but the '88 event and every one after it occurred in December, largely due to WWE introducing Survivor Series the year prior as their Thanksgiving competitor. WWE going out of their way to spite other companies? No... In recent years WWE brought the name back, holding house shows around Thanksgiving in 2017,18 and 19 in North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia. Even on the first one allowing Goldust to break character, and wrestle as The Natural, Dustin Rhodes. More on him later.
Starrcade through it's years had some truly great moments, and more than a few dodgy ones as well, so I was really interested to see what would be chosen for the list. Going in there was one match I absolutely hoped would be here, and if we get to it I'll let you know what it is. Also I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matches coming up, so let me know what you think in the comments.
1) Rowdy Roddy Piper vs Greg Valentine - Dog Collar match 1983
We begin on a high note with a legit classic match. The Dog Collar match itself is one of the rarer stipulations you ever see, probably because no matter how you do it wearing that collar while wrestling must really be a gruelling experience. It's the kind of match you have to be super tough or mentally committed to take part in, and Piper vs Valentine for years has been thought of as the quintessential version. I'd argue that the two AEW ones and FTR versus the Briscoes were also great, but have we had any other truly great ones in between? Let me know if I'm forgetting any.
From the start the announcers Gordon Solie and Bob Caudle go to great lengths to put the collars and the chain between them over as much as possible, which is so important in a match like this. The more we see a weapon used, the easier it is for it to lose it's sting, so perhaps it helps that a chain connecting the necks of two wrestlers is seen seldom. More importantly though, Piper and Valentine do an excellent job of making this match look brutal, largely because it was.
On an event subtitled a Flare for the Gold featuring Ric Flair defeating Harley Race for the NWA world title. His second World title win, but also the one considered to be his coronation, this being the match they chose speaks volumes as to how good it is. It undoubtedly deserves to be on this list.
2) Magnum TA vs Tully Blanchard - I Quit match US title 1985
Admittedly having been aware of this match for maybe twenty years mainly because of it's finish, I'd never seen it until making this video, which for me feels like admitting that I've never seen Star Wars.
The most famous I Quit matches since this one have relied on all manner of gimmicks to push wrestlers to their extremes, such as Mankind crashing into what Michael Cole called an "electrical circuit board" with suspicious pyro inside it at the 99 Royal Rumble, or Batista quitting while on John Cena's shoulders as John threatened to adjust his attitude off a car. Incidentally and a bit off topic, while researching this I realised John Cena had four I Quit matches and won them all, defeating Miz and Randy Orton with his STFU, and Batista and JBL with the threat of violence.
Back to Magnum and Tully, their I quit match was focused on two men who hate each other, and the emphasis being put on how degrading it would feel for one man to surrender to the other. The match is, fitting of the story going in, an ugly brawl in a confined space, with the microphone not working as they expected it to. I loved this match. It was dramatic and tense without the need for any histrionics. I won't spoil the finish, but it is perfect for this match, and to my mind this match absolutely needs to be seen by all.
3) Ric Flair vs Lex Luger - NWA World title 1988
We move on to a World title match from the 88' Starrcade. There are certain things you expect to see on a WCW compilation, and Ric Flair in a World title match is one of them. Looking at the list of opponents he had World title matches with in the history of the event, including Dusty Rhodes twice, Harley Race, Nikita Koloff, Sting, Ronnie Garvin, the Black Scorpion, Vader and Randy Savage, Lex Luger is an interesting choice. This is also Flair's longest Starrcade match at thirty-one minutes.
This match was the peak of a story that had been building through 1988, with Luger joining the Horsemen only to be turned on, now coming for Flair's gold. I always find a babyface Lex Luger slightly jarring to watch, he's just one of those wrestlers that I feel did better as a bad guy. The first half of the match see's Lex in almost in complete control, with Flair routinely cowering away, much as he would later on in his famous matches with Sting. It gets more interesting though when Flair finds that he can gain the upper hand by being more aggressive outside the ring, however this comes at the risk of being disqualified, and per a stipulation of this match if Flair gets DQ'ed he loses the World title to Luger. From here the match gets much more engaging, and not knowing the result going in, it felt like either man might win.
Approaching this match I wasn't sure if it would be Best Of worthy when watched in a vaccum without seeing the nearly year of story before hand, but it definitely is. This might not be one of Flairs best matches, but it could well be one of Lugers, and it helped that the crowd were with him all the way.
4) Big Van Vader vs Sting - King of Cable tournament finals 1992
The next match on the compilation is the semi main of the '92 event. To end the night The Great Muta won the BattleBowl tournament, where wrestlers qualify for a battle royal by winning a tag match with a randomly chosen partner earlier in the night. Sting vs Vader was a more of a conventional tournament final, ending the 8 man King of Cable tournament which had been taking place on television. Earlier in 92 Vader had defeated Sting at the Great American Bash for the WCW World title, and so this would be the return pay per view bout.
This was also the second of three matches for both men on this show, as they had also qualified for the Battlebowl final earlier in the night, which would take place right after this match. Just when I thought this match was going to be too similar to the Flair vs Luger match I just watched, in which Luger is clearly the more powerful and uses that to his advantage frequently, Sting shocked me by hitting a German suplex on Vader. It seemed to shock Vader too as somehow his mask came off. In the end what could have really hurt this match, both men being clearly tired from wrestling earlier actually helps the story being told, as Sting does his best to try and outlast Vader, even drawing him in and taking some brutal looking punches in an effort to wear the bigger man out. This one also belongs on the Best Of, but I nearly decided it didn't until the tense last few minutes and great finish.
5) Dustin Rhodes vs Stunning Steve Austin - US championship 1993
I'll admit I probably watched this with a bit of bias, as Dustin Rhodes is one of those wrestlers that was never a top star, but I've always been a fan of. Also, it's frigging Steve Austin on the other side of the ring. Not just Steve Austin, but Hollywood Blond (yet very much Texan) Steve Austin. I also once saw another match between these two that liked a lot, a 15 minute draw from Halloween Havoc 1991.
This one is a two out of three falls match for the WCW US title, and is one of the longer matches on this compilation at twenty-three minutes. If you only knew Stone Cold in his latter years, you could be forgiven for not knowing that earlier in his career, he was a very good wrestler too. It also amuses me when Tony Schiovone claims on commentary that these two will dominate WCW into the next decade, well, not quite Tony...
In case you couldn't tell I gave this match a green tick as well. I promise theres some crosses coming soon, but not yet, as the next match is also from the 1993 Starrcade, and it's that match I referenced at the start, that I hoped would be on this show.
6) Vader vs Ric Flair - WCW World title 1993
I don't quite know why, as this match isn't a technical classic by any means, but it's one I absolutely love and go back to maybe once a year. It's a match where not just Vader's WCW World title was on the line, but also Ric Flair's career. Given some of the events of recent years I wonder if Ric wishes that he'd lost on this night? Given that Vader had already defended the title against Flair on a Clash of the Champions the month previous, Flair had to put his career at risk before Vader would accept his challenge.
The legacy around this match, in brief, is Flair not being willing to take Vader's stiff style like others did. Unlike Shawn Michaels who dealt with Vader in his own way, Flair fought back and in turn, the match felt more dramatic for it. Flair's version of events from his podcast is that he and Vader planned nothing going in, but when Vader was punching too hard Flair quote "lit him up" and "blackened both of his eyes. He specifically mentions an exchange on the outside of the ring where he really goes after Vader.
Ric Flair is not a man well associated with shooting in matches, quite the opposite in fact. Flair claimed in the 30 for 30 documentary about his life that he would as a younger man practice his worked punches by hanging up a piece of string, and attempting to convincingly punch it without the string moving. When people talk about the best punchers in wrestling names like Jerry Lawler and Terry Funk come up a lot, but I've got to give Flair some credit for that too. This one also gets a tick from me.
7) Jushin Liger vs Rey Mysterio 1996
It wouldn't be a WCW list without some good cruiserweight action. In 2018, Rey Mysterio went to New Japan, debuting on the same night as the famous Omega vs Okada rematch, so it's fair to see why Rey being there might have been forgotten by many fans. He wrestled one more match for them later in the year, even challenging Jushin Thunder Liger to a match that would never take place, as Rey re-signed with WWE. Thankfully though, we still have their match in WCW, which took place at the 96 Starrcade.
A very svelte looking Mysterio was just six months into his WCW career, but had spent half of those six months as Cruiserweight champion, beating Dean Malenko in only his fifth televised match in July, and losing it back to Dean in October. Liger however, while not a WCW regular, had been appearing for the company since 1991, so you could consider him established. His first WCW pay per view being the '91 Starrcade, taking part in the BattleBowl tournament that I referenced earlier
Back to their 96 match, rather annoyingly the crowd greets the hispanic and Japanese wrestlers with a 'USA' chant at the opening bell. It's really cool by the way to hear recent Impact Hall of Famer Mike Tenay on commentary, as the professor has been long renowned for his knowlege of international wrestling. In the early going this match might not be what you would expect, as Liger keeps the pace slow, and uses his size to power over Rey, however when Rey gets control, the match speeds up. The match isn't really helped by the four commentators, Schiovone, Heenan, Tenay and Dusty Rhodes bickering from time to time, with Dusty halting everyone in their tracks by being amused at Tenay calling a Dragon Screw leg whip. Is this one of the greatest Starrcade matches? Likely not, but it's certainly not a bad one, and it is still cool to see these two in a singles match.
While it's easy to see why the match between these two legends was picked, there is another match from the same show that possibly should have been picked over it. In the opener of the night Dean Malenko defended the Cruiserweight title against Ultimo Dragon in arguably the better match of the two.
8) Hollywood Hogan vs Roddy Piper 1996
Oh boy. Well at least this wasn't their naff cage match which happened at the 97 Halloween Havoc. The match Jim Cornette in a rant he did on Raw called 'Age in a Cage', around the same time as the creation of Hell in a Cell. Like Ric Flair, there is another thing that is a given on a WCW compilation, NWO interference.
If you can't tell, I fully expected this match to be the driz- to be not very good. One thing it is, is profoundly strange to be seeing a heel Hogan, still fairly new heel Hogan by the way, against a babyface Roddy Piper, as when you think of these two you tend to think of their 80's WWF days where the roles were reversed.
Admittedly I didn't find this as bad as I expected, but there was a whole lot of Hogan stalling around ringside, as well as a fan run in at a suspiciously timed moment when the referee was right about to see outside interference. It might well have been real but the timing made it look sus. Add to that a confusing finish that I won't reveal here, but it involves the belt Hogan carried to the ring. Should this be on here, maybe not when you could have included Hogan vs Sting from '97, which had an even more dodgy finish, but is a way more famous match also, though it's also worth noting that they've made a load of these specials and so are maybe looking for less famous matches to include by now.
9) Eddie Guerrero vs Dean Malenko - Cruiserweight title 1997
It's very interesting to me that they didn't include anything from the last three WCW Starrcades, so this is technically your main event. It's also from a fairly critically panned pay per view, with this match, the opener by the way, oft considered the best of the night.
By December '97 Dean and Eddie knew each other very well, having wrestled many times in WCW and before that in ECW. As a result this match includes some very cool counters, such as Eddie going for his arm drag from the top rope, only for Dean to catch him in a stiff looking powerbomb. While I would never call this a bad match, I wouldn't call it one of the best of Starrcade. One match I'd include over this is the triangle ladder match from Starrcade 2000 between 3 Count, the Jung Dragons and the team of Jamie Noble and Evan Karagias. Or if you want bigger stars but still want the cruiserweight theme, the triple threat match from 1998 between Billy Kidman, Juventud Guerrera and Rey Mysterio.
So whats my final verdict? If you like me aren't the most expert WCW fan, the early half of this compilation might be for you, but the latter might have you looking for alternatives. It's also interesting that every match they chose was a singles match, surely there could have been a tag team match thrown in somewhere to provide something different. Nine singles matches in a row took me a while to get though Overall, I'd recommend this Best Of, and I look forward to finding out what WWE Network has in store for December's best of WWE.
Sources:
series list https://thetvdb.com/series/the-best-of-wwe/allseasons/official
Wrestlenomics John Carlan interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tcdxlraLug
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