Mad Mike’s Retro PPV Review: Starrcade ’89

I’m back Mayhemers and this week I’ll be watching Starrcade from the glorious year of 1989. This supposedly features round-robin Iron Man and Iron Team Tournaments. I have no idea what this means but we shall find out.

Holy hell amazing 80’s intro.

Yay, J.R. is on commentary this won’t be painful to listen to!

Sounds like 2 tournaments one with 4 singles wrestlers and one with 4 tag teams

Holy hell, Terry Funk AND Jim Cornette are on commentary

Tournament scoring Pin/Submission – 20 points, Count Out – 15 points, DQ – 10 points, and a Draw is 5 points, no points for a loss…interesting concept

The Four Tag Teams are as follows:

Doom w/ Woman and Nitron

Road Warriors w/ Paul Ellering

The Wild Samoans w/ The Big Kahuna

Steiner Brothers

First off….holy hell, this is gonna be awesome

Secondly, the dude’s name really is Nitron

Match 1: Doom vs. The Steiners

This is so old even Rick Steiner had a mullet

Woman is doing her best Miss Elizabeth impersonation

The Wild Samoans are substitutes for the Sky Scrapers, no Sid Vicious for me…J.R. heard he had a punctured lung, I wonder if this is the infamous Arn Anderson incident

Doom are wearing black masks so they can play the “twin angle”

I think Faarooq just hit an actual Stunner

If you actually look it’s really easy to determine Simmons from Reed, for those keeping score it’s also easy to determine the difference between Rick and Scott, Rick has headgear

Apparently this tournament is also single elimination…I think, Cornette is hard to understand

I giggle every time I hear the name Nitron

Thank you Wikipedia, Nitron is also known as Tyler Mane…better known as the evolved form of Sabretooth from Liev Schrieber

Wow younger Faarooq’s powerslam is awesome

Okay so apparently this is not single elimination as every team will have to fight each other

This, by the way is Nitron:

P.S. Not the one with the tits

These matches all have short time limits to increase the urgency, it makes these matches more high paced

Steiners win by countout after Rick rolled in when it turned into a brawl outside, 15 points

4 Wrestlers in the singles tournament:

Muta! niceness

Muta’s manager looks like Doyle from Heroes (Gary Hart for the record)

Stinger is number 2, and this is bleach blonde don’t call me Steve Borden Sting

Lex Luger, funny side note kinda when I got drunk right before the Olympics and saw all these headlines about the luger that died I screamed aloud in the bar “Oh No! What happened to Lex Luger!”

Flair is the fourth guy as if you couldn’t guess

Match 2: Sting vs Lex Luger

Both J.R. and Funk think that Sting and Luger will dominate the generation of the 90s…at least they were half right

Luger is apparently undefeated at this point

Misterpreting the rules tally: 1 (J.R. said if it was a double count out no one would get points, as this is a draw they’d each get 5)

Mullet count: 3

“Sting can’t afford to let his motions get involved” -Terry Funk

Sting should totally go back to the rattail look

Misinterpreting the rules tally: 2 (“Can’t beat him outside the ring” Actually you can, it’s the second highest way to earn points)

Luger’s trunks are really really bright green

I think this was before Luger had steel surgically implanted into his forearm

Wow Luger totally botched the finish, they both flopped over the top rope, after the ref had to physically help them and Luger pinned Sting while holding the middle rope, 20 points

Match 3: Doom – 0 points vs. Road Warriors

This seems to be going really fast without entrance music and such things

LOD’s shoulderpads and leg pads look like Tokka’s spikes from TMNT2

I love when a masked man complains of having his hair pulled

Mullet count: 4 (yes even though half his head is shaved I count Animal’s hair as a mullet)

J.R. gives a shout out to all the wrestling writers, including Bill Apter

Road Warriors win after a modified Doomsday Device, awesomeness, 20 points

Something tells me this was pre-recorded and then cut together, the cutaways between the singles and tag tournaments are too quick and clean

Match 4: Muta vs. Flair….oh fuck yes

Flair has Ole and Arn coming out with him, I’m sure they won’t interfere at all

Someone named Norman is dressed as Santa Claus…I don’t know…

Mullet count: 7, Muta’s Japanimullet counts, and they showed Funk from behind, it’s definitely a party in the back

The Wrecking Crew is attacking Buzz Sawyer

Flair with a quick rollup on Muta after Muta missed a moonsault, 20 points

Scoreboard chick is really ugly….like really bad

Match 5: Steiners 15 points vs. Road Warriors 20 points

This is just a damn good match

Ooh awesome double pin finish with Scotty getting his shoulder up and Animal still having his down, 20 points for Steiners they now have 35

Match 6: Muta vs Sting both with 0 points

Terry Funk is really tough to listen to on commentary, I think he’s drunk

I wish Muta had done some stuff in WWE in his prime

Damn Muta is using a bridging over double arm chicken wing, awesome

Terry Funk really doesn’t like Gary Hart

Wow, Sting goes over after a superplex, 20 points

HALFTIME!

Vel Vel and Madison kissing

TIME IN!

Cornette’s Pick: Steiners

Funk’s Pick: Luger

The Big Kahuna is also know as Sir Oliver Humperdink…say that name without giggling

Match 7: Doom w/ Woman (in new outfit!) and Nitron (giggle) vs. The New Samoans w/ Sir Oliver Humperdink (giggle)

Mullet count: 8

This incarnation of the Samoans is Fatu (Rikishi) and Samu, also known as The Headshrinkers

Butch Reed totally no-sold a headbutt from a Samoan, that’s something you just don’t do

Humperdink looks like the love child of Sheamus and Lou Albano

Samu and Fatu both have really crazy hair

Kinda funny that J.R. and Cornette don’t know the names of either member of Doom or the Samoans

Misinterpreting the rules tally: 3 (Cornette said Doom is still in it even though this is their last match and they have no points while the Steiners have 35)

Samoans win with a headbutt, 20 points

Match 8: Luger 20 points vs Flair 20 points

Wow, there was a glitch in the recording so WWE join the match already in progress

The Omni is actually using the light up scoreboard to keep track of the points

Luger has ditched the really green tights, thank Christ

This match is also being brought live through the wrestling hotline…wow

Nice, time limit draw, if I had to guess one set of people to go the limit I never would have guessed it’d be Flair vs Luger, 5 points each

Match 9: The New Samoans 20 points vs. Steiners 35 points

Misinterpreting the rules tally: 4 (“This is still up for grabs!” Not if the Steiners win, which makes me think they won’t)

It took 3 matches but I finally saw the classic Steiner pose

Samu is called “The Savage” is he Fred or Ben?

I like the fact that all these matches are 15 minutes time limits, it really gives every minute of the match purpose and focus, not much in the way of rest holds

Mullet count: 9, Helloooooooo 80s ref!

Yay, the Samoans just pulled “the old dipsy doodle” and switched out illegally

“I think someone spiked (Rick) Steiner’s Alpo.” God bless you J.R.

Cornette cleared up his math mistake from earlier

Samoans got the win via DQ because Scott threw a Samoan over the top rope…always hated that rule, 10 points

Match 10: Muta 0 points vs. Luger 25 points (so Sting vs Flair is last…naturally)

Terry Funk got the math right…I can’t believe it either

Luger is selling the knee (Flair’s Figure Four) is the story of this one

Muta’s progressive loss of facepaint is awesome

Muta using inverted inverted Indian Deathlock, I adore this maneuver

I think Sting was the only non-champion in the singles tournament, Flair was World Champ, Luger was US Champ and Muta was TV Champ

Green Mist!!! French Onion Soup for the DQ Loss! Luger gets 10 points.

Luger’s final score: 35 points

Muta’s final score: 0 points

Match 11: Road Warriors 20 points vs Samoans 30 points

Steiners have 35 for those keeping track, so if  either team gets a clean win here they win…I don’t see that happening

Cornette said a tie will be settled by a “wrestle-off” and here I was hoping for a game of musical chairs

Nice back body botch Animal

Flying clothesline by Hawk to give the LOD the win for the tournament at 40 points

Match 12: Sting 20 points vs. Flair 25 points

Luger has 35 points and is undefeated in the tournament, so he’ll probably lost (this is still WCW after all folks)

I expect someone to win this within the last minute or two

Sting got his face paint redone, not following Muta’s path

I wonder if Sting and Flair are the first pair of wrestlers to main event against each other in 3 separate decades

I think this tournament idea could definitely work in WWE today, imagine this being the new Night of Champions for singles have the WWE, World, US, and IC Champs in it, winner gets bragging rights, and for the Tag belts have the winner become the new champions, you could have Legacy, Hart Dynasty, ShoMiz, and Truth and Wisdom, it’d be a really fun idea

Sting is Stingering up now

If you told Sting and Flair that over 20 years later they’d still be doing angles with each other I wonder if they’d believe you

One minute and counting!

Flair doesn’t seem to be in any hurry despite time ticking away

Sting reverse the figure four into a cradle to win the match and the tournament with less than 30 seconds to go

Sting and Flair shaking hands, and Arn is asking Sting to join the Horsemen…..WOOOOOOOOOOO

Pretty funny fact that neither the World Champ nor the Tag Champs won either tournament

All in all this was a pretty damn awesome ppv, considering only 12 men were on the same show for three hours, it was really well done.

I give it 4.5 Fuck TNA’s out of a possible 5