I touched on the lapsed fan podcast a few months back here on the site but I feel like they’re worth bringing up again.  I first discovered the Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast almost one year ago and when I did, they were on their journey through all 30 Wrestlemanias.  Every week they would review one Wrestlemania at a time beginning with Wrestlemania 1 and all the way up to and including Wrestlemania 31 (which they did a live show immediately following Wrestlemania).  Each week they would start with their favorite moments from the show and then they would welcome in Dave Meltzer for a really unique historical perspective.  Once Meltzer was finished, they would then start their trademark “Deep Dive”  and go through each Wrestlemania from start to finish in grave detail.  The result was a podcast that lasted anywhere from 4 hours in length to, in the case of Wrestlemania 17, over 7 hours long.  People would talk about how perhaps the podcast was too long but I loved it because they paid careful attention to everything from every midcard superstar to every vignette, the lapsed fan had you covered.  I remember listening to the Wrestlemania podcasts all week long on the way to and from work and they left me both engaged and nostalgic going through each one.

Following the Wrestlemania journey, the Lapsed Fan podcast started doing listener request shows where, for a small fee, a member of the “lapsed fan solar system” would get to choose a show for Jack and JP to review.  On top of that the person who chose the show got to come onto the show and discuss the ways in which this show had effected them.  By now, you’ve read my personal stories regarding meeting certain wrestlers or having different live experiences at a variety of shows, so I really appreciate hearing different fans talk about their favorite experiences at shows.  The most recent listener request show they put up on Summerslam 1999 features a great personal story from show producer TJ DeSantis that is worth going out of your way to listen.  I had meant to getting around to donating to the lapsed fan and requesting that they review either Summerslam 2007 or Royal Rumble 2008 just because those two shows have my own personal stories that I feel are interesting but it appears that the listener request series is at least on a hiatus because…

Just a few weeks ago, the Lapsed Fan announced that Jack & JP are going on another journey, this time through all of the different WCW Starcade events through the years.  This is going to be a 17 week journey spanning from the original Starcade event in 1983 all the way through the end of WCW in 2000 (they’ve already done Starcade 1985 as a tribute to Dusty Rhodes right after he passed).  This is reay cool for someone like me because I’ve never actually seen any of the Starrcade events other than 1997.  The reason for that is because I’ve always been a big WWE fan growing up and never watched any of WCW.  My family tried to order Bash at the Beach 1994 to see Hogan and my father was unimpressed with the entire show.  Due to this, I never once asked to ever order a WCW show until Starrcade 1997, and I only pushed that because of Bret Hart.  Now with the WWE Network, I can go back and watch each one  of these events as the Lapsed Fan breaks them down, which is awesome as a new fan.  Starrcade was obviously the WCW’s version of Wrestlemania, and the original as it started 2 years prior to Mania, and is more than worthy of getting that journey treatment.  Jack and JP started their Starrcade memorial tour yesterday with the debut of Starrcade 1983.  As an added bonus, Dave Meltzer is in fact back to give that historical perspective of each one of the Starrcade events.  It’s especially cool with Starrcade because WCW is out of business so, as Jack and JP have mentioned before, they can really tell the entire story of WCW through their history of Starrcade series.

Jack and JP have made it clear that, unlike the Wrestlemania series, this may not take place every single week.  I’m glad to hear this actually as Jack and JP both have families and I’m sure that Wrestlemania series (30 episodes in 30 weeks at about 5 hours a week) had to be quite the burden on both them and their families.  The lapsed fan is also now independently owned and operated as the guys are no longer affliated with Wrestlezone.  If you’d like to support thelapsedfan podcast you can follow them on twitter @TheLapsedFan to find out how you could.  I’m excited for the new Starrcade journey to begin and would love to hear your feedback on the lapsed fan if you’ve checked it out as well.