Starrcade

The Spotlight On WWE Bringing Back Starrcade

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Big news out of WWE today as it was announced that WWE will be reviving Starrcade, WCW’s flagship event, as it will be returning to the Greensboro Coliseum on Saturday Night, November th 25th, 2017. The event will take place just 6 days after WWE Survivor Series which will now be a huge week for the company.  
For those who don’t know, Starrcade was in many ways Wrestlemania before there was Wrestlemania, it was the biggest annual show for World Championship Wrestling that took place from 1983 until 2000. The first three Starrcade events took place at this historic Greensboro Coliseum, the site of the revived Starrcade Event later this year. 
The card has already been released for the event so far being headlined by 2 Steel Cage matches for both to World Championship and the Womens Championship. The Card is as follow
WWE Championship Steel Cage Match- Jinder Mahal (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

WWE Smackdown Womens Championship Steel Cage Match- Natalya (c) vs. Charlotte Flair

WWE United States Champonship Triple Threat Match- AJ Styles (c) vs. Rusev vs. Baron Crobin

WWE Tag Team Championship Match- The New Day (c) vs. The Usos

Grudge Match- Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn

Bobby Roode vs. Dolph Ziggler

The Fashion Police Vs. Mike Kanellis & Aiden English
Plus Appearances By: The Hardy Boyz, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, The Rock N Roll Express & More.  
The story for this show is clearly Charlotte Flair. On all of the promotional material from the Greensboro Coliseum she is being heralded as “North Carolina’s Own”. Thus, it would make sense and be quite the story for the Women to go on last and have Charlotte main event the event in which he father, WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair, main evented the first ever Starrcade at the same arena.  
This is purely speculation but this would also be the perfect time for Ric Flair to make his return to the company following at health scare. Flair is synonymous with Starrcade, having main evented the first 8 events and is also originally from North Carolina, where he still has a big presence to date. It would be quite the moment to have the show close by having Charlotte Flair win the womens championship and having Ric to return to present her with the belt.  
While this is great for long time fans, especially those former WCW fans clamoring for the return of some of their favorite WCW events like War Games, World War 3 and the aforementioned Starrcade, we should probably hold off on getting too excited. While the event is confirmed and will be a great night, it unfortunately has not yet been promoted as anything more than a live event, meaning that unless you’re their live you may not be able to see the event. That being said, it’s still early and you would hope that if WWE is spending the time and effort to bring back Starrcade, especially by bringing in the legends, that it would be aired as a network special. Regardless it’ll be great to have WWE back during Thanksgiving weekend and it’ll be great to see the return of Starrcade! 

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The Spotlight On Wrestling Podcasts- The Lapsed Fan’s Starrcade Memorial Tour

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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.