WWF Saturday Night's Main Event XXI (May 1989)

Original Airdate: May 27, 1989

From Des Moines, Iowa; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura.

WWF Saturday Night's Main Event XX (March 1989)

Original Airdate: March 11, 1989

This one is coming off of The Main Event special on NBC that saw the breakup of the Mega Powers a few weeks before, and the theme is that Miss Elizabeth will make her decision as to whose corner she will be in for the main event of WrestleMania V.

From Hershey, Pennsylvania; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura.

WWF Saturday Night's Main Event XI (May 1987)

Original Airdate: May 2, 1987

From Notre Dame, Indiana; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura.

WWF Saturday Night's Main Event IX (January 1987)

Original Airdate: January 3, 1987

From Hartford, Connecticut; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura.

WWF Saturday Night's Main Event VI (May 1986)

Original Airdate: May 3, 1986

From Providence, Rhode Island; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan.

WWF Saturday Night's Main Event V (March 1986)

Original Airdate: March 1, 1986

With WrestleMania 2 around the corner, this edition of Saturday Night’s Main Event was used to set up the main event, as well as promote the card.

From Phoenix, Arizona; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura.

WWF The Big Event (August 1986)

With the WWF becoming increasingly popular in the mid-80s, the need for a summer blowoff show to wrap up all the post WrestleMania angles, and wipe the slate clean to build new angles for the next WrestleMania became increasingly necessary. The concept of an end of summer WWF supercard wasn’t new (similar cards had been run at Shea Stadium in 1972, 1976, and 1980), and would eventually, in 1988, lead to the introduction of SummerSlam. In 1986, the WWF produced The Big Event – sold on the anticipated showdown between WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and former best friend Paul Orndorff.

From Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Your Hosts are Gorilla Monsoon, Ernie Ladd, and Johnny Valiant. As a testament to the WWF’s popularity at this point, late August evenings in Toronto tend to get quite cool, but they still managed to set an attendance record for pro-wrestling, drawing over 60,000 fans to the outdoor stadium.

WCW WrestleWar 1992

1992 was the last year WCW ran WrestleWar, replacing it with Slamboree in the lineup for 1993, and shuffling WarGames into the new Fall Brawl pay per view event as its permanent home. The card came during yet another period of transition for WCW, this time quite a sharp one, as Bill Watts was unseating Kip Frey, and morale dropped sharply, as their management styles were night-and-day – Watts known for being an out of touch, stingy hardass.

From Jacksonville, Florida; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone and Eric Bischoff, with Jim Ross and Jesse Ventura on commentary.

WCW WrestleWar 1991

WrestleWar 1991 is notable for being the first pay per view event WCW ran after leaving the National Wrestling Alliance at the beginning of the year, as well as the first with Dusty Rhodes back in the fold as head booker – after being ousted over two years before. With Rhodes back in the driver’s seat, WCW decided to make WrestleWar the home of one of his best match concepts – WarGames – which, up until then, had been used as an occasional attraction at The Great American Bash.

From Phoenix, Arizona; Your Host is Tony Schiavone, with Jim Ross and Dusty Rhodes on commentary.

ECW Born to Be Wired (August 1997)

Born to Be Wired was a non-pay per view event produced for television/home video, which served as the ‘go home’ buildup show for ECW’s second pay per view offering – Hardcore Heaven – a few weeks later.

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.; Your Host is Joey Styles.

NWA (WCW) Capital Combat (May 1990)

After WrestleWar, after Lex Luger (again) failed to defeat Ric Flair for the NWA Title when the Horsemen got involved, WCW had painted themselves into a bit of a booking corner. Logically, Luger would get a rematch with Flair (which he did) and destroy him to win the title (which he didn’t), but WCW had already long decided they wanted the still injured Sting to be the next world champion, and by this point, had all agreed that it would be best for Flair to be the one to drop it to him – making Luger a placeholder.

That left Luger brutally twisting in the wind, as the fans (the majority unaware of the backstage politics) were clamoring for him to get revenge, but from a booking standpoint, he was fucked if he did win, and fucked if he didn’t. If they did put him over Flair in the rematch, he would have to drop it to Sting as soon as the guy was cleared to wrestle – making his first World Title reign a pointless transitional blip – and if he lost, it would be his fourth failure to defeat Flair for the title in under two years, and would certainly put him in danger of irrevocably damaging his credibility.    

From Washington, D.C.; Your Host is Tony Schiavone, with Jim Ross and Bob Caudle on commentary.

NWA (WCW) WrestleWar 1990

After Sting’s clean pinfall victory over NWA World Champion Ric Flair in the finals of the ‘Iron Man’ tournament at Starrcade ’89, Flair and the Horsemen promptly turned on the Stinger, and a title match between the two was set up for WrestleWar. At the time, the WCW front office – headed by Jim Herd – felt Flair was past his prime, and it was time to give up the NWA Title (which he had held almost exclusively for over six years) to an up and coming young star like Sting, before being demoted to the midcard.

Unfortunately for their plans, Sting legitimately injured himself during the buildup for the show, leaving WCW without a main event for WrestleWar. Since there wasn’t anyone else credible enough on the roster, they subbed in Lex Luger (who was NWA United States Champion, and had gone to a draw with Flair at Starrcade) with plans to put him over Flair instead, and then transition the title to Sting once he healed. Flair balked, already unhappy with WCW’s plans for his future, and refused, saying he would put over Sting – and Sting only.

From Greensboro, North Carolina; Your Hosts are Jim Ross and Terry Funk.

ECW Wrestlepalooza (June 1997)

Wrestlepalooza started in 1995, as a non-pay per view ECW supercard to be broadcast on their television programming, and sold on home video. Though the event would eventually transition to pay per view (1998) the 1997 show – the direct follow-up to ECW’s first pay per view effort in Barely Legal – was taped for ECW Hardcore TV, and the home video market.

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Your Host is Joey Styles. Rick Rude comes out to offer his thoughts on the card, and joins Styles periodically throughout the broadcast – coming off like a cross between Jesse Ventura and Bobby Heenan.

WWF King of the Ring 1997

Though I was a still a super fan in mid-1997, and had made a point of seeing nearly every WWF and WCW pay per view offering of the year live, my initial interest in King of the Ring was limited, at best. The show focused on the rivalry between Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels (both of whom I couldn’t stand at the time, as they were also engaged in feuds with Bret Hart – who wasn’t on the show), and a WWF Title match between The Undertaker and Faarooq – something I wouldn’t even have been excited to see on RAW, let alone pay per view. The show seemed so dull on paper, that I didn’t even bother to order, and this will actually be the first time I have ever seen it in full before.

From Providence, Rhode Island; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jim Ross.

WCW SuperBrawl VI

In early 1996, months before the beginning of the nWo angle, WCW had already become quite competitive with the WWF. Bolstered by the addition of ‘Nitro’ as a live weekly television program going head to head with the WWF’s ‘RAW,’ ratings and buyrates were steady, and neck-and-neck with the WWF. Going into SuperBrawl – the last year it would be promoted as WCW’s flagship show, before reverting back to Starrcade later that year – the build focused on a blowoff for the Hulk Hogan/Giant feud, and a WCW World Title match between Randy Savage and Ric Flair – both in a cage.

From St. Petersburg, Florida; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone, Dusty Rhodes, and Bobby Heenan.

WCW SuperBrawl V

With Hulk Hogan putting Ric Flair into ‘retirement’ at Halloween Havoc, SuperBrawl V was built and sold solely on their next most anticipated main event showdown - between Hogan and Vader for the WCW World Title. Though I had just started watching WCW a few months prior, when Hogan entered the picture over the summer, I had already learned enough to know that Vader was WCW’s resident monster, and was sure to be a formidable challenge for the Hulkster.

From Baltimore, Maryland; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan.

WCW SuperBrawl IV

While SuperBrawl had usurped Starrcade as WCW’s flagship show, the 1993 edition of Starrcade – the tenth anniversary of the show – had prompted a brief change back to using that as the promotions most prestigious card. With SuperBrawl airing only two months later, it was mostly used to catch the fallout from Starrcade, more than promoted as the biggest show of the year.

More interestingly was the goings on backstage, as WCW was experiencing yet another shakeup. After 1993, Dusty Rhodes – who had had played roles of varying degree in WCW’s booking under Jim Herd, Bill Watts, and Eric Bischoff – was ousted, and replaced by a committee headed by Ric Flair, and including Greg Gagne, Mike Graham, and Robert Fuller – with Bischoff still in charge of the overall direction. This led to yet another change in the products direction – a habit that made WCW often difficult to follow.

From Albany, Georgia; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan.

WCW Starrcade 1992

Starrcade 1992 continued the abatement of Starrcade – no longer the promotions flagship show – and, for the second year in a row, ran the Lethal Lottery/BattleBowl concept. This year, under the guidance of the often misguided Bill Watts, WCW wisely added some blowoff matches to the show along with the tournament – hoping to add the intrigue that was missing from the inaugural BattleBowl.

From Atlanta, Georgia; Your Hosts are Jim Ross and Jesse Ventura. Before things get started, head booker Bill Watts and baseball legend Hank Aaron present Sting with a Super Bowl-style ring for winning BattleBowl a full year before. That’s actually right in line, given Watts’ reputation of stinginess.

NWA (WCW) Starrcade 1990

Throughout the fall of 1990, NWA World Champion Sting had been repeatedly harassed by a mysterious character known as ‘The Black Scorpion’ – a masked man who hid in the shadows, and had an aptitude for magic. Though that sounds like any number of guys hanging out in a comic book store, the basis of the feud was that the Scorpion was someone from Sting’s past – coming back into his life for vengeance of a past deed, as well as to chase take the NWA Title.

While the feud was goofy (as noted, the Scorpion was a skilled magician – which he incorporated in his attacks on Sting by doing parlor tricks on audience plants, and disappearing in puffs of smoke), it made logical sense, as the WWF and WCW were neck-and-neck for ratings among adults, but the WWF was leaps and bounds ahead of the competition when it came to drawing kids – a lucrative market. The idea of the mysterious Scorpion facing WCW’s face painted superhero wasn’t poor logic – proven by strong ratings during Sting’s first showdown with the Scorpion at a Clash of the Champions telecast leading up to this show – it was just poorly executed. The payoff was teased as possibly being The Ultimate Warrior (the WWF’s face painted superhero, who had teamed with Sting earlier in their careers), and was actually planned on being a number of different guys (anyone from Al Perez, to ‘Angel of Death’ Dave Sheldon, to Ole Anderson depending on who you ask, and when you ask them), but ultimately ended up offering a much less satisfying payoff.

From St. Louis, Missouri; Your Hosts are Jim Ross and Paul E. Dangerously.

NWA (WCW) Starrcade 1989

In 1989, Starrcade was still firmly WCW’s flagship show. Unfortunately, the booking for 1989 had already paid off most of the major feuds well before the big show, leaving the promotion out of gas by the time Starrcade rolled around. Without a proper main event to build the show around, WCW instead presented four of the top singles stars and four of the top tag teams competing in round-robin ‘Iron Man’ tournaments, and using it as a platform to set up NWA World Champion Ric Flair’s feud with Sting for 1990. However, a lack of any notable feuds, and no titles on the line (the tournament was for glory alone) left the show with a distinct lack of intrigue, and failed to captivate the audience the way WCW was hoping.

From Atlanta, Georgia; Your Hosts are Jim Ross and Terry Funk for the Iron Man matches, and Jim Ross and Jim Cornette for the Iron Team matches. Not great commentary teams, but logical – as Funk had spent the year in the main event, and could ‘lend insight,’ while Cornette was known for his work managing tag teams.

As noted, the Iron Man and Iron Team tournaments were round-robin style, and worked on a point system – 20 points for a pinfall or submission victory; 15 points for a countout victory; 10 points for a disqualification victory; 5 points each for a draw; 0 points for a loss. And ten points to Gryffindor for good measure.

NWA (WCW) Starrcade 1988

By the time Starrcade rolled around in 1988, it was the culmination of a year of upheaval within the promotion. Failing to compete with Vince McMahon’s WWF on a national level, Jim Crockett sold his territory to Ted Turner in the fall, and changes abounded – starting with the date of the event itself switching from traditional November to December, to avoid another counterprogramming nightmare. In the spirit of change, fans started clamoring for longtime NWA Champion Ric Flair to drop the title to new rival, rising superstar Lex Luger. The two had battled to an inconclusive finish at the Great American Bash (the companies second biggest event of the year) over the summer, and all eyes turned to Starrcade as the show Flair would put Luger over at – an idea championed by longtime booker Dusty Rhodes. Rhodes initially stayed on to ensure a smooth transition from Crockett to Turner (and his Executive Vice President, Jim Herd), however, after numerous clashes with new management over the direction of the product, this Starrcade – the event he helped create in 1983 – would be his last appearance in the company for over two years.

From Norfolk, Virginia; Your Hosts are Jim Ross and Bob Caudle.  

NWA (JCP) Starrcade 1987

In the fall of 1987, Ric Flair had been – with the exception of a few token switches along the way – NWA World Champion for four years. And, not coincidentally, it had been four years since Starrcade – the NWA’s flagship show – had a clean, satisfying finish in the main event. With the 1987 edition slated to be the NWA’s first pay per view offering, they decided to build intrigue by having Flair lose the title, and face the man that beat him in a rematch at Starrcade. However, the offer of becoming a transitional champion with no chance at actually carrying the ball didn’t exactly cause a feeding frenzy, and the promotion literally had trouble finding someone willing to win the World Title. They finally settled on relative non-contender Ron Garvin to win the title in September, as the aging Garvin decided a lame duck NWA World Title reign was better than having a career with no World Title reigns. Unfortunately, the rest of the roster was less then eager to work with Garvin, fearing that losing to him would lower their stock in the fans’ eyes, and leaving him twisting in the wind – big gold belt, and all.

Another factor going into Starrcade was Jim Crockett’s purchase of Bill Watts’ failing UWF in the spring. While Crockett had continued to allow the promotion to exist separately throughout 1987, he had plans to close and merge it into his own circuit by the end of the year – with Starrcade becoming more or less the last stand for the UWF.

More interestingly than internal issues, as the NWA prepared for its first pay per view, the WWF (already a player in the pay per view market) decided to counterprogram their efforts by holding a new event known as Survivor Series on the same day, also on pay per view. In a bold move, Vince McMahon not only forced fans, but forced cable companies to chose between Starrcade and Survivor Series – with the threat that cable providers carrying the NWA show would be ‘shut out’ of future WWF business. His strong-arming worked, and almost every provider chose Survivor Series (featuring household name stars like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Randy Savage), and in turn, decimated Starrcade’s buyrate.

From Chicago, Illinois; Your Hosts are Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone.  

NWA (JCP) Starrcade 1986

For 1986 the NWA – getting routinely destroyed by the juggernaut that was Hulkamania – decided to change things up at Starrcade. Not by upping the ante and running four towns simultaneously (thankfully), but by putting the title on rising megastar Magnum TA, in hopes that his popularity could, though not realistically overtake, at least rival that of Hulk Hogan as a babyface champion the fans could rally behind. Unfortunately for them, Magnum suffered a career ending automobile accident a month before the supercard, leaving the main event twisting in the wind until they hastily turned USSR loyalist (and Magnum rival) Nikita Koloff face, with the angle being that he had gained so much respect for Magnum in their own wars, that he wanted to win the title for him.

In case that didn’t draw as they had hoped, the NWA hedged their bets by ramping up promotion for a scaffold gimmick match between new star team the Road Warriors and the hated Midnight Express – known as  the ‘Skywalkers Match.’ It worked, too, because as a kid – seeing a rare NWA tape on the shelf of one of the local video stores – the idea of the Skywalkers sold me on renting it, as opposed to SummerSlam ’91 for the dozenth time.

From Greensboro, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia; Your Hosts are Bob Caudle and Johnny Weaver in Greensboro, and Tony Schiavone and Rick Stewart in Atlanta.

NWA (JCP) Starrcade 1985

Starrcade ’85 was an ambitious production for the NWA. With Vince McMahon’s introduction of WrestleMania earlier in the year (along with the less influential ‘Wrestling Classic’ from a few weeks before this), Starrcade was no longer the only closed circuit supercard on the block, and the NWA knew it needed to go bigger – in this case running the show live from two arenas at once (an idea the WWF would lift for WrestleMania 2 a few months later, pushing it to three locations), and promising the anticipated rematch between Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes – after delivering a terribly unsatisfying finish the year before.

From Greensboro, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia; Your Hosts are Bob Caudle and Tony Schiavone in Atlanta, and Johnny Weaver helping out in Greensboro – with a giant disco ball hanging above the arena to really make it a party!

NWA (JCP) Starrcade 1984

After the critical and commercial success of the first Starrcade in 1983, the NWA ran the even again for 1984. Meanwhile, the WWF was starting to ramp up its long and often fierce battle with Jim Crockett – soon introducing WrestleMania to follow up on the success of Starrcade – but in November 1984, Starrcade remained the first, and only, nationally broadcast supercard, playing in closed circuit locations across the country.

From Greensboro, North Carolina; Your Hosts are Gordon Solie and Bob Caudle.

WCW Halloween Havoc 1997

By the time Halloween Havoc rolled around in 1997, Hollywood Hogan v Sting at Starrcade was as much of a guarantee as one could get in a business like pro-wrestling. But, they still had a pay per view slot to occupy – and with the nWo still drawing massive numbers – they were more than happy to oblige. Unfortunately, because Sting wasn’t used as an active as a wrestler until his return at Starrcade (which was actually a lot of the appeal of the buildup), they couldn’t do some sort of tag team situation with him facing off with Hogan, instead giving us the final blowoff to the year-long, on again off again, Hogan/Roddy Piper feud.


From Las Vegas, NV; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, and Dusty Rhodes.

WWF Coliseum Video Collection: WrestleFest ’90 (1990)

WWF Coliseum Video Collection: WrestleFest ’90 (1990)

Coliseum Video compilation – hosted by Sean Mooney. The cover of the tape features the Hart Foundation, and promises a profile on them.

WCW Halloween Havoc 1995

When Halloween Havoc rolled around in 1995, Hulk Hogan had held the WCW World Title for 469 days, longer than anyone before him did, or anyone after him would. While WCW had failed to rebottle the lightning of Hogan’s success in the WWF during the 1980s, his introduction into the promotion still led to record buyrates and ratings. However, as 1995 was drawing to a close, fans started getting increasingly tired of Hogan’s predictable, repetitive act – a problem he would often incur as a babyface in WCW, as the majority of its core Southern fans grew up on Ric Flair and Sting, and not the New York based Hogan.

From Detroit, Michigan; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone, and Bobby Heenan.

WWF King of the Ring 1994

King of the Ring ’94 will always hold a special place in my heart, as it was the first wrestling pay per view I ever saw live. My interest in wrestling (which began in January with the Hart Brothers feud) had developed into a full fledged obsession by early summer, and after exhausting the local video stores library of old pay per views and Coliseum Videos (which was a small section, totaling probably thirty tapes – but including the first King of the Ring), I was properly pumped for the 1994 show.

What I didn’t know at nine years old, is that the show was taking place in the eye of a legal hurricane, as the steroid investigations of the early 1990s, and now trial of Vince McMahon, were reaching their climax – with Vince himself on trial, and facing years in prison if convicted. The ramifications on the booking of the WWF reached far and wide, though probably the most noticeable difference was the phasing out of all the hulked up guys in favor of smaller, but more technically gifted stars to carry the promotion.

From Baltimore, Maryland; Your Hosts are Gorilla Monsoon, Randy Savage, and Art Donovan – one of the worst commentary teams ever assembled, and the subjects (particularly Donovan – who had little/no knowledge of professional wrestling, and was only there due to his celebrity as a former Baltimore football star) of endless gags over the years. Vince McMahon is notably absent.

WCW Uncensored 1996

WCW was a promotion with a somewhat notoriously erratic pay per view lineup, with shows that never repeated (Chi-Town Rumble, BattleBowl, Capital Combat), changed place in the lineup (WrestleWar flip flopping from May to February to May, SuperBrawl from May to February, Great American Bash taking a few years off), or changed names (Beach Blast to Bash at the Beach) so, after the live abortion that was the 1995 version of Uncensored, it wouldn’t have been surprising if WCW dropped it all together for ’96. It ended up becoming a staple in the pay per view lineup, with the second version sold on another night of ‘unsanctioned’ mayhem, and a blowoff of the long running Hulk Hogan/Dungeon of Doom storyline with a gimmick cage match.

From Tupelo, Mississippi; Your Hosts are Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan, and Dusty Rhodes – actually having the balls to return to the same arena they ran in 1995.

WWF Coliseum Video Collection: World Tour 89/90 (1990)

WWF Coliseum Video Collection: World Tour 89/90 (1990)

Coliseum Video compilation – hosted by Sean Mooney. The cover of the tape features the Ultimate Warrior, and promises WWF action from around the globe, as well as a profile on Jimmy Snuka.