In 1983, Jim Crockett Promotions presented Starrcade, the first “super card” in wrestling. With a line-up of top talent in a series of great matches, the initial Starrcade was a huge success for the NWA. It paved the way for the WWF to counter with Wrestlemania, the event that launched wrestling into the mainstream.
As the 1980s continued, wrestling grew rapidly in popularity. Starrcade became the premiere event in the NWA, with Jim Crockett Promotions using the success to expand out of the Mid-Atlantic territory and attempt to go nationwide, as the WWF had done. With his sights set on emulating Vince McMahon’s strategy, Jim Crockett mortgaged his future on the success of Starrcade 87.
The mid 1980s introduced a new source of income for wrestling promoters with the advent of Pay Per View. The WWF had drawn huge business with PPV buy rates for their Wrestlemania III event. Seeing PPV as the way of the future, JCP scheduled Starrcade 87 to be the company’s first PPV offering. It was also the first Starrcade event not to be held, at least in part, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Not wanting to be seen as a regional promotion, Starrcade branched out into Chicago, where they did not have nearly the fan base they did in the Mid-Atlantic territory. As a result, attendance was down considerably for the live gate. However, JCP and the NWA were counting on PPV buy rates to make up the difference and then some.
Seeing the NWA making a play to reach the level of prominence the WWF had, Vince McMahon devised a plan to counter the NWA’s premiere event of the year. Riding the momentum of the massive success of Wrestlemania III, McMahon introduced a new PPV event known as The Survivor Series. This new event would feature the WWF’s top talent in elimination style tag team matches against each other and it would also be held on Thanksgiving night, going head to head with Starrcade.
In the early days of Pay Per View, the technology was far more limited than it is today. Most cable companies would only be able to offer one of the two wrestling shows scheduled for that day. In order to make sure the Survivor Series was the one they chose, McMahon told cable companies if they aired Starrcade, they would not be allowed to show the upcoming Wrestlemania IV. Looking back at the amount of money they had made from Wrestlemania III, this was not a hard decision for most companies to make. They would much rather choose to air Survivor Series and Hulk Hogan than the competition, Starrcade, which was headlined by Ron Garvin against Ric Flair in a steel cage.
For reasons that are debated to this day, in 1987 the NWA World Championship was taken off of perennial champion “Nature Boy” Ric Flair and put around the waist of career mid-card wrestler, Ron Garvin.
In 1986, the NWA had decided that Ric Flair was not the champion they wanted any more. He had held the title, with some brief gaps, for almost 4 years. The NWA felt it was time to have a new man carry their company. The man they were grooming as Flair’s replacement was super popular fan favorite Magnum TA. With his size, strength, athletic ability, charisma, wrestling ability and good looks, Magnum TA was everything the NWA was looking for in a World Champion to represent their company. They felt with Magnum’s huge fan base, he could be their promotions answer to Hulk Hogan, but with superior wrestling skills. They were ready to make a serious run at the WWF with Magnum TA as the face of the promotion. Unfortunately, Magnum had a career ending car accident, and his scheduled match with Ric Flair at Starrcade 86, in which he was to win the World Championship, never took place.
Almost a year later, with Starrcade 87 approaching, Flair was still the champion. With so much of the planning riding on Magnum TA, the NWA was at a loss to find a replacement. Sting was very popular, but still too inexperienced to be seen as a world champion. Dusty Rhodes was well past his prime. Lex Luger was an ally of Flair’s in the Four Horsemen. The decision was made to take the belt off of Flair temporarily and have him regain it at Starrcade, the thinking being that Ric Flair challenging for the championship at Starrcade would be of more interest than Flair defending the title once again. With so few candidates, none of whom wanted to be a mere transitional champion, the NWA turned to Ron Garvin.
Ron Garvin had been a lower tier and mid-card performer for his entire career. His biggest claim to fame up to that point had been his feud with Jake Roberts over the NWA TV Title, which Garvin had won after knocking Roberts out with a stiff punch. At the time, Garvin was seen as a huge underdog against Roberts, and the upset win moved him up the ladder from lower card wrestler to the mid-card.
Garvin had won a title as a huge underdog before and he repeated the achievement on September 25, 1987 when he pinned Ric Flair to become the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. This would allow Flair to enter Starrcade as the challenger and regain the title against the champion Garvin. Instead of drawing added interest to the event, the plan backfired.
Ron garvin was a popular wrestler. Fans enjoyed his stiff punches and rough brawling style. However, they viewed him as a mid-card performer. While they were willing to cheer him as a challenger for Flair’s title and root him on as he chased after the belt, he did not have nearly enough credibility with the fans to actually defeat Flair for the title, which at that time was the most prestigious in wrestling. As an underdog challenger, fans respected Garvin. As the man who was the face of the company as it’s World Champion, the fans did not.
Ron garvin was a huge flop during his brief title reign. At this time, he gained what is known as “go away heat.” When a wrestler is a heel and he is booed, it is considered a good thing. It means that the wrestler has connected with fans and gotten an emotional response. The fans boo him and cheer his opponent because they want to see the wrestler perform and see him hopefully defeated. When a wrestler is supposed to be a fan favorite and is booed, it is a very bad thing. The fans are expressing that they are not booing because they want to see him get beat; they are booing because they don’t want to see him at all. When this happens to a wrestler, it is bad. When it happens to your World Champion, it is a disaster.
Fans had no interest in seeing Ronnie Garvin as World Champion. Attendance was so low in shows he headlined as champion, the NWA soon took him off the road, covering his absence by saying he was in intense training for his rematch with Ric Flair at Starrcade 87.
The decision to put the belt on Ron Garvin came to a head at Starrcade. Attendance in the arena was low and the fans in the building could be heard to loudly boo Garvin and cheer for Flair throughout the match, even though the opposite was what they were supposed to be doing. Pay Per View buy rates, which Jim Crockett Promotions was counting on heavily to turn a profit, were no where near what was expected, thanks to fans lack of interest in Garvin, as well as pressure from Vince McMahon on the cable companies to not even offer the event, and head to head competition with the Survivor Series.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of the entire venture was the match itself. Poor booking decisions aside, poor business decisions aside, the wrestling product itself could have helped to lessen the damamge if the few who saw the event were impressed enough to give the product good word of mouth. However, after a series of mediocre matches, along with one strong match (Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard vs The Road Warriors) that was destroyed at the end by a tired “Dusty finish” that had fans enraged, Ron Garvin and Ric Flair had a very sub par performance.
Perhaps it was the apathy of the fans for his title run, or maybe it was the pressure of being thrust into the main event when he wasn’t able to carry the spotlight, but Ronnie Garvin did not rise to the challenge in this match. Even Ric Flair, arguably the greatest in-ring performer of all time, a man famous for his ability have a great match with anyone, didn’t have a very good match. Both seemed to merely go through the motions as they gave what could only be described as the poorest main event Starrcade had ever seen up to that point. What makes this more disappointing is the fact that the match in which Garvin had initially won the title was very good. Unfortunately, with the future of Jim Crockett Promotions riding on the outcome, and a series of bad decisions leading up to it, Garvin and Flair each gave sub-par performances.
As one would expect, this event marked the downfall of Jim Crockett Promotions. Gambling that they would make a huge profit on the event, it was a financial disaster for the company. A poor night of wrestling in an area they were hoping to cultivate new fans in only made matters worse. Starrcade 87 marked the beginning of the end for JCP, as Crockett was forced to sell his promotion to Ted Turner, who took it and turned it into World Championship Wrestling.
Both Ron Garvin and Ric Flair continued their careers after Starrcade. Garvin had a brief run as a heel in the NWA, turning on Dusty Rhodes before leaving for the World Wrestling Federation, where he was once again relegated to mid-card status. He never came close to the success he had when he won the NWA World Title, whether he deserved that belt or now. After some time, Garvin retired as a full-time wrestler, and now makes his living as a pilot.
After the feud with Garvin, Ric Flair went on to feud with newcomer Sting, wrestling him to a time limit draw at the first Clash of Champions event, a match that is hailed as an all-time classic, and the match the propelled Sting to superstardom. If Ric Flair and Sting had been booked just a few months earlier at Starrcade 87, would wrestling history have been drastically altered? Would the NWA have had a big success with their first foray into PPV instead of the disaster they did? Would they have challenged the WWF as an alternative product with a more athletic, wrestling based promotion? Would we still be watching Starrcade on PPV instead of Wrestlemania? These are questions that wrestling fans debate to this day.
Starrcade 87 was supposed to be the event that rocketed the NWA to new highs. Instead, when Ron Garvin and Ric Flair entered that cage, it was the beginning of the end.
