Starrcade ’83: A Flair for the Gold

Date: November 24, 1983

Location: Greensboro, NC

Announcers: Gordon Solie & Bob Caudle

The Setup

The event was built around the “A Flair for the Gold” campaign, centering on Ric Flair’s quest to reclaim the NWA World Heavyweight Championship from Harley Race. Earlier in the year, Race had placed a $25,000 bounty on Flair’s head, leading Bob Orton Jr. and Dick Slater to attack Flair with a spike piledriver, nearly ending his career. We also had Roddy Piper avenging his injured ear against Greg Valentine in a non-title dog collar match, Rick Steamboat & Jay Youngblood challenging The Briscos for the tag titles in a match where the challengers would break up if they lost, and Charlie Brown (Jimmy Valiant) having to unmask if he couldn’t beat Great Kabuki. The promotion’s top talent had huge matches on this show with high stakes. 

The Business

The Coliseum was sold out, selling 15,447 tickets, and they sold an additional 32,400 tickets at closed-circuit locations, according to ProwrestlingHistory. This was a massive success for JCP, and it obviously led to making this an annual event. 

The Results 

The Assassins def. Bugsy McGraw & Rufus Jones in 8:11. There was a lot of ass-shaking in this match. There’s no way you could call something like this “good,” but the crowd loved every minute. Rufus and Mugsy are in a special league of their own when it comes to being bad. It often looked like middle school kids wrestling with their friends, and Assassin #1 won with a roll-up on Bugsy. 1/2*

Kevin Sullivan & Mark Lewin (with Gary Hart) def. Scott McGhee & Johnny Weaver in 6:43. This was an extended squash. The heels worked the arm a lot and frequently tagged. *1/2 After the match was absolute fucking chaos when Mark Lewin continued to spike Scott McGee until he was a bloody, gory mess. Angelo Mosca came out and tried to make the save, but Lewin was still going batshit crazy and started blading Angelo’s arm as well. Eventually, the heels left after Scott McGee was nothing but a bloody, lifeless corpse. Holy shit, that escalated quickly. 

Abdullah the Butcher def. Carlos Colon in 4:30. What can you say about this? It took thirty seconds before Abby started slicing Carlos‘s forehead with the blades on the tape on his fingertips like a fat-ass Freddie Krueger. Then, Abby began gigging, and objects were used, and so on. Colon put the figure-four on Abby‘s massive tree trunk legs until Hugo Savinovich ran in and hit Colon with a big ass cowboy boot, allowing Abby to win. I’d be bummed if I were Colon and took a flight from Puerto Rico for this shit, but at least he’s not the ref that might have had his spleen ruptured from Abby dropping the big elbow on him. *1/4

Dick Slater & Bob Orton def. Wahoo McDaniel & Mark Youngblood in 14:46. Orton and Slater are awesomeness masters at bumping and selling here, and Wahoo in particular was throwing fire. The finish itself was pretty intense for the era, with Orton and Slater hitting a double superplex on Youngblood. The heels really deserve credit for this one. They were both always so good at selling comically enough to be entertaining, but without it being too goofy to maintain their heat. ***1/2 

TV Title Match: Charlie Brown def. Great Kabuki (c) in 10:35. Charlie Brown is Jimmy Valiant under a hood. I have no idea what to rate this match. I suppose it depends on how you feel about Kabuki’s nerve hold, Jimmy Valiant’s seizure sell. A lot of it looked like two kids playing wrestling with their friends, but Kabuki threw a few awesome sidekicks, and Valiant was at least tremendous at working the crowd. Valiant won with an elbow after Kabuki missed a charge. *1/4 

Dog Collar Match: Roddy Piper def. Greg Valentine in 16:15. This match was fucking phenomenal. Not only did they bleed enough to live up to the stips, but Piper blading the already injured ear was incredible, especially after Valentine continually blasted it with the chain. I’ve heard people knock the finish over the years, but I liked it, as Piper pulled Valentjne off the second rope using the chain, and wrapped up the Hammer’s legs with the chain for the pinfall win. This was just a brutal fight with some great psychology built around their storyline and the dog collar. ****1/2

World Tag Team Title Match: Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood def. Jack & Gerry Brisco (C) in 12:20. They came pretty close to double heat on the babyfaces despite a relatively short match length, with Steamboat taking the more extensive beating and the better hot tag sequence. The Briscos were good at working over the babyfaces, and they kept a very good pace. Steamboat and Youngblood won when Ricky press slammed Youngblood onto Gerry for the win. ***1/2 

World Title Cage Match: Ric Flair def. Harley Race (C) in 24:01. This was a great match, a kind of ultra-classic old-time world title bout, more like a Harley match from the 1970s than 1983. Gene Kiniski, a former NWA champion, was the referee, and I thought he brought the match down with incredibly slow counts. In fact, the crowd was outright booing at one point. They teased a ref bump finish when Harley accidentally headbutted Kiniski. Still, Flair went to the top and hit a crossbody with Race tripping over Kiniaki and giving Flair the NWA title. ****

Recommendation 

Thumbs up. Dusty didn’t book this show (although he did come up with the concept), but Dory Funk Jr. and his team of bookers did a great job of building the top babyfaces in the promotion, who won matches with enormous stakes. The first half of the card is more of a setup for the bigger battles, but even the Wahoo tag was really fucking good. I loved this show! All-timer right here.