Starrcade '87: Chi-Town Heat — JCP Finally Reached Pay-Per-View and Learned How Ruthless the Fight Would Be

The opener is loaded with future significance. Sting looks immediately comfortable in a major setting, Michael Hayes brings charisma, and Rick Steiner supplies the raw physicality that will become much more refined later. The match starts with energy and makes good use of tags to keep the combinations fresh.

The problem is structural. Once the fifteen-minute limit becomes obvious, the pace settles into holding patterns designed to reach the bell. The crowd senses the lack of a decisive finish and cools. A final burst around Hayes and Gilbert arrives too late to change the shape.

The draw protects everyone and advances nothing. On a territory television show, that might be acceptable. On JCP's first live pay-per-view, the opener needed either a babyface win or a cheating heel win to establish emotional momentum. The work is good enough for C+; the booking keeps it there.

Steve Williams and Barry Windham are capable of much better than seven minutes of awkward storytelling. The face-versus-face exchanges are technically competent, and there are flashes where the two seem ready to accelerate into the athletic heavyweight match the pairing promises.

Instead, the match becomes about a strange character beat. Williams gets caught in the groin during a leapfrog sequence, Windham hesitates to capitalize, then gets rolled up moments later. The intended hint that Williams might be moving toward a heel turn is too subtle and confusing for the crowd to process.

The result also wastes the chemistry available. Windham's smooth movement and Williams' explosiveness never receive enough time to create escalation. The title stays with Williams, but neither wrestler leaves stronger. This is not bad execution so much as bad allocation: too little time, unclear motivation and a finish that generates questions rather than heat.

The second Starrcade scaffold match is more entertaining than the first because the Rock 'n' Roll Express and Midnight Express use their rivalry and crowd connection to create tension even when normal wrestling is impossible. Bobby Eaton, Stan Lane, Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson all understand how to make small movements look dangerous at twenty feet.

That does not make the stipulation good. The platform still removes most of what makes these teams special. Timing, tags and ring positioning are replaced by balance, cautious movement and the constant question of who will take the required fall.

Morton follows Lane beneath the scaffold, the Midnights eventually drop, and the babyfaces win exactly as expected. Big Bubba and Cornette add personality around the edges.

Historically, the match is worth seeing. As wrestling, it remains a spectacle that asks four elite tag workers to stop doing elite tag-team wrestling.

The first half is slow enough to test patience. Nikita Koloff works the arm, Terry Taylor eventually returns the favor, and the match spends too long establishing control without offering much urgency. The crowd's restlessness is understandable.

Then Taylor takes over as a more aggressive heel and the match wakes up. He targets Koloff's damaged arm and shoulder, Eddie Gilbert adds outside interference, and the champion's comebacks finally have something meaningful to overcome. The figure-four sequence gives Taylor a credible near victory.

Koloff survives, Gilbert's interference backfires, and the Russian Sickle ends the match cleanly enough to unify the championships. The result matters because it symbolically absorbs another piece of the UWF into JCP.

The slow start prevents a higher score, but the second half is strong and the title-unification stakes give the finish genuine consequence.

The wrestling before the finish is exactly what the pairing should be. Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard throw themselves around for Hawk and Animal, making the Road Warriors look like an unstoppable force without becoming passive victims. When the champions finally create openings, they target Hawk's knee and use classic Horsemen teamwork to make the control believable.

Chicago is desperate for the Road Warriors to win. That makes the apparent payoff enormous when the Doomsday Device lands and a replacement referee counts the pin.

Then Tommy Young reverses the decision because Arn had been thrown over the top rope. The disqualification preserves the Horsemen's titles and detonates the emotional payoff the match had carefully built.

The work remains excellent. The finish is the problem. This was the night to let the hometown monsters take the belts or find a different way to keep them strong. Instead, JCP chooses protection over catharsis.

The cage promises hatred and delivers long arm-control stretches. Dusty Rhodes and Lex Luger spend too much of the match working holds that would be more acceptable on television than on the flagship pay-per-view inside a steel cage.

Luger is still developing, and Dusty tries to organize the match around selling and comeback timing. The crowd never fully buys into the pace. Blood and the cage itself add visual intensity without changing the underlying rhythm.

The closing sequence is much better. J.J. Dillon steals the key, a chair enters the cage, Luger appears poised to use it, and Dusty catches him with a DDT onto the chair for the title change.

That finish creates a strong isolated moment. It cannot erase the preceding fifteen minutes. Historical importance and a satisfying result keep the match above failure, but barely.

The crowd alignment is upside down, and that becomes part of the fascination. Ronnie Garvin arrives as the babyface world champion and is booed. Ric Flair is the heel challenger and is treated like Chicago's preferred champion. Both wrestlers ignore the intended morality and work a physical title fight.

Garvin's chops and grinding offense make the match feel mean. Flair sells, targets the leg and gradually creates the strategic opening he needs. The cage matters because it limits escape and eventually becomes the mechanism for the finish.

Flair reverses an Irish whip, sends Garvin into the cage and gets the pin to regain the championship. The result is decisive and historically correct even if Garvin's reign never felt fully accepted.

The match is not an elite Flair classic, but it is strong enough to close the show respectably. The hostile reaction to Garvin gives it a unique texture rather than ruining it.