Starrcade 1997: WCW Had the Whole World Waiting and Forgot the Ending

Guerrero and Malenko open the biggest show in company history with the radical concept of simply wrestling well. Malenko brings the early urgency, Guerrero finds a target in the left knee, and the match becomes a tidy little argument about whether the challenger can keep his base underneath him long enough to reach the Texas Cloverleaf. The work is crisp, the roles are obvious, and the frog splash to the damaged leg gives the finish a logical final punctuation mark.

The disappointment is relative. These two have a catalog full of sharper, faster, more inventive matches, so a merely good version feels smaller than it should. The crowd appreciates the technique without treating it as an event-changing performance, and the bout never quite escapes first-gear storytelling. Still, on a night that repeatedly turns simple ideas into committee meetings, Guerrero and Malenko provide fifteen minutes of blessed competence. That makes them look like geniuses by comparison.

The original card already had moving parts, and this six-man wears the revisions like a jacket with somebody else's name stitched inside. Randy Savage replacing Konnan gives the nWo side genuine star power, while the Steiners supply the athletic jolts and Ray Traylor provides a sturdy target. There are flashes of useful chaos, especially when everybody floods the ring and Savage can operate at sprint speed instead of pretending the match has a deeper architecture.

Most of the twelve minutes, though, are unremarkable faction wrestling. Vincent is badly overexposed on the promotion's biggest stage, the heat segment has very little texture, and the match never creates a reason to care beyond the logos on each side. Savage pinning Scott Steiner at least gives the finish a recognizable star and a decisive ending. The problem is placement. On an ordinary Nitro this would be harmless. On Starrcade, with elite wrestlers visibly sitting in the crowd, harmless starts to feel wasteful.

Goldberg is still in the strange larval stage of his push, recognizable but not yet accompanied by the thunderous audience ritual that soon makes his entrances feel like weather. McMichael is a willing opponent and certainly looks at home in a collision, but looking like two refrigerators headed toward the same doorway is not the same thing as constructing a match. The exchanges are clumsy, the pacing never settles, and the table spot feels imported from a different bout without explanation.

There is value in hindsight. The spear and Jackhammer are already there, and within months WCW will understand that Goldberg works best when the entire presentation strips away hesitation and points him directly at destruction. Starrcade catches the company before that realization becomes automatic. He wins, the streak continues, and the future is visible if you squint. As a standalone pay-per-view match, though, it is rough, short, and notable mostly because one participant is about to outgrow this version of himself almost immediately.

Raven declining the match and sending Saturn in his place could have wrecked the segment completely, but Benoit and Saturn are too naturally compatible to produce nothing. They hit hard, move with purpose, and make the permissive rules feel like part of the feud instead of a decorative label. Benoit's intensity gives the crowd a clear emotional lane, while Saturn works the neck and keeps the match from dissolving into random weapon wandering.

The ceiling is lowered by the substitution and the finish. The Flock's interference, Raven's Evenflow DDT, and the Rings of Saturn create a conclusion that advances the program but does not reward the audience for investing in Benoit's fight. It also lands on a card already drowning in distractions, replacements, and outside involvement. There is a strong television match buried here, and portions of it are genuinely enjoyable. At Starrcade, however, it feels like another promise revised at the door rather than a feud reaching the destination advertised.

This is where the show begins testing whether anticipation can be converted directly into patience. Luger is still one of WCW's biggest babyfaces, Bagwell has tremendous heel presence, and the crowd understands the assignment before the bell. Then the match settles into a long, soft middle built around control work that never feels dangerous enough to justify the time. Luger eventually fires up, the Torture Rack arrives, and for a moment the building remembers why this pairing seemed useful.

Naturally, the referee goes down and the nWo machinery starts coughing smoke into the ring. Savage appears, Scott Norton uses a foreign object, and Bagwell gets the pin. The heel victory is not inherently wrong; Bagwell can benefit from beating Luger. The method and duration are the killers. After more than sixteen minutes, the audience receives the same interference finish WCW has conditioned it to expect. Giving this the longest match time on the undercard is an astonishing allocation of resources.

Page and Hennig understand something Starrcade keeps forgetting: a pay-per-view crowd occasionally likes seeing a popular wrestler accomplish the thing he came to accomplish. Hennig works the injured ribs, Page sells without disappearing, and the match moves with the comfortable rhythm of two veterans who know where the important moments belong. It is not especially ambitious, but it has structure, a championship at stake, and the welcome sensation that the finish might matter after the bell rings.

Then the Diamond Cutter lands and Page wins the United States title cleanly. The reaction is immediate because WCW has spent much of the evening denying its audience that kind of release. Hennig's theatrical bumping adds personality, and Page's celebration in the crowd gives the event a rare image of uncomplicated joy. In another context this is a decent midcard title match. Here it becomes a small oasis. That says something flattering about DDP and something less flattering about nearly everything surrounding him.

The premise is enormous: control of Monday Nitro is supposedly at stake, Eric Bischoff can finally receive physical consequences, and Bret Hart arrives in WCW carrying the hottest real-life controversy in wrestling. That should be enough combustible material to heat a small city. Instead, the match spends long stretches exposing Bischoff's limitations and asking Zbyszko to build drama around kicks, stalling, and referee tension. The crowd wants the payoff, but the route is awkward and strangely cautious.

Hart eventually turns on the nWo side of the equation, clobbers Bischoff and Hall, and applies the Sharpshooter to a huge response. That moment works because Bret is Bret and the audience desperately wants a reason to explode. The actual finish is murky, with the steel plate and disqualification mechanics creating one more argument over what just happened. WCW has a newly signed superstar, a heated authority story, and a willing crowd. Somehow the segment makes all three ingredients feel less organized than they did beforehand.

For eighteen months, Sting barely needs to speak. He watches, descends, points the bat, destroys nWo members, and becomes the human answer to WCW's longest-running problem. By Starrcade, the crowd does not need a masterpiece. It needs Sting to survive Hogan, win the championship, and let the building exhale. The match itself never develops the urgency that the story demands. Hogan controls too much of it, Sting's comeback lacks the cathartic violence the build promised, and the atmosphere slowly shifts from anticipation toward confusion.

Then Nick Patrick counts a normal-looking three for Hogan when the story requires an obviously fast count. Bret Hart protests, restarts the match, Sting applies the Scorpion Deathlock, and WCW wrestlers celebrate a title change that now feels legally challenged. The visual should have been immortal. Instead, the audience is asked to remember the explanation. The botch does not erase the build, but it contaminates the payoff so completely that the finish becomes more famous than the victory.