NWA Starrcade ’89: Future Shock
December 13, 1989
Atlanta, GA
The Omni

This year for the NWA’s biggest show of the year, they’ve taken All-Japan’s concept of the Real World Tag League tournament and applied it to both singles and tag divisions. This round-robin-style tournament (its named the Iron Man/Iron Team tournaments here) is based on a point system: 20 points for a pinfall/submission win, 15 points for a countout victory, 10 points for a DQ win, 5 points for a 15-minute time limit draw and zero points for a loss. The singles contestants are NWA World Champion Ric Flair, Sting, NWA U.S. Champion Lex Luger and NWA World TV Champion Great Muta. The tag team contestants are the NWA World Tag Team Champions The Steiners, Doom, the Road Warriors and the Wild Samoans who are subbing for the recently injured Skyscrapers. Scott Steiner had punctured Sid’s lung at the last Clash and put him out of action for six months. Flair vs. Funk was blown off at the same Clash in November and now Terry Funk has seen the errors of his ways and turned into a straight-laced color commentator. Honestly, the Clash card probably should’ve been Starrcade, as it was such a great card comparatively. You should just never perform an experiment that your audience isn’t used to seeing on your biggest show of the year. Also, Arn Anderson had left the WWF right after Survivor Series and is already back in the NWA alongside his pals Ole Anderson and Ric Flair to reform the good guy Four Horsemen along with their newest addition: Sting. That should set the stage quite nicely here. I felt I should catch you up on things since we’re moving on past the Flair/Funk feud.

Your hosts are Jim Ross and Terry Funk for the singles matches, and Jim Ross and Jim Cornette for the tag matches! Read the rest of this entry →