Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
For the NWA/WCW, the Starrcade pay per view was the granddaddy of all their shows in the calendar year. All of the biggest matches took place on that show with the likes of Ric Flair Vs. Harley Race, Roddy Piper Vs Greg Valentine in a dog collar match, Dusty Rhodes vs Flair so on and so forth. By 1994, the landscape of World Championship Wrestling had changed. Owner Ted Turner invested a lot of money and time in bringing in Hulk Hogan to be the crown jewel of their company. Along with Hogan’s heavy price tage, came a contract which allowed the Hulkster a certain amount of creative control over his character. It would lead to one of the most disastrous main event’s in Starrcade history.
With Hulk Hogan on board in WCW, he was almost immediately made the world champion. While old school NWA fans rejected Hogan’s mere presence in the promotion…Ted Turner was committed in seeing Hulk take WCW to new and bigger heights. To get to that point, management felt they needed to bend over backwards to make Hulk happy. Hulk brought in several friends that he trusted to work with including Jimmy Hart, the former Brutus Beefcake (Ed Leslie)…even Mr. T. While these people made Hogan happy…it sorta killed the old days of the promotion at the same time..which I guess was the whole point.
One of Hulk’s ideas was to work a program with his very best friend…Ed Leslie (Known as Brother Bruti in WCW). The idea was pitched to booker Kevin Sullivan, whose job it was was to convince Eric Bischoff to give it the green light. According to Bischoff himself, he knew the proposal was a bad idea from the start, but Eric Bischoff’s main goal was to keep Hulk Hogan happy. After all, a happy Hulkster meant a happy Ted Turner. So despite all of his reservations in allowing this feud to go through…Bischoff said yes to it. Bischoff has insisted that Hulk didn’t pressure anybody in making the program happen….he was just extremely loyal to his friends and really felt a feud with Ed Leslie would be successful.
The start of the angle began at Clash of the Champions XXVIII during a scheduled interview with Gene Okerlund. As Hulk was introduced to the crowd, a masked man clubbed Hogan on the back of his knee. A story truly ripped from real life headlines as Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked in the same manner a few months earlier.
That storyline would play out for a couple of months with a masked man continually assaulting Hogan at various times. The WCW announce team would begin to speculate on who the masked attacker could possibly be. The early consensus was that Ric Flair was behind the attacks and that his Horsemen partner Arn Anderson was the attacker. At Halloween Havoc ’94 after a victory against Ric Flair…the masked man returned to assault Hogan. Only this time, Hogan was ready for him.
Hulk beat the masked man down and then ripped off his mask to reveal his best friend Brother Bruti as the attacker. The moans and groans from the fans in attendance were deafening in many ways. Despite that, Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan did their best to act shocked as if this was the biggest heel turn in pro wrestling history. Heenan would go as far as to repeatedly say that Bruti “butchered” his friendship with Hogan. It was a way to ease fans into what Ed Leslie’s new name was going to be…The Butcher.
Kevin Sullivan and The Avalanche (John Tenta) would soon enter the ring and align with the Butcher and attack Hogan. Their faction would be called ‘The Three Faces of Fear’ and added another layer to the upcoming world title match between Hulk and his former friend the Butcher. The match was set for December 27th, 1994 at Starrcade….the company marquee pay per view.
The fans in attendance didn’t really seem to care one way or the other as the dreaded Butcher made his way to the ring. If you watch the match…many fans weren’t even paying attention to the contest but rather fights that were breaking out in the crowd. The match quality was extremely low compared to what fans were use to from Starrcade’s in the past. Hulk got his revenge by pinning the Butcher and retaining his WCW world title. The feud was quickly dropped almost immediately following the match with Hulk moving on to other opponents…namely Vader.
It was one of Bischoff’s bigger regrets as head of WCW and he readily admits it was a bad decision to make that match…especially for such a high profile event like Starrcade. The Butcher went on to several other gimmicks in his WCW career with no real identity.
David Fullam
Pathetic.