Starrcade '91: BattleBowl - The Lethal Lottery

1991 Starrcade: The Lethal Lottery

The 1991 edition of Starrcade was the very definition of a gimmick PPV event. There were 10 tag team matches, with the winning team of each match sending it’s representatives to a battle royal known as the Battlebowl. The BattleBowl was a double-ring take on the Battle Royal. As for the tag teams themselves, they were random pairings. As a result, there were heels teaming with faces, and in the case of the opening match with the Fabulous Freebirds, normal tag partners facing off against each other. There was certainly promise for this event to lay down the groundwork for stories moving forward. Unfortunately, the event didn’t seem to do that with the exception of the outcome of the BattleBowl match itself. As an admission, I caught WCW when I could back then, which wasn’t often, so I could be wrong about feuds.

My overall opinion of the event would be that while I felt the BattleBowl concept was interesting, the overall card I felt very middle-of-the-road about. The first half of the tag matches provided most of the highlights. The first match had Fabulous Freebird members Michael P.S. Hayes and Jimmy Garvin on opposing teams. The Arn Anderson and Lex Luger vs. Terry Taylor and The Z Man provided fans with the match of the night. Of course, how can we forget Rick Rude was on this card as well as part of the Dangerous Alliance. The rest of the tag matches after the first half of the event leading up to the Battlebowl could not hold my interest. However, Rick Steiner’s belly-to-belly overhead suplex to 450lb Big Van Vader was one of the event’s highlights. Arachnaman? Not so much.

The BattleBowl itself was a different take on the Battle Royal match concept. Two rings were set up side-by-side, and the elimination was a two-step process. The match starts in ring one. Competitors get tossed over the top rope into ring two. Sort of like a losers ring. When a competitor gets tossed over the second ring’s top rope and hit the floor, then they are eliminated. The first ring in due time gets cleared of everyone except for one, as does the second ring. The two remaining competitors then do battle, and whoever gets tossed over the top rope to the floor is the loser.

The BattleBowl match I felt was well paced. It took awhile for the first ring to clear, which I feel in a match like this is important for storytelling purposes. It gives the feeling that the competitors all want to survive and win the match. Once the second ring started to fill up, THEN the eliminations began to pick up pace. The two survivors were Lex Luger (first ring), and Sting (second ring). Sting and Luger would battle for a bit before Sting eliminates Luger, winning the inaugural BattleBowl match. I thought this set up the feud between Luger and Sting nicely.

Overall, Starrcade ‘91: BattleBowl – The Lethal Lottery, was an event with a lot of promise, but the execution ultimately fell flat. There was so much potential to create interesting feuds moving forward out of the tag matches, which didn’t seem to happen. The wrestling overall wasn’t bad, but lacked consistency. There are some good things to be found on this card, but it was easy for me to become bored watching a lot of it. While I give WCW credit for trying something different, they should’ve saved this gimmick idea for a card other than their biggest one of the year. Either that, or have the tag team matches occur on a series of Saturday Night shows over a few weeks, and save the BattleBowl for the PPV. I’d not recommend watching this. The tag matches made the card drag at times, and can easily cause a view to lose interest, in particular the final half of the tag matches.