NWA-JCP 1987: JCP Takes Over the CWF and Bill Watts' UWF; Starrcade goes to PPV for the First Time, But Competes Head-to-Head with the WWF's Survivor Series; Lex Luger Joins the Four Horsemen; Ronnie and Jimmie Garvin; WarGames

1987 was the beginning of the end of Jim Crockett Promotions as it was a down year. Jim Crockett further expanded his promotion by purchasing NWA's Championship Wrestling from Florida (CWF) promotion (which head booker Dusty Rhodes was part owner of) and Bill Watts' Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) out of Oklahoma and a bunch of their fellow wrestlers came over with the merger.

Many, including Ric Flair, believed that all this over-expansion caused Jim Crockett Promotions' wrestling to go out of business and if he had just stayed in the Mid-Atlantic and South then he would still be in business today.

Obviously the biggest star from the CWF territory was Dusty Rhodes, but had already been in JCP for several years. The next biggest young star to come from the Florida territory was a young stud by the name of Lex Luger. Luger was an athletic body builder who had a background in football playing for a major college (University of Miami, Florida) and even a couple of years of pro ball.

Luger, nicknamed "The Total Package", debuted in NWA-JCP in early 1987 following the purchase of CWF after only a little over a year's worth of pro wrestling experience. Shortly after his debut in JCP, Luger became an associate member of the Four Horsemen as he would appear alongside NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair.

Eventually, Luger became a full-fledged member of the group replacing Ole Anderson after the group kicked Ole out. He defeated Nikita Koloff to win the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship during The Great American Bash tour on July 11, 1987. He lost the title to Dusty Rhodes at Starrcade '87 following botched interference from manager J.J. Dillon, which eventually saw Luger part ways with the group.

Starrcade '87 was the first NWA-JCP to be broadcast on pay-per-view television after several years of being broadcast on closed-circuit TV. Jim Crockett saw the success and how much money WrestleMania III brought to the WWF and Vince McMahon earlier the year on PPV

Crockett decided to do his own PPV and chose the top-of-the-line supercard showcase Starrcade to be shown on PPV. Every Starrcade and other supercards from this point forward would be shown live on PPV.

McMahon created the annual Survivor Series PPV for 1987 and he chose to run it on Thanksgiving night, November 26, 1987, the same night the annual Starrcade event was run. Crockett still chose to air his Starrcade PPV on Thanksgiving night to combat McMahon and the Survivor Series.

He needed Ric Flair to lose the NWA World Title two months before the event and have him win it back in order to draw strong numbers against McMahon and the WWF. However, the NWA's top choices to take the belt off of Flair for a couple of months were not available for one reason or another so they decided on a surprising Ron Garvin.

The storyline between Garvin and Flair took place during the summer of 1987 when Flair was lusting over Ron's storyline brother Jimmy Garvin's valet Precious. Flair defeated Jimmy to win a date with Precious. When it came time for Flair to go out with Precious, Flair was ambushed by Ron, who dressed in drag pretending to be Precious.

Ron Garvin then defeated Flair at a house show in Detroit on September 25, 1987 to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Garvin defended the title against Flair in a Steel Cage match at Starrcade '87. The fans were not in favor of Garvin as champion. In fact, the heel Flair got more cheers at times than Garvin did during the match. Flair defeated Garvin to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for the fifth time.

Starrcade drew a 3.30 buy rate, but the Survivor Series drew a 7.0. The reason being was that only a small amount of cable companies offered Survivor Series only and not Starrcade as Vince McMahon said they could not carry WrestleMania IV if they did not carry Survivor Series exclusively. Cable companies chose to favor McMahon over Crockett by about 10:1.

For the second year in a row, The Great American Bash went on tour. During the tour, a special match was created called the WarGames match. The match was created by Dusty Rhodes as it featured two rings side-by-side with a giant steel cage surrounding it.

The match would feature two teams of four or five with one member of each team facing off at the beginning. Then after five minutes, one member of a team enters as it is decided by a coin toss. After two minutes, a member of the opposing team comes in and they rotate for every two minutes until all eight or 10 men are int he ring. After everyone is in the match, a team has to make a member of the other team submit, surrender, or knock him unconscious as there are no pinfalls in this match.

The first-ever WarGames match took place on July 4 from The Omni in Atlanta during The Great American Bash Tour. It featured The Road Warriors, Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, and Paul Ellering vs. The Four Horsemen and J.J. Dillon. The Road Warriors forced Dillon to submit to an arm bar after they accidentally injured his right arm following the Doomsday Device.

Another WarGames match took place during The Great American Bash on July 31 featuring the same teams minus Dillon, who was replaced by The War Machine (Ray Traylor best known as Big Bubba Rogers and the Big Boss Man) as The Road Warriors, Dusty, Koloff, and Ellering won again. WarGames match would take place about once a year or more until the closure of WCW in 2001.

When Jim Crockett bought Bill Watts' UWF, he brought many of Watts' wrestlers into the company and even some of their titles. However, Crockett buried the UWF by phasing out the UWF titles and even having many of the wrestlers not get pushed in the company with a few exceptions like the Fabulous Freebirds, Shane Douglas, Rick Steiner, Eddie Gilbert, "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, and some guy named Sting.

Steve Borden was a blonde, California bodybuilder who went by the wrestling name of Sting. Sting was a charismatic young wrestler who was very popular with the fans with his blonde flat-top hair, wild colorful outfits and face paint. Sting teamed with Jim Hellwig in the UWF before coming to JCP. Hellwig did not come to JCP as he left to go to the WWF and become The Ultimate Warrior.

Even though Sting did not have much experience in the ring, he was pushed along with Lex Luger and the Warrior because of their looks and chiseled muscular bodies. During this time, super muscular wrestlers were getting the main event pushes because they really looked the part despite other wrestlers having much more experience, but they didn't have "the look" promoters and even fans at the time wanted.

This was just the beginning of Sting, who would ultimately get a push like no other as he would eventually become the face and franchise player of what would eventually become WCW.