Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) was one of the oldest and one of the longest running professional wrestling organizations in history. For many years, JCP was the top wrestling promotion in North America as the best and brightest stars competed there. It was even the main promotion which usually housed the number one wrestling Heavyweight Championship in the industry.
JCP was founded by Jim Crockett Sr. as he promoted numerous live events such as sporting events and concerts. Crockett formed JCP as his own professional wrestling promotion starting all the way back in 1935. His territory focused heavily on the Carolinas and Virginia.
The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) was formed back in 1948 with the intent of one professional wrestling governing body to take all the promotions around the country and world and all the claims to being the world heavyweight champion into one simple World Heavyweight Championship: the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
The NWA World Heavyweight Championship has its lineage traced all the way back to the first professional wrestling World Heavyweight Championship won by George Hackenschmidt back in 1905. The NWA World Heavyweight Championship is the oldest surviving World Heavyweight Championship in the world/
The NWA World Title would be defended any and everywhere an NWA-sanctioned promotion would be held at the NWA's request due to contractual obligations. Although the champion came from one NWA territory, the NWA was the overall owner of the World Title and demanded the champion to defend the title wherever the please. The NWA had a board of directors who determined who would be the NWA World Champion.
Jim Crockett Sr. and JCP joined the NWA in 1952 and their territory was the Carolinas and Virginia. JCP used the name Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling in advertising as well as the name of its main TV program. Soon everyone called it Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling.
JCP's Mid Atlantic Championsnhip Wrestling was the largest territory and promotion of all the NWA promotions. In most cases, the NWA World Heavyweight Champion came out of Crockett's Mid Atlantic territory. Jim Crockett Jr. took over control of JCP after his father, Jim Crockett Sr., passed away in 1973. Crockett was elected to his first of three terms as NWA President from 1980-1982.
This is still while the territories ruled the wrestling world just before Vince McMahon took control of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) from his father after his father's passing in 1984. The younger McMahon went ahead and "broke the code" with the owners who promised not invade each other's territories.
This was before Crockett would go ahead and buy out many of the smaller, Southern NWA territories to try and compete with McMahon and the WWF which unfortunately, ended Crockett's promotion and was forced to sell the company to Ted Turner, which created World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the late 1980s.
JCP had weekly TV tapings in various arenas throughout the Carolinas and Virgina, but soon moved to once a week to a TV station in Raleigh and eventually Charlotte. They taped its weekly top syndicated TV show, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, along with the "B show", World Wide Wrestling, syndicating the shows to various TV stations in the Carolinas and Virginia and eventually other cities.
In 1983, Jim Crockett purchased a mobile TV production unit for the whopping price of $1 million and started taping his shows on location from live events from various arenas instead of filming them in TV studios.
Entering 1983, Ric Flair was the reigning NWA World Heavyweight Champion, which meant he was the number one wrestler in the world. Flair became the NWA World Champion on September 17, 1981, beating Dusty Rhodes in Kansas City, Missouri. Flair won the NWA World Title for the first time in his career as the NWA Board of Directors voted him to be their world champion.
Flair had been in JCP's Mid Atlantic region since coming over from Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association (AWA) in 1974. Flair quickly established himself as one of the top stars in the promotion. That nearly came to a tragic end, however.
On October 4, 1975, Flair was involved in a serious plane crash in Wilmington, North Carolina. Flair suffered a near career-ending back injury at only 26 years old. The pilot died from the crash and wrestler Johnny Valentine became paralyzed. Despite being told he would never wrestle again, Flair made it back into the ring only five months after the accident.
Flair quickly climbed his way back to the top of the promotion, winning various titles in the Mid-Atlantic region, including winning the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship five times. The accident caused Flair to change his wrestling style as in his early days, he was a brawler who was between 260-300 lbs. and wore short brown hair before becoming the Flair we were used to.
Flair soon adopted the "Nature Boy" style similar to that of the original "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers. He even began using Rogers' finisher the Figure Four Leg Lock as his own. A feud between Flair and Rogers took place with Rogers putting Flair over to become the true "Nature Boy."
Flair dyed his hair bleach blonde and wore expensive suits and custom robes to the ring. Flair would hit his opponents with knife-edge chops and taunt his opponent by screaming "Wooo!!" He would also say his famous "to be the man, you gotta beat THE man!!" usually followed with a big Wooo!!
His promos and interviews were second to none, which put him over with the crowd whether he was a heel or babyface. Flair would brag in promos about how many women he would be with as well as his expensive suits, shoes, jewelry, cars, jet planes, houses, etc.
As NWA World Heavyweight Champion, Flair took on all-comers from all over the world in various NWA promotions and defended the title as often as the NWA wanted him to. For nearly two years, Flair turned back every challenger to hold onto the belt.
Finally on June 10, 1983, Flair lost the NWA World Title to Harley Race in St. Louis, Missouri. Flair initially pinned Race with a back suplex, but as the referee counted three, Race got his shoulder up while Flair's shoulders were still on the mat. Flair thought he won, but the referee awarded the title to Race. Race won his record seventh NWA World Title, breaking a tie with the legendary Lou Thesz.
A feud started between Flair and Race over the NWA World Title as Race did not want to give it up and saw Flair as a threat to his title. Race put out a storyline $25,000 bounty to anyone who could take Flair out of commission.
On August 31, 1983, Dick Slater and Bob Orton Jr. attacked Flair and gave Flair a double "aided" piledriver, "injuring" his neck and putting Flair out of wrestling. Slater and Orton collected the $25,000 from Race. Flair storyline feigned a neck injury and was going to retire. A month later, however, Flair attacked both Slater and Orton with a baseball bat and showed everyone his neck was fine and challenged Race for the World Title.
To settle the score between Flair and Race, NWA Mid-Atlantic JCP decided to create an end of the year supercard known as Starrcade. Starrcade would become an annual supercard and THE supercard for JCP and its predecessor WCW and was created even before Vince McMahon created WrestleMania.
Starrcade was only broadcast on closed-circuit television across the Southern United States and the first several Starrcades were only shown on closed-circuit TV before they would eventually be broadcast on pay-per-view (PPV) TV. This was the forefront of what is now known as modern PPV wrestling supercard events.
The inaugural Starrcade event, also nicknamed "A Flare for the Gold", took place on November 24, 1983, Thanksgiving Night, from the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. The main event for the inaugural Starrcade was the Ric Flair-Harley Race NWA World Heavyweight Championship match held inside a steel cage.
There would be a total of eight matches on the card with seven on the undercard in addition to the main event. The biggest match on the undercard and the most violent was the Dog Collar match between "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Greg "The Hammer" Valentine.
The two feuded for the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship throughout 1983. Piper defeated Valentine to win the title on April 16, 1983. Valentine won the title back two weeks later on April 30. Valentine used a ring bell to hit Piper in the left ear, causing it to bleed and the referee stopped the match and awarded the title back to Valentine.
The match was unlike anything seen at the time and certainly the most violent ever seen at the time. Valentine went after Piper's left ear, which caused Piper to lose 75% of his hearing in that ear. Piper won the match, but Valentine attacked him after the match and choked him with the chain. Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood defeated Jack and Jerry Brisco to win the NWA World Tag Team Championship.
Ric Flair fought Harley Race in the main event contested inside a steel cage. Former NWA World Champion Gene Kiniski was the special guest referee. A thrilling match which saw Flair get busted open, certainly not the first and definitely not the last time this happened, and Flair pinned Race following a high cross body off the top turnbuckle to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for the second time.
Ric Flair and Starrcade were pretty much synonymous with each other for the upcoming boom of professional wrestling in the 1980s.
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