I attended a couple of panels at Starrcast 3 and wanted to post a live recap for people who were curious of the few shows I did get to see live.
The first show I attended was the Being The Elite Live Mailbag. The highlights of this panel was Nick confirming Being The Elite will continue even when AEW is on TNT (though he seemed to think about it at first, so there was a little hesitation there).
Another highlight was Kenny Omega confirming that a video game deal may be in the works and that there could be some news on an AEW video game before the end of the year.
The surprise of this panel was when a fan asked what the worst town was, Hangman Page said the “entire UK”. He put the blame on Nick and said it was because the UK didn’t have any places to eat after 9 PM or air conditioning. I also thought wrestlers liked going to the UK.
The second panel I attended (entered halfway through) was a video game tournament hosted by Leva Bates. There really isn’t too much to recap on this one. It was a non-wrestling video game they were playing (last year’s video game tournament they played Fire Pro Wrestling) There were maybe 55 people who attended it, and it was all fans and no wrestlers partaking in the tournament (last year’s Starrcast had mostly wrestlers and one fan). This took place at 9 AM in the morning, which might be why it was so sparsely attended.
The next panel was Malenko hosted by Tony Schiavone. Malenko revealed he had Parkinson’s during this panel. I’m not sure if this has ever been revealed, but the crowd seemed a little shocked by it. Malenko is actually quite a funny guy and made several jokes throughout the panel.
He said Chris Benoit told him it was his moment too after Benoit went backstage and won the title at Wrestlemania XX. He did not delve into the Benoit tragedy at all and understandably so.
He talked about working as an agent in AEW and that he is going to let the wrestlers do their own thing and then go over the match/what they could have done better after. He would rather have unscripted promos, and for the wrestlers to go out and make a mistake because that’s real and provides a learning experience.
He had high compliments for The Miz when someone asked him about his favorite performer in WWE.
He said he was living in a bubble for the past 19 years and didn’t really see too many Kenny Omega matches while working with WWE.
The next panel time frame there were 2 panels going on (The Women of AEW hosted by Tony Schiavone on the main Pro Wrestling Tees stage and Paving The Way with Madusa on the secondary stage). I wanted to see both, so I split my time in half.
The first 45 minutes I attended The Women of AEW. Brandi Rhodes, Nyla Rose, Sadie Gibbs, Allie, and Dr. Britt Baker were on the panel. This was kind of a weird panel, since it seemed to be part shoot, part kayfabe.
There wasn’t too many notable quotes in the first half. Brandi Rhodes talked about being a figure skater and falling in love with the wrestling business on the first day. She mentioned attending a live Survivor Series and Rey Mysterio being an inspiration.
Dr. Britt Baker talked about being a dentist. Nyla Rose had a lot of charisma and she and Britt Baker seemed to play up a rivalry on stage. I left as soon as Sadie Gibbs came out to attend Madusa’s panel.
I joined “Paving The Way With Madusa” halfway through it. For context, The Women of AEW panel was 75% full on the larger main stage. Madusa’s panel probably had less than 60 people in attendance and wasn’t broadcasted on Fite.
When I walked in DDP was there talking about his yoga. He wrapped his speech up within 5 minutes and then Conrad Thompson was Madusa’s next guest.
Conrad talked about mortgages, managing multiple jobs, getting into podcasting, and his podcasting business evolving.
He said he will never stop doing mortgages, as he finds its to be one of the most rewarding jobs ever.
He says he met a lot of wrestling personalities (including Bruce Prichard, Eric Bischoff, and Tony Schiavone) through doing the Ric Flair show. He mentions it being tough to do since Ric Flair was drinking heavily at the time, and it was evident on some of the episodes.
He said Bruce Prichard was working as a car salesman when he met him and thought he would never get involved in the wrestling business again.
He talked about the importance of having a business plan and said he sent Cody a 7 page detailed vision of the first Starrcast. He mentioned that last year the lines were crazy, and his goal with this one was to have better line flows so fans could get around easier.
According to Conrad, there’s no Starrcast 4 on the books but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
Conrad then said he now has a person who quit his job and works with him full time to keep his podcasting empire going and said he has another guy on the way to doing that.
The panel ended with Madusa showing a trailer for an inspirational movie that is in development about her life. It seemed to be a very compelling story from the trailer. It showed her being abused as a child and had some clips of her from AJPW, monster trucking, and her present day.
The next panel I attended was The Art of Wrestling With Colt Cabana. Marty DeRosa co-hosted. It was announced by Mark Madden before the show that this would be one of the last recordings of Art of Wrestling ever.
Marty and Colt were both very funny. They had a multiple guest format and brought on Jimmy Wang Yang, Awesome Kong, Jerry Lawler, and Madusa.
Jimmy Wang Yang seemed to be a huge fan of the podcast and talked about his party bus business. He said running a party bus business on Friday and Saturday nights means he no longer really has time to take indie bookings. He said he drives a lot of people to sporting events and during the games, he listens to Art of Wrestling to pass the time.
Jimmy Wang Yang also said he signed his WCW contract when he was just one month past his 18th birthday. He talked about living close to DDP and Eric Bischoff and finding their houses on Halloween as a kid. He also mentioned dressing up as Sting on career day at his high school.
Awesome Kong talked about being in Hollywood and GLOW. She mentioned watching GLOW as a kid. I don’t recall too much else from her interview, but she definitely has a totally different demeanor out of character and seems like quite the fun person to be around.
Jerry Lawler came out and said he had a signing with JR in 5 minutes and that he couldn’t talk too long because the last thing he needed was an angry JR. Notably, he was wearing a WWE shirt. They talked briefly with him about Andy Kaufman, and said Andy liked making audiences uncomfortable more than he liked making them laugh. Jerry probably was on the stage only about 5 minutes before he said his phone was buzzing and had to go to his meet and great.
The last person they had as a guest was Madusa. Madusa totally had a different tone than most of the guests. Her interview was a much more serious one. She broke down and cried during it and mentioned having a personal tragedy recently but did not go into too much detail.
She talked about old road stories and making no money in her first 5 years in the business. She said she had her first real big payoff working The Cow Palace for Verne Gagne (I think she said it was $800 dollars) and spoke highly of him.
She talked working Sherri Martel. Colt mentioned he also worked with Sherri in a mixed tag match on the indies, and Madusa seemed shock by this since she thought Colt was so young.
When asked about ribs, Madusa mentioned that some of the old school wrestlers were crazy and would throw Dairy Queen ice cream onto other people’s cars and moon each other while driving in blizzards.
The final panel I got to attend was Tales of a Hardcore Legend: With Mick Foley.
He opened the show telling a story about how Jake Roberts drunkenly peed on him during his early WWF tenure (probably spring 1996). When someone asked Jake Roberts why he was drinking as a born again Christian, he said “The Lord told me it would be OK if I could have one beer”.
He talked about being on an AEW event as a WWE contracted legend. He first started saying that going to war with WWE is like throwing spitballs at a battleship, but then played up like this was only an act. He then mentioned Vince McMahon had so many great ideas like the XFL, Ico Pro, and the WBF which got huge pops and laughs from the crowd.
He made some Al Snow jokes, talked about his new movie the Peanut Butter Falcon and said Jake Roberts played an outstanding heel in that movie.
Foley then went into not having his own Wrestlemania moment before his match with Edge and said that when he went through the flaming table Edge told him he loved him. Edge burned his eyelashes off and Foley burnt off his forearm hair. He also mentioned that Jake Roberts could be seen drunkenly in the second row holding a beer with his fly unzipped ready to pee on him to put the fire out (not sure if Jake Roberts was actually there or if this was just a joke).
Foley talked about how sometimes his live shows he can get the weirdest questions. He talked about going to Ecuador and a fan asking him if Ole Anerson hated Raven’s WCW promos.
He closed the show by cutting a promo on Kenny Omega. It was a joke promo where he said he was so bad Kenny Omega wouldn’t be able to carry him to a good match, and that his star rating would go down huge because it would be negative stars.
The CM Punk panel was just 30 minutes after Foley’s in the same room. I did not attend the CM Punk panel since the line wrapped around almost the entire hotel and there were people who sat out of the Foley panel because they wanted to start a line for CM Punk’s show.
Aside from the panels, this time around Starrcast had much more of an AEW feel to it. It almost felt like an official AEW convention. When you walked into the hotel, the throne that Cody Rhodes broke at Double or Nothing was on display next to a huge AEW on TNT banner.
There were a couple of WWE legends there (Sgt. Slaughter, Jerrry Lawler, Jimmy Hart, Mick Foley). The AEW meet and greets were held in separate rooms from The Collector’s Corner room downstairs where most of the non-AEW wrestlers and podcasts/other booths were.
Also, this time around they are not doing any panels on Sunday (today) and they only have a few meet and greets listed for today, so it seems like they are really winding it down on the 4th day this time.
There were no live podcasts in the lobby this time around and the space where live podcasts took place (including the Post Wrestling one) was occupied by an AEW merchandise booth. Also, no wrestlers were signing in the lobby and having a bracelet to get into rooms and panels was more strictly enforced.
The first Starrcast was an amazing experience. The third Starrcast was a good experience, but didn’t have the same magic as the first (I did not attend the second Starrcast so can’t comment on how that one felt live, but even some of the panels for the second Starrcast seemed better from what I saw on Fite).