I had the pleasure of attending Starrcast this past weekend and wanted to share my perspective and recap on the events and panels I witnessed. I live only 15 minutes away from the hotel where Starrcast was held, so I was really lucky to have such a big convention be local.
Thursday:
I started with the Botchamania Meet and Greet, which was supposed to include Maffew, Tony Schiavone, Ron Funches, and Casio Kid(one of Conrad’s friends). Maffew’s plane was late, so he couldn’t make it to the meet and greet. Tony Schiavone was a hell of a nice guy. This meet and greet was kind of chaotic since they were doing a Bruce Prichard/Eric Bischoff and Madusa meet and greet in the same room.
I then went to the Monday Night Wars panel, and it honestly wasn’t that great as predicted by several people on this forum. I was able to make it into the other panel for some karaoke but only caught of the tale end of it (last song). Marty Scrull sung Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” as the finale.
I didn’t stick around much longer Thursday and headed home as I was tired from working that same day.
Friday
Started the day off watching a video game tournament hosted by Leva Bates. Noelle Foley, Bruce Prichard, Sami Callihan, Maffew, and Jessica Havok were included in the tournament among a few others. The one fan who was in the tournament ended up winning it. This panel had one of the lower turnouts at it was fairly early on the Friday morning that it was held.
Met Brutus Beefcake and had him sign my already purchased Brutus Beefcake book. He asked me “Where I bought his book?”, making me wonder if he thought I stole it from his gimmick table. I told him I bought it online. He was nice otherwise.
After meeting Brutus, I caught some of Madusa’s panel with Gail Kim and Summer Rae. Gail Kim’s interview was very interesting. She said her first WWE firing caught her by complete surprise as they had her run an angle with Trish Stratus and Lita the day before she was fired.
She had to go out of her way to get an explanation from the firing, and they said they were moving in another direction. She also said she feels like that wrestling needs a mix of the bra and panties and athletic type female wrestlers. Gail then talked about the difficulty of being an Asian female performer.
Summer Rae’s interview was also pretty interesting, and she said she had a serious back issue that kept her out for a year and some days her fingers go numb. This panel won me over on Madusa’s Full Throttle podast, and I may add it to my listening queue moving forward.
After that, I attended the What Happened When Monday panel. It was very funny. They ran a lot of bits they do on the show. It included a run-in by former NWA referee Tommy Young, who shared a story about Ric Flair pooping his pants in a match with Ricky Steamboat in 1984. He mentioned how Ric Flair was a professional for continuing the match for 10 minutes. Apparently, Ric Flair was wearing pink tights and both the sight and smell was apparent to the members in the first few rows. He also shared the story of getting injured in the ring during a match.
Barbarian also did a run in for WHW Monday. The show closed with Scott Steiner’s music hitting to a big pop. Conrad and Tony constantly rib on Steiner on the show, so this has been a few months in the making build. Conrad ran off the stage in fear, and Steiner proceeded to cut a 2 minute crazy promo calling Conrad and Tony fatasses. He then asked: “Who is a bigger c*nt, Triple H or Stephanie?” The guy is nuts.
I only caught a few minutes of the Four Star Panel with Pro Wrestling Torch and The Wrestling Observer, but it seemed as though they were talking a lot on the current product. I wish I would have caught more of this one in retrospect.
I left mid-afternoon Friday, but had time to attend the Wrestlecrap panel briefly. It seemed pretty fun as Rd Reynolds was dressed as the Gobbedly Gooker and Blade Braxton was wearing the Oz shirt. Kevin Sullivan and Dr. David Schultz were on the panel. Kevin Sullivan was pretty funny and wasn’t afraid to joke around about his questionable booking and the Dungeon of Doom angle.
Saturday
Started the day meeting Scott Steiner. He was still setting up his table when I met him. He wasn’t overly friendly but signed my plaque.
I also had the pleasure of meeting John and Wai around this same time. We chatted a little about their drive in and the implications about All In potentially becoming a yearly event. I gladly purchased a Post Wrestling t-shirt and got some stickers.
At the beginning of the live Ask-A-Wai there was a huge line but eventually it cleared and I attended a good portion of the show. Post Wrestling definitely had one of the biggest turnouts for a show happening in the lobby. There were some podcasts that had no people around. Post Wrestling had about 6 or 7 rows of people deep. Unfortunately, one of my friends called me towards the end and told me to meet them in the vendor room as they wanted me to show them around the convention. By the time, I got back up to the lobby the show had ended.
I then attended the Total Nonstop Jarrett panel. Total Nonstop Jarrett was a little boring, although they did have another Steiner run in where he told the story about his percentages promo. He said he cheated on tests in college and got caught. The promo was inspired by that. Conrad did another worked run in where he was supposedly talking to a production member in back of the room. Steiner then ran off the stage and chased him with Jarrett’s guitar out the door. Gail Kim and Velvet Sky were the next guests after Steiner, and I left at that point.
I met one of the authors of WWE’s comics in the vendor room. I asked him about having any creative freedom, and he said he didn’t have that much. He mentioned a bar scene in the Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn comic he did not making the final cut as an example.
Next I attended the Prime Time with Sean Mooney panel with Jim Johnston. This was the highlight of the convention for me. Jim Johnston was such a humble and nice man. Highlights included him mentioning he thought Triple H was better off in a comedic role in DX, and he didn’t think he was a good fit as the serious power guy. He mentioned what a sweet woman Joanie Laurer was. He also wasn’t shy about admitting he wasn’t a wrestling fan, but Sean brought up a good point in that a music writer for wrestling should have a distance from the product in order to make good music for it.
Another interesting note from the Jim Johnston panel was that sometimes he wouldn’t know if his work got accepted until he heard it on the show. He also said sometimes they would call him at 4 PM on a Monday and ask him to come up with a song for a wrestler who would be on the Raw that day.
I got to meet him, and the one question I asked was who sung Shawn Michaels song on WWF The Music Volume 2. If you aren’t familiar with this, there’s an Internet rumor that Vince McMahon sung that version. He answered it was Shawn. I’m not sure if he remembered that one, as it doesn’t sound like Shawn at all. Here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up49_xur8Ng.
Another panel was Death of WCW with Eric Bischoff and RD Reynolds. Death of WCW’s panel seemed like the typical Eric Bischoff spiel of “Fuck the dirt sheet writers, you weren’t there and don’t have the facts”. I didn’t stay at this panel too long, but RD Reynolds seemed to not be able to get many words in as Eric Bischoff kept babbling on and on.
Saturay’s festivities ended around mid-afternoon as All In was happening.
Sunday
Highlight of Sunday for me was meeting Guy Evans and Neal Pruitt. Guy signed a copy of the Nitro book for me. Guy asked me about how I found out about the book, and I gave Post Wrestling a shout-out. Guy mentioned it took him 3 years to write the book. Neal Pruitt (the voice behind the nWo vignettes) did his nwo voice for me. I asked him who was the most difficult to work for at WCW and he mentioned Lex Luger and Goldberg. We shared a few laughs about the time William Regal tried to teach Goldberg a lesson in 1998 on a live Nitro.
I caught the tale end of Colt Cabana’s podcast after. One interesting note on this one is that they did not open it up for a Q&A at the end, which they did for almost every other panel. I wonder if this could have been due to fear of being asked a question on the CM Punk case.
After this, I wandered around for a bit. The convention fatigue finally started to hit at this point.
Ringside with JR was the second to last panel. He had Rey Mysterio and Cody as his guests. JR went on a brief rant on millennials who feel like something is owed to them saying “We old guys don’t owe you shit”. Highlight included JR and Cody both saying they felt Dusty’s presence at All In. When asked what he thought Vince’s reaction to Jericho showing up at All In, JR answered with “None. He would have no sold it”.
Last panel of the whole convention was Why It Ended with Robbie E. It was apparent by this time a good number of people left and most of the people staying at this point later in a Sunday afternoon were fairly local or were trying to get last minute bargains in the vendor room. This panel had a smaller turnout. Glacier came on stage and seemed like a nice guy, but not much relevant was said. Then Buff Bagwell hit the stage and good God, what a finale. This dude is legit nuts and did his Buff Bagwell pose into the Fite TV camera as if he was going out for Nitro. He told the story about shooting his dad in the arm, working as a gigolo for a Showtime show, and getting fired by WWE. He’s definitely a riot and what a crazy way to end the four days.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, I thought Starrcast was a potentially once in a life time and amazing experience. There was so much to do and see. They had two panels running at the same time all day, which was pretty awesome to have a choice of what event you wanted to go to.
If you didn’t have a Gold, Platinum, or Silver bracelet, there was still a lot to do and plenty of wrestlers to interact with. The amount of merch being sold was absolutely insane. There was also a belt room with a lot of cool memorabilia.
I do have a few criticisms of the event. The volunteer workers wearing the yellow shirts there seemed uninformed at times. I did not get a refund for my Ric Flair Robe and Big Gold photo op. It was supposed to take place all 4 days and was advertised as Sunday 10-noon. However, the Sunday session didn’t happen. The basically told me I was SOL and sorry no refunds as I should have gone one of the other times for the photo op.
It also seemed like certain events got shuffled around with little to no announcement. Ryan Satin’s Trivia event was moved from Sunday to Friday. However, it was still on the board for Sunday on Sunday. When I asked one of the volunteers if it was happening a second time, they had no idea what I was talking about.
Last criticism was that there was minimal enforcement on platinum, silver, and gold bracelets. I felt like kind of a chump paying $140 for the gold bracelet when it seemed like a couple of people without any bracelets were sneaking into panels.There wasn’t a person checking the doors as the panel started so really anyone could have walked in.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading my long winded post. I wanted to give a perspective and recap for people who weren’t there.