Hey Scott,
I have a couple of questions for you and they both kinda/sorta involve Christmas shows:
1) I remember hearing a while ago about how Dusty wanted to put the NWA Title on Rick Steiner at Starrcade '88. I didn't think anything of it and thought it was a joke. So last night I was watching one of the August 1988 episodes of World Championship Wrestling via Classics on Demand and saw Rick in a few segments. One thing led to another and I found a few other places online that noted Dusty did in fact want to put the title on Rick. Now I have to ask, what was the thought process behind this? Did Dusty really think that would be a good idea? Also, with Flair/Luger as the main event and definitely a big time match, how could Steiner have even won the belt? Would they have called an audible and not gone through with Flair/Luger?
2) I'm listening to Stone Cold Steve Austin's podcast with Jim Cornette and Cornette was talking about how Christmas used to be a huge time period for wrestling in the territory days. Now it seems like it's a wrestling dead period as WWE is just killing time until the Royal Rumble/WrestleMania season. And to me, WWE's approach makes sense since general television viewership declines after Thanksgiving which is why most TV shows try to wrap up their seasons by the first week of December. I also remember hearing an interview with Eric Bischoff where when he first took over WCW, he placed the emphasis on SuperBrawl, not Starrcade, because he thought December pay-per-views were a hard draw. Why was this different in the territory days? Even though the territories didn't make the money off TV that WWE does now or even WCW did in the 90's, TV was the main catalyst for the territorial live events which were their main source of revenue.
Cheers,
Pete
1) It wasn't so much Dusty thinking it was a good idea as much as it was him throwing a giant hissy fit at Ric Flair and trying to destroy him. I think they were gonna do some kind of injury angle to hotshot Steiner in there, but either way it was just a ridiculous power play by Dusty to try and show Flair who was boss.
2) It used to be different BECAUSE Christmas was such a dead time. There was no competition and people were hanging around the house and looking for stuff to do. No idea why they can't capitalize on that these days, actually.