Oh, this guy's a WRESTLING fan, too?! Yep.

Adding an extra dimension to the blog, I'm going to start reviewing some wrestling DVD's WWE put out back when the product was something you weren't ashamed to watch. For starters, yesterday I found Starrcade: The Essential Collection on sale at Best Buy for $20. Let's see: A documentary on the NWA's glory years, plus 25 matches including guys whose work still holds up to this day? Yep, I'm in.

THE DOCUMENTARY

The documentary is good, but flawed. They do a great job with the 1980's, the decade where Ric Flair absolutely CARRIED Starrcade. It used to be broadcast from Greensboro, North Carolina, and they even go the extra mile, placing Ric Flair in the arena and watching him walk around the old locker room. He even channels his wrestling persona, delivering a promo about how the best wrestlers ever sat in this locker room while tears formed in his eyes. GREAT stuff.

Also, positive points for offering reviews of some of the concepts NWA and WCW tried on their biggest stage. This includes reviews of scaffold matches, the ill-fated Battlebowl concept, and the Iron Man Tournament they tried in 1989. This also brings up Goldberg's winning streak ending at Starrcade '98 at the hands of company booker Kevin Nash, and Arn Anderson and Jim Ross going back and forth about whether this was a long-overdue good idea or the idea that killed the company is pretty funny. I'm in the camp of the latter, but I digress.

The one beef I have with the documentary is that they completely glossed over 1996 and 1997, two instrumental years (and ones that were important for the wrong reasons). In '96, Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan met in the main event, where Piper won. However, nobody knew it was a non-title match until AFTER the match, which killed any momentum and any chance of a rematch that drew money. '97, of course, was where Sting came out of his hiatus to face Hogan and Hogan BURIED him, telling referee Nick Patrick the ending was changed. The matches were terrible despite Hogan doing clean jobs in each, and while we get them in the matches section of the DVD, it's not like these were minor events. Clearly, the people in charge of revisionist history want to say Vince McMahon killed WCW, when in fact WCW shot themselves in the foot.

All things considered, though, the documentary is pretty good. It's not great, and it's fairly short (runs about 80 minutes), but what you get is solid material told by the guys who lived through it (Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper, Road Warrior Animal, Magnum TA, etc.). It doesn't get my highest recommendation, but NWA and WCW fans, as well as new WWE fans who want to know where Wrestlemania really came from, should enjoy it. RATING: ***1/2

THE MATCHES

HERE is where the three-DVD set earns its salt. Wrestling fans voted on the lineup of matches on WWE's website, and while there are some head-scratchers, the results are amazing. The final disc, which features the top nine vote-getters, would be a best-seller even if sold as a one-disc set. Just on that DVD, you get three Ric Flair matches, two great brawls (Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard and Roddy Piper vs. Greg Valentine), the Road Warriors/Midnight Express scaffold match where Jim Cornette takes the funniest fall in history, another Road Warriors match against the Steiner Brothers back when the Steiners were known for wrestling rather than steroid dosages, and a sneaky-good three-way match from the last Starrcade in 2000. The lone clunker on that disc is Sting/Hogan, but that match is worth viewing simply because it wasn't covered in the documentary.

The two other discs feature some gems as well. The first, while not amazing, does include a great ten-minute match between Sting and The Great Muta that was pretty revolutionary for 1989. The second DVD has two more Flair matches, two Eddie Guerrero matches, two Sting matches, Rey Mysterio/Jushin Liger, and a few other good ones. Simply put, if you want to see wrestling the way it was meant to happen, you need to watch the final two DVD's of this set. This is the best collection of pure wrestling I have in my possession, and any praise I can possibly give it falls short of how in awe of it I am. RATING: *****

THE VERDICT

Buy the set. WWE has produced better documentaries, but the match collection is flat-out incredible, and for $20, there's no better bargain in the "sports" section of your local Best Buy if you're into wrestling.