Starrcade

Starrcade was an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view event held from 1983 to 2000 by the National Wrestling Alliance and later World Championship Wrestling as their flagship event equal to the World Wrestling Federation's WrestleMania (although Starrcade was held in November or December, while WrestleMania is held in March or April), and featured the largest feuds of the promotion. From 1983 to 1987, Starrcade was produced by Jim Crockett Promotions, the dominant promotion of the NWA, on Thanksgiving. In 1988, JCP was sold to Ted Turner due to financial problems, and became WCW. After a fiasco in organizing the pay-per-view events because of rival WWF's ultimatum to cable television providers to not carry Starrcade, instead carrying WWF's inaugural Survivor Series on Thanksgiving, WCW held the remaining events in December, with the events from 1988 to 1990 held under the NWA banner.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, it was tradition for JCP to hold major professional wrestling events on Thanksgiving and Christmas, mostly at Greensboro Coliseum. In 1983, JCP created Starrcade as their supercard to continue the Thanksgiving tradition, and spread it across its territory on closed-circuit television. It popularized broadcasting on closed-circuit television and was financially successful. From 1987, Starrcade was broadcast on pay-per-view, the first NWA event to do so.

The rights to the event now belong to WWE (formerly the World Wrestling Federation). In November 2008, WWE 24/7 Classics aired a special as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the event called The Essential Starrcade. This five-part series counts down the top 25 matches in Starrcade history. In January 2009, WWE Home Video released Starrcade: The Essential Collection as a three disc DVD set.