Starrcade '86: Night of the Skywalkers

The 1986 Starrcade show took place in two separate locations, the Greensboro Coliseum and The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia. The shows were broadcast live on closed-circuit TV to the other arena. The show alternated between matches, starting with Tim Horner and Nelson Royal defeated Rocky and Don Kernodle in a Tag team match at the Greensboro Coliseum, then switching over to the first match at the Omni, alternating until Ric Flair and Nikita Koloff faced off in the main event at the Omni. Switching between shows allowed the Atlanta crowd to watch The Road Warriors wrestle The Midnight Express while the steel cage was set up for the Greensboro Coliseum main event match between The Rock 'n' Roll Express and the Anderson Brothers (Arn and Ole Anderson).[2][3]

The scaffold match between the Road Warriors and the Midnight Express

The Road Warriors won the "Skywalkers" scaffold match by knocking both Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey off of the scaffold, dropping into the ring below. After the match manager Paul Ellering chased Jim Cornette up the scaffold; this led to Cornette suffering a legitimate severe knee injury when he fell from the underside of the scaffold onto Big Bubba Rogers. Rogers was supposed to catch Cornette, but failed to do so. Cornette did not land properly and had to be carried out of the ring.[2] Road Warrior Hawk wrestled the match with a broken leg, an injury he suffered during a match during a Japanese tour The Road Warriors did a month earlier.[2]

Jimmy Valiant's years-long feud with Paul Jones finally came to an end, Jones would go on to manage Rick Rude and Manny Fernandez to the NWA World Tag Team titles, then lost them back to the Rock 'n' Roll Express after Rude jumped to the WWF in 1987. Ole Anderson would be kicked out of the Four Horsemen in February, 1987, replaced by Lex Luger, with his performance in this match as well as being absent for his son Bryant's amateur wrestling matches (in reality, this is the reason Anderson wanted to retire from active competition) being the pretext of kicking him out. Arn, having thus split from Ole, would form a tag team in the Horsemen with Blanchard, winning two NWA World Tag Team titles as Horsemen and one WWF World tag team championship as The Brain Busters. Also forming a regular tag team were the newly babyface Nikita Koloff and his former enemy Dusty Rhodes - the Superpowers would go on to win the 1987 Crockett Cup.

Big Bubba Rogers would move to the UWF after Jim Crockett Promotions bought the territory in April 1987, and winning their world title then briefly returning to JCP and his bodyguard role for Cornette before jumping to the WWF to become the Big Boss Man. Jimmy Garvin would turn face in 1987 after his (kayfabe) brother Ron Garvin had his face burned at the hands of Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express, then would challenge Ric Flair for the NWA World Heavyweight Title during that summer's Great American Bash. Sam Houston, in real life, married Baby Doll and would eventually leave Central States for the WWF. Also headed to the WWF shortly after this event was Kruscher Kruschev (Barry Darsow) who would replace Randy Colley in the role of Smash of Demolition in late January 1987 - the resulting "classic" Demolition lineup of Darsow and Bill Eadie as Ax would go on to win three WWF World Tag Team championships, the first of these being the longest reign ever with the belts. Kruschev's spot in the Russian Team, meanwhile would be taken by Vladimir Petrov who, along with Ivan Koloff, continued to feud with Nikita.