It was held on December 28, 1997, at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C.[3] The matches revolved around the ongoing storyline between WCW and the New World Order (nWo) organization.

[4] The match ended in controversy over the referee's pinfall count, and their feud continued after the event surrounding this.

Despite its success, the main event was seen by critics and journalists as the beginning of WCW's downfall due to setting a tone for backstage dissension and what would retrospectively be seen as poor creative decisions going forward.

[5][6] The event was called by Tony Schiavone, Dusty Rhodes and Mike Tenay who was subbing for Bobby Heenan who in reality had to miss the event to attend his daughter Jessica's wedding and to explain the absence on the air, Heenan joined the NWO on the previous WCW Monday Nitro but then rejoined WCW the next night on Nitro.

Hollywood Hogan, the leader of the nWo, had been the WCW World Heavyweight Champion for most of the preceding year.

In reality, Hogan and Eric Bischoff, the executive vice president of WCW, disagreed over the outcome of the match.

[10] Late in 1997, Bret Hart was a top star in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), a competitor of WCW.

As Hart was the champion, WWF owner Vince McMahon devised the Montreal Screwjob, secretly changing the planned outcome of a title match.

[11] After Hart made his debut with WCW, he was assigned as the guest referee for a match between Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko at Starrcade.

[10] The match between Hogan and Sting was made official with a pre-taped "live press conference" at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

This aired on October 28, 1997, on TNT during a commercial break for the premiere of Hogan's new cable movie, Assault on Devil's Island.

On the November 10 episode of Nitro, the New World Order beat down Sting, with Hogan delivering several leg drops as the show came to a close.

Sting then disappeared for a month, with the nWo beating down the likes of the Giant, Diamond Dallas Page, the Steiner Brothers, and Larry Zbyszko, and looking stronger than ever.

Page hit Hennig with a Diamond Cutter but Rick Rude interrupted the pinfall attempt.

On the December 8 episode of Nitro, Ric Flair, on behalf of Page, challenged Hennig to a steel cage match at Starrcade.

Moments later, Giant came to the ring and told Gene Okerlund he'd see Nash at Starrcade and was bringing the chokeslam with him.

Nash no-showed the event due to 'health issues',[12] and the match would be subsequently postponed and later rescheduled for Souled Out the following month.

Guerrero performed a missile dropkick and a frog splash to the knee, and pinned Malenko to win the match, and retain the title.

As Scott was attempting a Frankensteiner on Savage, Norton stopped him, and performed an electric chair drop.

They then exchanged attacks, and Page pinned Hennig after a Diamond Cutter to win the match and the title.

The seventh match was between Eric Bischoff (accompanied by Scott Hall) (nWo) and Larry Zbyszko (WCW), with Bret Hart as the guest referee.

However, Bret Hart claimed Patrick counted the pinfall fast, and restarted the match with himself as the referee.

The outcome of the main event at Starrcade did not occur as planned, with the referee not making the pinfall count fast enough as scripted.

On July 6, the undefeated Goldberg defeated Hollywood Hogan to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, and remained the champion until the next Starrcade.

[17] In March, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) began to fight back in its competition with WCW.

[18] In 2017, Kevin Pantoja of 411Mania gave the event a rating of 2.0 [Very Bad], stating, "It was WCW's biggest show ever and they bombed.

Vincent, Traylor, Zbyszko, Bischoff and Mongo were booked, while Rey Mysterio, Harlem Heat and several others sat in the crowd.