Starrcade (2019)
The 2019 Starrcade was the 21st and final Starrcade professional wrestling event. It was the third Starrcade promoted by WWE and was held as a live event for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. A portion of the event aired exclusively on the WWE Network. It took place on December 1, 2019, at the Infinite Energy Arena in Duluth, Georgia. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an event was not held in 2020 and no further events have been scheduled since. Eleven matches were contested on the card, four of which were shown for the  WWE Network special. In the main event of the show, "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt defeated Braun Strowman to retain the WWE Universal Championship in a steel cage match by escaping the cage, meanwhile in the main event of the televised portion of the show, Bobby Lashley defeated Kevin Owens by disqualification. Part-way through the broadcast, WWE began to stream the remainder of the special on YouTube; it was reported that WWE Network had been experiencing a major service outage predominantly in the eastern United States. Production. Background. Starrcade was a live closed-circuit event that was conceived in 1983  by Dusty Rhodes. The event was originally produced under the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) banner by NWA member Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). The NWA and JCP regarded Starrcade as their flagship event of the year, much in the same vein that its rival, the World Wrestling Federation, would begin to regard WrestleMania two years later. In 1988, JCP was sold to Turner Broadcasting and became World Championship Wrestling (WCW), with Starrcade being held by WCW until 2000. After a 17-year hiatus, WWE revived Starrcade as a SmackDown-branded live event on November 25, 2017. On November 24, 2018, WWE  filmed a second, co-branded Starrcade event that aired as a one-hour WWE Network special on November 25, 2018. On September 17, 2019, WWE announced that its third Starrcade event, featuring the Raw and SmackDown brands, would air live on the WWE Network on December 1, 2019, held at the Infinite Energy Arena in Duluth, Georgia. Storylines. Starrcade consisted of professional wrestling matches that involved various different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches , with results predetermined by WWE's writers on the Raw and SmackDown brands. Storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, "Monday Night Raw" and "Friday Night SmackDown". Aftermath. The 2019 Starrcade would in turn be the final Starrcade, as an event for 2020 was not scheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the cancelation of all live events outside of WWE's main shows, which were held behind closed doors. WWE resumed live touring in July 2021, but a Starrcade event was not scheduled for that year.