Ladies and Gentlemen, you are about to witness history. As my more
devout followers (you know who you are) know already, I protested the
Hulk Hogan title reign back in 1994 by doing a total and complete
boycott of WCW programming from August of 1994 until November of 1995.
This boycott stood until a few months ago, as I had never seen anything
from Fall Brawl 1994 through Fall Brawl 1995 until I broke down and did
them both for the Fall Brawl Retro Rant series last month. And now with
the Havoc series, this will mark the first time ever that I have watched
Halloween Havoc 1994, although I did see the Hogan-Flair match during
the All Nighter II a couple of years later. So if you wanna stand up
in tribute of the moment, I’ll wait for a bit.
…
There, that’s enough.
– Live from Detroit, Michigan.
– Your hosts are Tony & Bobby
– Opening match, World TV title: Johnny B. Badd v. The Honky Tonk Man.
Welcome to the Friends of Hogan Era, as almost anyone who’s sucked up to
Hogan for the 5 years or so prior to this now gets a job with WCW and a
push. Johnny has a pair of vampire fangs here, which I guess is
supposed to make him look butch. Hah, doesn’t work, as the confetti gun
and pyro- shooting robe is enough to put him at 7 on the Lenny-O-Meter.
Stalling to start. Then cheating from HTM. As exciting as it sounds.
Honky is just worthless at this point. Oh, wait, he draws money, or so
he says. Maybe in 1987, Wayne, but your crap doesn’t draw flies
anymore. Same goes for Hulk these days. Resting abounds. Capetta
starts counting down to the 10-minute limit at the FIVE minute mark,
which pretty much telegraphs the finish right there. And people wonder
why WCW sucked so much. Badd makes the comeback with one minute left,
but HTM ducks the Tooty-Fruity Punch of DOOM and they roll around on the
mat until the time limit. What a car wreck that match was. DUD
– World tag team title match: Stars N Stripes v. Pretty Wonderful.
Amazingly, WCW manages to recycle the SAME ANGLE as Bagwell had last
year — the plucky, thrown-together team scores an upset win over the
arrogant champs for the titles shortly before the PPV, only to stupidly
give the former champs a rematch on the PPV. Tony even POINTS THIS OUT
himself, thus completely giving away the finish for anyone who
remembered what happened the previous year. And Tony even REMINDS us
what happened the previous year. How does this man sleep at night?
Melee to start, as Roma and Bagwell blow some stuff. Have I mentioned
recently how glad I am that I’ll never have to worry about seeing Roma
in a major promotion again? Everyone does seem energetic tonight, at
any rate. Bagwell gets to play Ricky Morton, falling victim to that
dreaded Orndorff special — the ELECTRIC BOOGIE-WOOGIE ELBOWDROP! Rock
stole the People’s Elbow from him, by the way. Roma does some stuff
too, but it’s Roma, so does anyone care? He does manage to blow his
patented dropkick, going too high on the move and missing Bagwell
entirely. The beating continues until a pier-six erupts (Patriot not
having made the tag, and thus being in there illegally) and the ref
finally forces him out. In the meantime, Bagwell gets his fisherman’s
suplex, but with the referee tied up with Patriot, that allows Roma to
do the Midnight Express finish and drop an elbow off the top on Bagwell,
then put Orndorff on top for the pin and the titles at 13:42. Patriot
had no one but himself to blame for that one. **1/2
– Kevin Sullivan v. Evad Sullivan. Evad debuts “I Want To Be A
Hulkamaniac” as his entrance music, and if you have that song running
through your head right now, you damn well DESERVE IT. This is the
long-awaited (cough cough) blowoff between the “Sullivan brothers” (who
are obviously NOT brothers) after months of Kevin slapping Dave around.
For those who don’t get the joke yet, Dave is dyslexic, so the joke on
the net became that WCW would actually start spelling his name “Evad”
and it stuck even after it was revealed to be a false rumor. Anyhoo,
Evad dresses and acts like Hogan — except he’s MUCH MUCH WORSE. See
if you can get to sleep now thinking about THAT one. Evad controls to
start, but Kevin cheapshots him and takes over. He shoves the Hogan doo
rag down Evad’s throat and hits the double-stomp, but Evad hulks up with
the big boot. Kevin calms him down by waving the doo rag at him, but
sucker punches him, and they fight on the floor. Evad beats the count
and gets the win at 5:18. Next. 1/4*
– Arn Anderson v. Dustin Rhodes. Dustin needed help fighting the Stud
Stable, so he did the dumbest thing humanly possible: He asked Arn
Anderson. And sure enough, AA turned on him and left him for dead at
Bash at the Beach, and thus we get this. Nice little mat sequence to
start. Dustin gets a lariat, but goes to the top too soon and gets
crotched. He manages to fight AA off and hit a lariat off the top for
two anyway. Flip, Flop and Fly is countered with a punch to the head,
and he takes over. Tony echoes my own thoughts on what a moron Dustin
was to trust Arn to begin with. Dustin works the arm. He tries the
lariat but Arn moves and Rhodes takes a nice bump to the floor. AA
pounds away, but gets caught in a bodyscissors, which he turns into a
catapult. Dustin fights back and it’s a double-KO. Dustin recovers and
the lariat gets two. Arn sneaks in a DDT try, but Dustin grabs the top
rope to block and hits a stun-gun. Arn gets a sunset flip, but grabs
the ropes for leverage, so the ref forces a break. Dustin then reverses
for three at 9:50 of a good little match. ***1/4
– US title match: Hacksaw Duggan v. Steve Austin. This is of course
the rematch from Fall Brawl 1994, and if you want to read about that
travesty, I’m sure a link will have magically appeared by the time this
gets posted. Austin blindsides him and attacks the knee, which Duggan
basically ignores. Austin tries two double axehandles off the second
rope, but Duggan nails him on the third attempt. A low blow ends that
rally, however. The trick knee was acting up again, you see. Duggan
comes back with the three-point stance, but Austin ducks and
inadvertantly backdrops Duggan over the top, basically ending the story
of Stunning Steve on a lame DQ at 8:06. Match was there. *
– Vader v. The Guardan Angel. Another rematch from Fall Brawl 1994.
Vader stops by Muhammed Ali at ringside and gives him a “You’re the
man!”, although it’s doubtful that Ali can even remember his own name at
this point, let alone know who Vader is and why it was so cool for him
to do that. Vader dominates, so Angel retaliates by going after Harley
Race. He slams Vader onto Race for good measure. Woof. Angel with a
suplex and a big boot, but Vader comes back with some VICIOUS looking
jabs to the face. Crowd was “Oohing” and “Aahing” after four or five of
THOSE suckers. He goes to the top but gets caught and powerslammed
coming down. Vader manages a botched clothesline to take over. Pump
splash gets two. Attempt #2 hits the knees, and Angel gets a splash of
his own for two. Bossman slam gets two, but he breaks the count to
chase Race. He suplexes Race into the ring, but as he lands Vader
splashes him in a neat spot and gets the pin at 8:21. Nifty match. ***
– Terry Funk & Bunkhouse Buck v. The Nasty Boys. The Nasties bring a
pumpkin with them. Yes, that does become important later. The Stud
Stable gets nowhere fast. Sags rubs his ass in Funk’s face, then it’s
Pitty Citty. Funk’s a trooper, I’ll give him that. The heels come back
and WE GOT CLUBBERIN’! Sorry, Dusty moment there. Terry bails and
smashes a chair into his own head 10 times to revive himself. This match
makes me wanna do the same. Buck tries to utilize an international
object, but the ref sees and escorts him out, which allows bodyguard
Meng to interfere, but that backfires, which allows Sags to piledrive
Funk, on the PUMPKIN, for the pin at 7:54. Oh, man, this was Heroes of
Wrestling bad. -** Hey, I just invented a new adjective
– WCW World title, career v. career: Hulk Hogan v. Ric Flair. Mr. T is
the guest referee. Hogan goes nuts on Flair to start, prompting T to
pull him off. Flair uses the opportunity to go for the leg, which was
injured by that dastardly (and oh-so- mysterious) Masked Man at Clash
27. It goes back and forth for a while, with Mr. T actually preventing
Hulk from doing his usual cheating. This allows Flair the advantage
again. He heads to the top and Hogan crotches him, but runs into a boot
on a blind charge. He no-sells the chops in the corner and rams Flair
into the cage a few times. Flair tries to climb out but gets rammed
into the cage again. Flair manages to go after the knee again, putting
Hogan on the mat. Figure-four, on the wrong leg as usual. Hogan
reverses, and Mr. T gets bumped. It gets nutso from here, as Sherri
tries to climb in, but Jimmy Hart yanks her dress off to slow her down.
Sting comes out of the crowd to help, but he gets jumped by the Masked
Man (with Kung Fu Grip Lead Pipe Action!) and taken out of the equation.
Sherri finally gets into the cage and she handcuffs T to the ropes and
they double-team Hogan. He hulks up, beats up Sherri (what a role
model), beats up Flair, big foot, legdrop, goodbye Flair. Of course,
that retirement only lasted a little longer than Hogan’s. The
overbooking was a little silly, but it was excellent for Hogan
otherwise. ****
– The aftermath: The Masked Man attacks Hogan during the post-match
posing, but screws up and gets unmasked. And it’s it’s the Disciple!
No, wait, that’s this year. It’s the Zodiac! The Clipmaster! The Man
with No Name! The Booty Man! Brutus Beefcake! The Butcher! Whatever.
The crowd is pretty shocked, however. And speaking of schizos, Kevin
Sullivan and John “Sharkalanchequake” Tenta join in the attack and they
splatter Hogan. Good for them.
The Bottom Line: Skip every other match and it’s a pretty decent show.
Of course, the NEXT PPV of 1994 would be headlined by Hogan v. Beefcake,
so that pretty much flushed any goodwill from the online world down the
crapper right there, but the intentions were good here at least. Still,
not enough for a recommendation.
