“History is not a catalogue but a convincing version of events.†– A.J.P. Taylor
The Opening Chapter
The Chamber of Horrors. Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal. Cheatum the evil one-eyed midget. All integral parts of one of WCW’s flagship events – Halloween Havoc. Arguably WCW’s number three pay per view (behind Starrcade and Great American Bash), the October pay per view had its share of famous, and infamous, moments. From electric chairs to fake Stings to monster trucks, Halloween Havoc had it all. With a storied twelve-year history, it is only appropriate to look at this WCW flagship now, a mere week away from this year’s All Hallow’s Eve.
The NWA Years
1989
The inaugural Halloween Havoc PPV was held in 1989. NWA mainstays like Dusty Rhodes, Barry Windham, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard were all in the WWF, the NWA was still a riding creative wave thanks to the Ric Flair-Terry Funk feud and the arrival of Sting on the scene as a hot young sensation. The show’s main event was Flair and Sting teaming up to take on Funk and The Great Muta in a “Thunderdome†cage, which was essentially a standard NWA cage match, but the top of the cage was “electrified.†Bruno Sammartino made a rare appearance as he was the referee for the main event; a match that Sting and Flair won when the heels’ manager Gary Hart threw in the towel.
The undercard featured the usual NWA tag team goodness, as The Road Warriors went over the Skyscrapers team of Danny Spivey and Sid Vicious, DOOM beat The Steiner Brothers and The Fabulous Freebirds defended the NWA Tag Team Championships against The Dynamic Dudes of Shane Douglas and Johnny Ace. The Samoan Swat Team also beat Steve Williams & The Midnight Express in six-man action. I can’t imagine that among all of those top-notch teams, the Freebirds and Ace & Douglas were the ones fighting for the belts. This show also featured the coming out party of Flyn’ Brian, as he went toe-to-toe with Lex Luger in a United States Title match.
1990
By 1990, Sting was the top guy in the NWA and the Four Horsemen were at full strength in the form of Flair, Anderson, Sid and Windham. The main event was a big-time Sting-Sid NWA Championship match that was marred by the “fake Sting†angle that saw Barry Windham coming out dressed like Sting, allowing Sid to get the pinfall. Of course the real Sting came back out and everybody could see how bad a Sting impression Windham did. My brief description doesn’t do this angle justice, but it was true WrestleCrap.
Once again the undercard was carried by tag teams as DOOM battled Flair and Anderson in a heel-heel NWA Tag Championship match and The Steiner beat The Nasty Boys in a NWA US Tag Title affair. I would be remiss if I didn’t note of Kevin Nash’s NWA debut on this show as well, as he and Al Greene paired up to form the Master Blasters (Steel and Blade) and got a victory over Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong. Stan Hansen also made a rare pay per view appearance as well, beating Lex Luger for the US Championship.
The WCW Years
1991
By 1991, Ted Turner had taken over and the NWA flagship had now been officially renamed World Championship Wrestling. Ric Flair had also taken a walk to the WWF with Big Gold Belt so the show was hurting a little on star power. Lex Luger was the WCW Champion, with Harley Race and Mr. Hughes as an entourage. He defended the belt against perennial mid-carder Ron Simmons in a 2-out-of-3 falls match.
The real match of the show however was the opening match, the infamous Chamber of Horrors, featuring Sting, El Gigante and The Steiner Brothers against Vader, Abdullah the Butcher, Cactus Jack and The Diamond Studd. Sting’s team won after Cactus accidentally electrocuted his own partner Abdullah. Once again, WrestleCrap at its finest. The promotional poster showed that the heel team was originally supposed to be Barry Windham, One Man Gang, OZ and The Diamond Studd which I think would’ve been another level of awesomely bad, just to see Hall and Nash at their gimmicked worst teaming together. How or why virtually the entire heel team got switched I don’t know. The rest of the show was pretty forgettable, save for the debut of Ravishing Rick Rude, who came out as The Halloween Phantom and defeated the Z-Man in quick fashion.
1992
Bill Watts was in charge for Havoc ’92 so the card was a lot of solid, hard-hitting mat wrestling with a not a lot of frills or cheesy gimmicks, unless you discount the main event “Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal†match between Sting & Jake “The Snake†Roberts. Rather than actually gimmick the wheel so it landed on something cool, it landed on an archaic “Coal Miner’s Glove†match. Sting won after Jake’s cobra “bit him.†We’re three years in a row for “so bad it’s good†action here. Oh yeah, and perennial mid-carder Ron Simmons was now WCW Champion and defended the belt against The Barbarian; yeah that Barbarian. I am a huge Barbarian mark, but even I thought that was a bit stretching it.
The undercard was chalked full of top athletes as Vader beat Nikita Koloff, Ricky Steamboat beat Flyn’ Brian and Dustin Rhodes & Barry Windham went to a time limit draw with Steve Austin & Steve Williams. And for some reason Z-Man, Shane Douglas and Johnny Gunn (Sal Sincere, Tom Brandi, The Patriot) went over THE tag team specialists of the ’80s in Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton and Michael Hayes.
1993
“Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal†was so awesome the first time that they brought it back again, this time for a Texas Death Match between Vader and Cactus Jack. A perfect match for these two stiff bastards but the Cactus Jack “Lost in Cleveland†amnesia angle leading up the match puts it at WrestleCrap entry number four for the list. Once again the rest of the show featured WCW’s usual band of talent performers highlighted. Sting beat Sid Vicious in a rematch apparently four years in the making, Rick Rude beat Ric Flair in a WCW Interntational/Big Gold Belt/World Heavyweight Championship match. The usual mid-card crew was tearing up as well, as Paul Orndorff beat Ricky Steamboat, Dustin Rhodes beat Steve Austin in a US Title match and Steve Regal and Davey Boy Smith went to a Television Title time limit draw. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesomely bad six man tag team of Shockmaster, Ice Train and Charlie Norris (some stereotypical Indian gimmick) beating Harlem Heat and Equalizer, who would later become Evad Sullivan. It’s hard to imagine Booker T made it out of that alive, having to carry five guys in one match.
1994
Hulk Hogan had debuted in WCW by this point and so the company was a weird mix of old WCW mainstays combined with Hogan and his old ‘80s WWF cronies. To illustrate my point Hacksaw Jim Duggan beat Steve Austin in under 30 seconds to win the US Title while Honky Tonk Man was billed a legit threat to Johnny B. Badd’s Television Title. And Brutus Beefcake did a run-in after the main event steel cage, retirement, WCW Championship match between Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. Flair lost of course, and “retired,†which I think lasted about four months.
1995
WCW Monday Nitro had just debuted a few weeks before the Havoc ’95 show and Bischoff had already started in bringing in new exciting undercard guys to supplement the “Hogan and buddies” main event show. This was the show that had the famed Hogan-Giant monster truck match that saw The Giant somehow fall off the roof of Cobo Hall in Detroit, only to walk into the arena moments later for his WCW Championship match with Hogan, which Giant won, by DQ. Randy Savage and Lex Luger also battled in the start of the convoluted Lex Luger tweener angle that lasted all the way until the nWo debuted. Seriously, he would be a face teaming with Sting in one segment and the next segment he was managed by Jimmy Hart as a heel in the Dungeon of Doom. Speaking of Sting, he and Ric Flair teamed up to take on Arn Anderson and Brian Pillman that saw an awesome angle where Flair once again turned on Sting and reformed a pretty solid 4 Horsemen line-up. The new guys were slowly creeping onto the card as Sabu, before he was broken down, beat Mr. JL (a hooded Jerry Lynn) in nice prelude to the cruiserweight division.
The MGM Years
1996
By 1996 the nWo was gaining power and popularity and were still a fresh and novel concept. This would also be the first of five straight years that Halloween Havoc would be held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The next few Havoc shows were also all sponsored by Slim Jim, insomuch that the Havoc logo featured a ghoul holding a Slim Jim sign.
The show was headlined Hogan and Savage battling over the WCW World Championship. Hogan won as did the rest of the nWo members: Syxx beat Chris Jericho, The Giant beat Jeff Jarrett and The Outsiders won the WCW Tag Championship for the first time, beating Harlem Heat in this instance. Roddy Piper also made his WCW debut after the main event, continuing the ’80 WWF feel of the top of card. Dean Malenko and Rey Mysterio, Jr. opened the show in a truly wonderful Cruiserweight Title match, as Eric Bischoff had already figured out his formula of opening his shows with hot action to prep the crowd for the slower paced main events yet to come.
1997
By this time, WCW and wrestling and general, was really beginning to get hot on a national stage. The nWo was going strong and Sting was only a couple months away from returning to action. So WCW headlines the show with Hogan and Piper in a steel cage 10 years after the match was really relevant. The highlight was a drunk fan scaling the cage after the match was over. Other action saw Randy Savage and Diamond Dallas Page in the start of their pretty epic feud, Goldberg (before they knew how to use him) ran in and helped Alex Wright beat Steve McMichael and some good international cruiserweight action with Chris Jericho beating Gedo and Yuji Nagata beating Ultimo Dragon. The match of the night (and the year) however was the Rey Mysterio, Jr.-Eddie Guerrero mask v. Cruiserweight Title match. It was an absolute masterpiece of a match and saw moves that Mysterio has yet to recreate since.
1998
By late ’98, the nWo was stale and had splintered in red and white versions. The roster was bloated to unbelievable levels and it was getting hard to keep track of what was going on with everyone. The double main event was “highlighted†by the Hogan-Warrior rematch that Hogan had been waiting for since 1990. The match was atrocious, full of botched spots, Hogan messing up a fireball spot and run-in from Horace of all people.
Then to make matters worse, the real main event of Goldberg v. DDP for the WCW World Championship ran long, forcing the cable companies to cut away and for viewers at home to miss the ending of what was a really good match. WCW then decided to air the entire Goldberg-Page match for free on Nitro the next night, rendering those who bought the PPV the night before useless. They ran long because it was apparently necessary to air Saturn v. Lodi and Alex Wright v. Fit Finlay as special unadvertised bonus matches. Or to have Disco Inferno beat Juventud Guerrera in order challenge Kidman for the Cruiserweight Championship later in the night, only to have Kidman win and then face Juvy the next night on Nitro anyways. This was also the night of burial of the WCW Tag belts as Rick Steiner and Buff Bagwell beat The Giant & Scott Steiner for the belts (even though Giant and Scott Hall were the champs) that somehow ended with Judy Bagwell and then jobber Kenny Kaos holding the Tag belts with Rick Steiner. Buried within all that crap was a nice little Sting-Bret Hart US Title match that could’ve headlined its own show instead of going third under Hogan-Warrior.
1999
This was essentially Vince Russo & Ed Ferrara’s first booking in WCW and they took no time in changing things. On paper the show was four deep in main events as Sting was set to defend the WCW Title against Hulk Hogan, Goldberg would challenge Sid for the US Title, Bret Hart one-on-one with Lex Luger and DDP would meet Ric Flar in a strap match.
But paper didn’t have anything on what really happened. Hogan walked out in street clothes and did a three second job to Sting in the first of Russo’s many, many shoot/work angles that either went over the heads of people or caused people to not care and lose interest. Goldberg beat Sid due to blood loss and then Page pinned, yes pinned, Flair in a strap match that saw Flair bleed much, much more than Sid did earlier in the evening. And the show capped off with Sting laying out an open challenge, which was answered by Goldberg. Goldberg pinned Sting in three minutes and the show went off the air with Goldberg celebrating with both belts, only to be swerved the next night to find out he didn’t win the WCW Championship and the belt would now be up for grabs in a 32 man tournament.
2000
By Havoc’s final appearance, WCW was on its deathbed. Within six months the promotion would be closed and Vince McMahon would be laughing all the way to the bank. Booker T was on top as WCW Champion in a truly breathe of fresh air for the promotion. Here he faced Scott Steiner who was about to become the monster heel champion that they hadn’t seen since they days of Vader six or seven years previous. Steiner lost to Booker T here by DQ, but it was just a chapter in their long feud. The final match of the evening was Goldberg beating Kronik in a handicap match in about five minutes. At least they sent the fans home happy. Sting and Jeff Jarrett also battled in what would’ve been a decent match, but was ruined by run-ins from fake Stings. Yes, they redid the fake Sting angle from a decade earlier, only this time it was much worse and much cheesier.
The rest of the show featured bad hardcore wrestling, a heel Candian turncoat Jim Duggan and a lot of new talent like Jindrak, O’Haire, Sanders and Palumbo that unfortunately just weren’t quite ready for the primetime spots they were given.
The Perspective
While researching event results, I noticed an interesting attendance bit. Every year from 1997 on, the fans at the MGM Grand dwindled, so that at the 2000 event there were under 10,000 fans in attendance. Just an observation.
Halloween Havoc was a WCW signature, a staple of the organization. The show did feature a lot of historical and memorable moments, but there was a lot of crap there too. But that was part of the event’s charm. Halloween can always be played over-the-top and for camp value and WCW did that camp part well, right down to the graveyard looking entrance, the giant pumpkin logo and that year Eric Bischoff dressed as a vampire. I mean they surely couldn’t have booked The Chamber of Horrors for seriousness right? Right?
For this week the vault is closed
Linked to the Pulse
Our own IP’s Danny Wallace is helping put together this United Kingdom wrestling tournament. Check ou what it’s all about.
David B. talks about Pitbulls, and this time Michael Vick is nowhere to be found.
Glazer gives a review for this year’s Ted Petty Invitational. This year’s winner was truly deserving.
Recent History
This is the section where I can ramble through my thoughts on this past week in wrestling, whether it be the television shows, pay per views, or any news that came out. Kinda like Vh1’s “Best Week Ever,†but this should be less annoying hopefully.
TNA was eh I had to go back and read the results again to remember what happen. Talia Madison is hot though.
This week’s SmackDown! looked a lot like last week’s. I also fell asleep during the first hour of it. That used to happen a lot back in college.
That’s the best way they could debut Harry Smith? And damn, did Candice’s fall look brutal.
I am perversely excited for the Big Daddy V-Kane-Great Khali-Mark Henry “monster’s mash†next week on ECW. Umaga and Undertaker couldn’t come too?
This Day in History
I figured if we are talking history around here we should pay homage to what has happened on this very day in the years gone by. It will either make you long for the old days or be happy for what we have now.
1992 – WCW Halloween Havoc was held at the Civic Center, Philadelphia, PA
1997 – The War Machine wins a four corners match over Johnny Thunder, Steve Flynn, and Ricky Harrison for the SSW Heavyweight title
1998 – WCW Halloween Havoc was held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV
1998 – Rick Steiner defeated The Giant & Scott Steiner for the WCW Tag title
1998 – Vito & Guido defeated Nick Dinsmore & Rob Conway for the Ohio Valley Southern Heavyweight Tag Title
1999 – Ivory defeated Fabulous Moolah for the WWF Women’s title
1999 – Kidman & Konnan defeated Harlem Heat for the WCW Tag Team title
1999 – Bret Hart defeated Goldberg for the WCW US Heavyweight title
2000 – Nick Dinsmore defeated Rob Conway for the Ohio Valley Heavyweight title
2003 – John Zandig defeated The Messiah for the Combat Zone World Heavyweight Title
1957 – Atsushi Onita was born
1965 – 2 Cold Scorpio was born
The Assignment
It’s important to know your history to know where you have come from and where you are going. Back when Nova was in charge of the WWE developmental system he implemented mandatory history assignments for the students of the developmental territories so they would know pro wrestling’s history and they would learn just how many moves Nova created and apparently the best ways to get on-line prescriptions. I feel Nova had a great idea there and every week I will assign a book or DVD for you to check out and learn from. They are not only educational but very entertaining.
The Assignment is going on hiatus this week (and maybe next) as I just picked up both Around the World in Spandex by Chris Jericho and Batista Unleashed a few days ago and I want to get them both read before I come back with any more book reports. I’m sure you’ll all understand.
