The Wrestling Doctor 10.28.08: Halloween Havoc…(Part 1 of 2)

I’ve been off the last couple of weeks with Nashitis, a condition where the muscles can easily tear clean off the bone if any energy is exerted towards any activity that the patient has no interest in doing; if the patient is asked to do a job; or if the patient is approached by a stylist wielding dueling bottles of Pantene and Just for Men. Thanks to Big Boss Csonka for the recovery time.

THIS WEEK’S PATIENT: Halloween Havoc: the WCW Saturday Night Era

I crapped my pants when I saw the title of this week’s Cook’s Corner six hours before my deadline. But thankfully, Steve just likes the sound of Halloween Havoc. And thankfully Resolve makes a fine upholstery cleaner.

There is no better way (from a wrestling column perspective) to spend the week of Halloween looking at one of WCW’s premier pay-per-views, Halloween Havoc. The annual October PPV was a major show that carried the company not only into Starrcade but into the following year. There were several year where the Havoc card was better booked and/or had more impact than Starrcade. The show also hosted two of the company’s most embarrassing moments not involving The Shockmaster. In a way, Halloween Havoc was a microcosm of the WCW experience – riveting highs, plenty of dead weight filler, and some booking beyond stupid thrown in.

The series will be in two parts; this week, I’ll look at the WCW Saturday Night era from 1989 to 1994. Next week, the Nitro era of 1995 to 2000 will be on the table. I will look at significant moments and matches from each show, but not every individual bout (do you really need to know about JYD vs. Moondog Spot?)

Put on the backless examination “robe” and let’s get to it.

Halloween Havoc 89: 28 Oct 1989 / Philadelphia, PA: This Halloween Havoc was one of the original five pay-per-views instituted during the 1989 transformation from Jim Crockett Promotions to World Championship Wrestling. Starrcade and The Great American Bash made it onto the PPV calendar under JCP, but Turner expanded the schedule with three more offerings: February and May PPVs which went through several incarnations before finally settling into Superbrawl and Slamboree, and the October PPV which never changed during WCW’s entire run, Halloween Havoc.

The first Havoc was built around the red-hot feuds of Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk and Sting vs. The Great Muta. Former rivals Flair and Sting had joined forces against Gary Hart’s top heels, and a tag team match at the September Clash of Champions ended when Funk tried to suffocate Flair with a plastic trash bag (note that one, would-be bookers). Halloween Havoc – sub-titled “Settling the Score” – was topped by a blow off to this feud pitting both teams against each other in the first Thunderdome Cage match.

The Thunderdome – which later had to be renamed due to its obvious Mad Max infringements – was a precursor to Hell-in-a-Cell. The cage was of black steel, much like the WWF blue cage except a little flimsy, covering the area immediately around the ring in addition to the ring itself. The first Thunderdome was draped in fake skulls and other seasonal decorations, and was supposedly electrified around the top – a point driven home when the cage pyro caught the decorations on fire. The lowering of the Thunderdome was also a unique innovation, as cages up until that point had mainly been built around the ring during an intermission.

The match could only end when the second to one of the teams threw in the towel – Ole Anderson for Flair/Sting, Gary Hart for Funk/Muta. Bruno Sammartino served as special guest referee, mainly as a swipe at Vince McMahon. The bout itself is not as good as was expected at the time, but it is still an entertaining chapter in the feud with a classic Flair/Sting double-team at the end.

The rest of the card was stacked deep, with Lex Luger defending the US Title against newcomer “Flyin'” Brian Pillman, The Road Warriors taking on the heavily over Skyscrapers, and Woman debuting her mystery team of Doom against The Steiner Brothers. The Luger-Pillman match is the only one that met its full potential (available on the Loose Cannon DVD), but WCW showed by the first Halloween Havoc that their pay-per-view events were more than worth buying. At least for the time being. This show is worth tracking down.

Halloween Havoc 90: 27 October 1990 / Chicago, IL: This show is sometimes referred to only by its moniker, “Terror Rules the Ring.” The second installment of Halloween Havoc mirrored the first in that it was a super show on paper but only a very good show in reality. The commercial tape version of this PPV is great, as the run time of a single VHS tape forced WCW to cut out filler bouts like The Master Blasters vs. The Southern Boys and Terry Taylor vs. Bill Irwin.

WCW was carried by its tag team division in 1990, and this show was no exception. The true highlight was an often overlooked match for the US Tag Team Titles between the Steiner Brothers and The Nasty Boys. This match was subtly revolutionary, as it introduced to WCW a new, rougher style and several big spots that were not common in the United States at the time. Scott Steiner had been using the Frankensteiner only briefly at the time of this match, and the one he hits at the end is as good as any he ever did. The Steiners introduced their bulldog-variation of the Doomsday Device during this match, which was the single greatest move I had seen in wrestling up to that point. The match was a classic brawl that deserves the DVD treatment. The Steiners made a lot of noise in 1990 , but this match against The Nasty Boys ushered in the period of their greatest popularity.

Another cornerstone was Doom defending the World Tag Team Titles against Ric Flair and Arn Anderson. This match was another big deal at the time, and it lived up to its promise of an old-school tag match. The only disappointment for me was that I had seen this match three weeks prior at a Greensboro house show, and that match and the one at Havoc were identical almost move-for move.

The Lex Luger – Stan Hansen US Title bout, which was heavily hyped in the show’s build-up, was a major disappointment. Hansen wrestled like a big, sloppy blob at this point; matched up with Luger, who always needed a ring general to bring out his best, and you have a slow-paced punchfest that takes the Chicago crowd down a notch. This match was not the one to stick in the penultimate spot designed to reenergize the crowd for the main event.

The main event featured Sting defending the NWA World Title against Sid Vicious. This match is not very good, as Sid was still under-developed, and the ending involving Barry Windham impersonating Sting was an interesting concept killed by poor execution. An earlier segment involving Sting and a Black Scorpion magic trick had caused enough confusion, but a muddled ending to the feature match caused the otherwise hot crowd to leave the UIC Pavilion in a bit of a stupor.

Halloween Havoc 90 has other highlights, such as the great announcing combination of Jim Ross and Paul E. Dangerously, decked in full costume to go with the theme. The ring was orange and black, making for a striking look. One big flaw with the design was that, while the ropes were well done, the mat was clearly one of their dark blue canvases painted orange. WCW used a white canvas on many occasions in 1990, so why they did not paint one of those orange is another of the many Jim Herd-era mysteries. The blue apron did not match, but, despite its obvious missteps, I would say this edition of the show is my favorite Halloween Havoc. Track it down. (It is usually listed as simply “Terror Rules the Ring”)

Halloween Havoc 91: 27 October 1991 / Chattanooga, TN: Oh dear. This show will long be remembered for the disastrous Chamber of Horrors cage match that could only end with a member of one team being “electrocuted” in an electric chair. Yes, you read that right. This match may have very well been WCW’s greatest clusterfuck, which is a remarkable achievement considering the wealth of competition for that award. The Chamber was one of WCW’s worst moments, and it opened a major PPV, so you can imagine the life that filled the UTC Arena for the rest of the night.

The card also featured the only appearance of a camera helmet worn by referees giving the PPV audience a motion-sickness inducing look at the oddly booked action. For example, WCW Tag Team Champion The Enforcers were feuding with The Fabulous Freebirds at the time, but instead they wrestled the joke team of the Patriots while the ‘Birds were split up into meaningless singles matches. P.N. News and Big Josh showed why companies should not over-crowd their PPVs in a win over one-time masked jobber team The Creatures.

The most significant moment of the night was Paul E. Dangerously introducing his new protégé The Halloween Phantom in a win over Tom Zenk. The Phantom then unmasked to reveal Rick Rude, a major surprise that could only be achieved in the pre-internet era and a great way to introduce one of the most important players of this period into the company.

Lex Luger retained his WCW Title over Ron Simmons in a best-of-three falls match in the main event. The match was not a classic, but it is a solid effort from both men. Unless you are looking for a few laughs and can get a copy for free (including shipping) I would not bother with this show.

Halloween Havoc 92: 25 October 1992 / Philadelphia, PA: Bill Watts digs his knife a little further into the heart of WCW with this PPV, notable for featuring the first “Spin-the-Wheel, Make-the-Deal” match between Sting and Jake “The Snake” Roberts. In a poor booking decision, the match was actually randomly determined, leading to an anti-climatic coal miner’s glove match (that you can see on the Pick Your Poison DVD).

Ron Simmons defended his WCW Title against…The Barbarian. Yeah, no one watching at the time could believe that they booked that one, either. Injuries and defections plagued the rest of the card, but one decent bout was Ricky Steamboat vs. Brian Pillman. The Dragon was often the saving grace of WCW during the Watts era, but that one bout is not worth tracking this show down.

Halloween Havoc 93: 24 October 1993 / New Orleans, LA: I often Eric Bischoff’s first Halloween Havoc brought us a mediocre show hampered by the thirteen-week-at-a-time taping schedule being undertaken as a money-saving effort. The main event and best match was the big payoff between WCW Champion Vader and Cactus Jack in another “Spin-the-Wheel, Make-the-Deal” match, which ended up being a planned Texas Death match. The ending of the bout is generally recognized as a disappointment, but if you panned every good match with a poor finish, then you would have stopped watching wrestling long ago. The Ric Flair-Rick Rude and William Regal-Davey Boy Smith matches are okay, but neither is as good as they should have been. I would stick with Matt Peddycord’s review of the show from a few months back and let this one lie.

Halloween Havoc 94: 23 October 1994 / Detroit, MI: I have been pissed off after watching many a WCW pay-per-view, but this show was the only one where I was enraged going into the event. The card featured a retirement cage match for the WCW Title between Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, and everyone knew that Flair was losing. Everyone also thought that Flair was retiring for real (what suckers were we?), so the crowd in the Joe Louis Arena and at home was quite hostile. The match itself is good, but seeing Mr. T as the special referee in 1994 – a decade after the A-Team and a decade before ironic nostalgia – was just sad. The unveiling of Brutus Beefcake as the mysterious masked man plaguing Hogan since August was also a big let down. Dustin Rhodes and Arn Anderson gave us a nice little payoff to their feud, and the show overall is not as weak as the three years prior. You may want to borrow this one if you can find someone willing to loan it out.

The wrestling columnist in my local newspaper – yes, wrestling was actually covered in real, daily newspapers prior to the IWC – held a Ric Flair trivia contest in anticipation of the Nature Boy’s retirement. I won, and my journalism teacher announced that fact to my class, revealing my love of wrestling and the stigma it carried in the pre-Monday Night Wars era. I did win a copy of Spring Stampede 94, but that fact didn’t exactly help out the Doc with the high school ladies.