Every October from 1989 to 2000, the dearly-departed World Championship Wrestling held an event called Halloween Havoc—or, as my elementary school friend Bradley insisted on calling it, “Halloween Hack-vo.” Although the mission statement was always “Halloween wrestling show,” WCW’s interpretation of that changed wildly from year to year.
Sometimes, it would just be a regular-ass wrestling show, but with spooky window dressing (cobwebs). The only indication you’d get would be the name and like, Randy Savage standing next to styrofoam tombstones or something. But other times they would get utterly, unapologetically stupid with it, and we are going to plumb both of those memory holes here today.
DOOM Debuts
The Steiner Brothers were Baki Hanma characters dressed like the opening credits of Saved by the Bell. They wore letterman jackets, did enthusiastic college sports hooting, and threw grown-ass men around like beach balls. They were kind of untouchable.
Enter DOOM, two enormous dudes in gimp masks and spooky capes who seemed purpose-built to oppose the Steiners. Just as big and strong, DOOM also boasted ungodly durability and a mean streak their collegiate foes couldn’t match.
At the inaugural Halloween Havoc, these two teams of human leviathans just get in there and start doing things to each other that would make other wrestlers explode into pixels like Mega Man. It’s about as much fun as you’re going to have in a ten-minute match, and it kicked off a killer two-year run from DOOM, which climaxed in the best t-shirt design you’ve ever seen.
If you’re in the mood to see big meaty men slapping meat, Halloween Havoc ‘89 has you covered.
Abdullah the Butcher Fucking DIES
HH ‘91 OPENS with a chaotic multi-man clusterfuck that only ends when someone suffers electrocution death. Except because they were trying to be family friendly, it’s not an electric chair, it’s a “chair of torture,” and the guy in it isn’t killed, he’s “rendered completely helpless.”
Except that it’s very clearly an electric chair, with a giant ACME-coded throw switch, and when it gets hit, the guy in the chair flops around like a fish while sparklers go off and the ring gets lightly lit on fire (!).
The whole thing is just bizarre. If you’re trying to be family friendly, why even book a Chamber of Horrors Match? And if you decided that you wanted to do a defanged version of such a match, why specifically import Abdullah the Butcher, a wrestler famous for ghoulishly bleeding and stabbing his opponents with a concealed fork? None of it makes fucking sense, but at least Abby’s involvement also brought us the time he hid inside a giant present to beat Sting’s ass on his birthday.
The WCW Halloween Phantom
Apart from Abby getting rendered hElPLeSs by electricity, the big story at HH ‘91 was the super secret identity of a brand new masked wrestler: The WCW Halloween Phantom! Or maybe the Halloween Havoc Phantom. Or maybe just WCW Phantom? They breathlessly speculate about this motherfucker through the whole show and never say his name the same way twice.
Now, WWF had introduced The Undertaker to great effect the year before, so you might assume The Phantom was WCW’s attempt at a marketable spooky guy. You would be super wrong, as The Phantom came out in a nondescript body stocking, fedora, and a luchador mask that made him look like a black and white deli cookie.
The scheduled match of The Phantom vs. Tom Zenk may as well be a bear vs. a knapsack of unsecured beef jerky. The mysterious new guy wrestles exactly like all-time heel “Ravishing” Rick Rude, and his ill-fitting mask struggles to conceal what appears to be a god-tier chevron mustache. O unknowable universe!
After the match, the mysterious and enigmatic Phantom unmasks to reveal that he is, in fact, “Ravishing” Rick Rude, and this whole bit was a weird prelude to threatening to beat Sting’s ass. Definitely a big swing from a guy whose usual psychological warfare strat was “hurtful airbrushing” but hey! ‘Tis the season!
Tony Schiavone Eats Some Kids
Every HH before the 1993 edition centered on Aqua Teen Hunger Force-ass haunted house graphics, but 1993 was different. WCW went all out with an opening cinematic straight out of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
This squad of radical 90s tweens is out looking for one final major candy score before settling in to watch Halloween Havoc 1993. Their ringleader is a mouthy little Dracula named Matt, and he insists on ringing the doorbell at a haunted mansion owned by WCW’s lead announcer, Tony Schiavone.
If you’re wondering whether that kid grew up to write Dirge articles about pro wrestling, shut the fuck up. I can tell you he’s not me, because I’m relatively certain I was not murdered by Tony Schiavone 30 years ago this very night.
After failing to make a Cactus Jack vs. Vader main event sound overtly spooky, Tony transforms into The Brainiac and attempts to devour the kids. The show then starts as normal, and no one ever references the fact that excitable, avuncular-ass Tony Schiavone is a canonical pedophage. Momuncher?
Please Clap
In 1994, WCW owner Ted Turner opened his checkbook to sign Hulk Hogan, the man synonymous with the WWF golden era. That decision makes sense in a vacuum, but WCW had long defined itself as a refuge for wrestling fans who didn’t like the WWF’s cartoony style. Terry Gene jazz handsing his way through the door went over like a fart in church with the WCW faithful, but management was not prepared to give it up easily.
At HH ‘94, the plan was for Hogan to definitively defeat, and in fact retire, Ric Flair. Flair had been the top guy in WCW for years, and no one was excited about the passing of the torch. Determined to trick the fans into enjoying it, WCW surrounded Hogan with all manner of special guests, not unlike wrapping a dog’s medicine in a piece of cheese.
Country music sort-of-star T. Graham Brown sang the national anthem! Mr. T was the special guest referee! Muhammad Ali was there in the front row, visibly confused about what he was watching! Unfortunately, the fans were still able to discern that it was all a smokescreen for Hogan and his cronies to beat all the guys they’d been following for years, and this was only the beginning.
Monster Truck Mummy Fight
A scant year later, Terry Gene’s presence had rendered the WCW landscape almost unrecognizable. Gone was every trace of grit and glory, replaced by the most puerile cartoon bullshit you can imagine.
Having banished Ric Flair one year previous, Hogan was locked in a feud with the Dungeon of Doom, a cadre of monster-themed villains that not even Skeletor could countenance. They did succeed in shaving off Hogan’s mustache, which turned him temporarily evil, if you had that on your bingo card.
Hulk Hogan wins a rooftop monster truck sumo battle with Andre the Giant’s fake son, only for the lad to be thrown from the roof and dashed against the pavement below. But not to worry! He recovers in time for the main event, which turns out to be a clumsy crock of shit that ends when a mummy hatches out of a block of ice and humps Hogan into submission.
Remember DOOM? DOOM was cool. :c
The Best Match You’ve Ever Seen
Living lucha libre superhero Rey Misterio, Jr. battles Eddie Guerrero, scion of a legendary family of wrestling scumbags. The stakes could not be higher: Eddie is wagering the WCW Cruiserweight championship against Rey’s mask, his very identity as a luchador.
Both Rey and Eddie achieve a kind of flow state in this match, a matchless chemistry that they’d never quite equal again in their legendary careers, but that’s understandable. This match should be hanging in The Louvre.
Louvre libre.
The Worst Match You’ve Ever Seen
This match, affectionately known as “age in the cage,” pit an over-the-hill Hollywood Hogan against an equally shopworn Roddy Piper. It is one of the most dogshit wrestling matches ever shown on American pay per view.
It combines all the fun of two old guys slowly climbing a fence with all the excitement of two old guys gnawing each another’s assholes. It’s an especially egregious failure because WCW aired this three weeks after, and perhaps even in response to (!) the inaugural Hell in a Cell match.
That match pitted Shawn Michaels against the Undertaker in an absolute bloodbath and climaxed with the appearance of a 7’ fire demon. This one, I stress, involved Roddy Piper stopping Hulk Hogan from climbing a fence by furiously rimming him.
The Worst Match You’ve Ever Seen, Again
Terry Gene, bless him, loved to outdo himself. One year after stinking up the joint with Piper, he fished another of his old WWF rivals out of the trash to caper around. This time it was none other than the Ultimate Warrior, an inarticulate muscleboy with cardio so poor that he often exhausted himself jogging to the ring. He’s back, he’s several years out of practice, and his opponent is an aging Hulk Hogan who desperately wants to avoid leaving his feet.
ARE YOU EXCITED YET.
The athletic highlight of this match is Warrior log rolling at Hogan’s ankles, causing him to slowly fall down. It’s just as stupid as you’re imagining, but things somehow get worse. The climax was supposed to be Hulk Hogan throwing a fireball at Warrior. Yes, like Street Fighter.
There’s actually a proud tradition of weaponized fireballs in pro wrestling, most famously in the arsenal of legendary maniac The Sheik. Terry Gene, conversely, appeared to have never attempted the move before this exact moment, and wound up burning his own hand with flash paper roughly 30 feet from his opponent’s face.
