Good PPV Despite Some Dumb Gimmicks
The third annual WCW Halloween Havoc took place in the UTC Center in Chattanooga, TN, with Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone commentating. In this, eleven matches were on the card, with four of them being title matches, one being the final round of a tournament to decide the first WCW Light Heavyweight Champion.
Basically, the PPV is more infamous for its starting match, the Chamber Of Horrors match. I saw this on a Best Of Halloween Havoc VHS I owned as a kid, and this match is insane. Here, two teams, each composed of four men (team one having El Gigante, the Steiner Brothers, and Sting, and with the other having Big Van Vader, Diamond Studd, Cactus Jack, and Abdullah The Butcher), the match has no rules, allowing the use of a kendo stick and even caskets (one having a masked man inside), and the only way to win is for someone to put a member of the opposing team in the Chair of Torture (which is basically an electric chair) and someone pulls the switch, electrocuting him. It was insane, and would be one of the crazy gimmick matches that WCW would be infamous for (and this was three years before Hulk Hogan joined the company).
As for the other matches, we have some stinkers (like Johnny B. Badd Vs. Jimmy Gavin, and a match involving Kevin Nash's horrible Oz gimmick, which YouTube videos list as one of the worst gimmicks WCW thought up), but it had some good matches (Steve Austin Vs. Dustin Rhodes for the WCW World Television Championship, as well as Lex Luger Vs. Ron Simmons for the main events in a two-out-of-three falls match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship). It's a good show, but the stupid gimmicks keep it from being legendary.
Basically, the PPV is more infamous for its starting match, the Chamber Of Horrors match. I saw this on a Best Of Halloween Havoc VHS I owned as a kid, and this match is insane. Here, two teams, each composed of four men (team one having El Gigante, the Steiner Brothers, and Sting, and with the other having Big Van Vader, Diamond Studd, Cactus Jack, and Abdullah The Butcher), the match has no rules, allowing the use of a kendo stick and even caskets (one having a masked man inside), and the only way to win is for someone to put a member of the opposing team in the Chair of Torture (which is basically an electric chair) and someone pulls the switch, electrocuting him. It was insane, and would be one of the crazy gimmick matches that WCW would be infamous for (and this was three years before Hulk Hogan joined the company).
As for the other matches, we have some stinkers (like Johnny B. Badd Vs. Jimmy Gavin, and a match involving Kevin Nash's horrible Oz gimmick, which YouTube videos list as one of the worst gimmicks WCW thought up), but it had some good matches (Steve Austin Vs. Dustin Rhodes for the WCW World Television Championship, as well as Lex Luger Vs. Ron Simmons for the main events in a two-out-of-three falls match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship). It's a good show, but the stupid gimmicks keep it from being legendary.
- jeremycrimsonfox
- 25 janv. 2020