Friday, October 30, 2020

WCW Halloween Havoc 1993




So we have another Halloween Havoc PPV one year later, featuring the Spin The Wheel Make The Wheel concept. So let's have a look at that before we dive into the NXT iteration... soon enough, I suppose.

Oh yeah, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the wonderful little opening mini-movie featuring a bunch of kids going to a creepy house and being greeted by a really creepy Tony Schiavone, who pulls off his face to reveal a much hairier face to scare off the kids. I'm amazed that in all the years of modern face technology, nobody bothered to replace the fake wolf mask thing with Tony Schiavone's face circa 2020. Wouldn't THAT be a hoot.

Anyway, on with the show...


The Shockmaster, Ice Train & Charlie Norris defeated Harlem Heat & The Equalizer in the opening contest and good lord, you want to talk about horrifying. Here you go. Enough said. Next.

Paul Orndorff defeated Ricky Steamboat via countout when Orndorff's second - a masked man called the Assassin - headbutted Steamboat outside the ring and kept him from making the count. Lame finish aside, this was a fun little match between two pros.

The match between WCW World Television Champion Lord Steven Regal and Davey Boy Smith ended in a time limit draw. Perfectly acceptable wrestling in my book... not much to say here.

Actually, I've very little to say in terms of thoughts. Opening match aside, it's been a tame show... oh wait, here's a thing. Vader and Uncle Eric spin the wheel to make the deal and we get a Texas Death Match for our main event championship match. For folks who thought WCW never learns anything, they at least learned to gimmick the wheel to land on a desired stipulation that people would like to see. Nothing lame like a "Coal Miner's MITTEN ON A POLE" match or anything stupid like that. Good on you, WCW.

United States champion Dustin Rhodes defeated Stunning Steve Austin to retain the title. Austin attempted to steal the pin with his feet on the ropes, but was foiled and thus defeated.

The Nasty Boys defeated WCW Tag-Team Champions 2 Cold Scorpio and Marcus Bagwell to win the titles. I expected worse than what I saw, but the Nasties are good enough tough guys, Scorpio is pretty slick, and Bagwell... well, he's some sort of stuff, I suppose. Perfectly fine.

Sting beat Sid with a roll-up. Lame match. Needs Barry Windham dressed up as fake Sting.

Rick Rude defeated Ric Flair via DQ when Flair was caught using a "foreign object". Clearly, in WCW 1993, he should have been using international objects. Oh yeah, I forgot. This was the debut of the WCW International World title, which is what they called the Big Gold Belt after a couple weeks of just calling it the "gold belt." See, the Big Gold Belt was once the NWA World title, but WCW dropped out of the NWA and still owned the belt, so they kept it on TV and had it defended on TV as a World title, but not the WCW World title, held by Vader. It's a bit of a mess that kept going until they eventually unified the titles mid-94.

WCW World Champion Big Van Vader defeated Cactus Jack in a Texas Death Match to retain the title. You know what, I'm happy they made this a Death Match because this was a brutal spectacle. I was expecting a brutal spectacle from these two because that was a thing. So this second Spin The Wheel, Make The Deal gimmick resulted in a much better match and between two hardened rivals used to beating the ever-loving piss out of each other. Is it the best of their multiple encounters? I'm afraid I haven't seen enough of their past matches to make that determination, but it is a really brutal, raw fight if ever I saw one.

The main event delivered, but not so much the rest of the show. There is some good stuff here, but not much worthy of checking out. All in all, a somewhat forgettable show, but do check out that main event. It's pretty good.

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