Halloween Havoc Memories

Just watched Halloween Havoc 1995 and 1996. The 1995 event wasn't very good, some ridiculous stuff going on here. The only thing I really liked was the Savage/Luger feud. The 1996 event was a bit better. 

Dean/Rey from 96 is a strong candidate for best opener in the events history

Halloween Havoc 95 gave us Hulk Hogan killing the Giant though ha ha ha If you put the volume up high you can hear Giant hit the mesh netting that was there to catch him.

That monster truck fight was probably the dumbest thing I seen at that time.

The 83 weeks episode about HH 95 with Bischoff is absolutely hilarious as they are going through this. You can tell he's genuinely mortified by the Dungeon of Doom...LOL

Havoc 96 was the first wcw ppv I ever ordered. I was hooked by the nWo and Hogan heel turn at this time. Really good show, and I was totally surprised by Pipers debut too.

Just finished two more Halloween Havoc's; 1997 and 1998. The 1997 show was pretty good, Savage/DDP and Guerrero/Mysterio matches were definitely the best of the show. The Hogan/Piper match wasn't too bad, definitely a better way to go with them having a cage match/fight instead of a traditional wrestling match. I can't remember, but why was the title not on the line? Piper won by sleeper but didn't get the belt. Flair and Perfect was decent, but I feel like they should have milked this feud a bit, maybe save it for the Starrcade show; really sell the injury to Flair at War Games to build Perfect strong. Also, Jericho took a horrible bump in his match, could have been disastrous.

Here we go, the review for the 1998 event. To be honest, it wasn't as bad as I remember. Nothing was too horrible about the event, there just wasn't anything great. And it should have been, they put the card together well, meaning they arranged the matches in the right order. But for whatever reason, none of the matches had a nice flow to it, they all just seemed to be lacking something. Maybe it was the audience, they really didn't seem to care too much about anything. They popped from time to time in some matches, but they never cheered/or were engaged for an entire match. The DDP/Goldberg match was the best of the event (in my opinion), DDP did a good job building up Goldberg really strong, he sold everything really well. And even Goldberg did a good job, he really sold the arm/shoulder injury. This seemed to be the only match that the fans were really into. Both the Hall/Nash and Sting/Bret matches were fine, nothing great. But the fans just didn't seem to care too much. They would cheer when Sting would make his comebacks, but other than that, they were dead. The Bret/Sting match just didn't seem to get any traction. There was nothing wrong with anything they did, but it just didn't seem to work. Same with the Hall/Nash match, nothing they did in the match was bad, it just seemed bland. Another thing about this event, they did the ref bump spot in 4 or 5 of the matches. By the time they did it in the Hogan/Warrior match, it was played out. You got the sense that the fans were thinking, not this again...

Now to the Hogan/Warrior match. I'll be honest, it wasn't as bad as I remembered it either. It was a bit sloppy at times, and Hogan and Warrior seemed to be off on a few moves, but it wasn't the crap show I remembered it being. And, after watching it again, it didn't seem like Warrior was the biggest problem in the match. Hogan seemed to mess up a few spots, not Warrior. And the producer's kind of messed up the fire ball spot (as well as Hogan). The camera is not supposed to focus on the person using the fireball (in this case Hogan), they are supposed to focus on the recipient of the fireball (in this case Warrior), this way it looks like it comes out of nowhere. But the camera followed Hogan into the corner, so we saw everything. We saw Hogan take it out of his tights, open the baggy, and him trying to light it. I also wonder if they had to call an audible because the fireball spot didn't work. It looks like that would have been the end of the match; the fireball would have hit Warrior, then Hogan would have dropped the leg and got the 1-2-3. It kind of looked like the announcers were a bit lost after the missed fireball spot, and the ending looked rushed with Horace coming to the ring with Bischoff. Very strange.

In the end, the HH 98 event could have been a big success, they had the wrestlers and the feuds/storylines to make it happen, but it just turned into another Starrcade 1997. It definitely didn't help that the feed got cut for a lot of viewers right at the end of the Warrior/Hogan match, so they didn't even get to see the best match of the night.

Amazing that he let someone beat Hogan cleanly. 

I never knew that. Giving Piper a short run with the big gold in 1996/97 would have been great. Hogan could have regained it at the following Super Brawl in 1997. He (Piper) shouldn't have gotten it in the fall of 1997, though. By then, the title and defeat of Hogan clearly belonged to Sting. By the end of 1997, the fans were ready for someone to finally beat Hogan cleanly and start turning the tide against the NWO. Sting was the one who should have done that by beating Hogan at Starrcade 1997, and there should have been no chaos or confusion about it. If Hogan was not happy with how Sting looked at the event, he should have still gone along with the original plans, then politic afterwards to get the belt back. Hogan could have won the belt back at one of the PPV's in the spring of 1998 if it meant that much to him, but Sting needed and deserved the title at that point. It must have been maddening for the booking committee dealing with Hogan's creative control. 

Yep, it would have been a great way to bring Macho into the NWO, costing Piper the big gold belt and giving the NWO a big win over WCW.