In an effort to dominate the Monday Night Wars, WCW held a yearly event which tried to set itself apart from rival WWE. Halloween Havoc captured the spirit of the holiday.
Halloween is my favorite time of the year and between 1989 and 2000 wrestling fans who also enjoy this holiday had our very own themed pay-per-view event. Halloween Havoc was different from other seasonal events such as Summer Slam or Fall Brawl because it took a specific day of the year and revolved an entire show around it with the matches often taking a more fun approach using the Halloween theme.
These shows featured plenty of unusual – but extremely entertaining – occurrences including Roddy Piper’s WCW debut (1996), Halloween decorations being caught on fire (1989), the Giant falling off the side of a building (1995), and Jake Roberts being bitten in the face by one of his snakes (1992).
The 1998 show is notorious for hosting what many regard as the worst match in professional wrestling history when Hollywood Hulk Hogan faced off against The (Ultimate) Warrior in a rematch of their main event at WrestleMania VI in 1990. Dave Meltzer has been the editor and publisher of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter since 1983 and during that time has declared only five matches so bad they deserved a rating of “minus five stars” with only one of those five coming from WCW. This was it.
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This match was a buffet of disasters including a palpable lack of cooperation and mistrust between Hogan and Warrior, a botched spot where Hogan accidentally singed his eyebrows and mustache with flash paper, and what Sports Illustrated writer Luke Winkie called, “the most unsatisfying chair shot in history“.
The persistent rumor is that the match only took place to satisfy Hogan’s ego and jealousy about losing to Warrior years earlier at WrestleMania VI. The Warrior himself commented on how bad the match was and went so far as to say that if he had known this reasoning at the time he would never have agreed to it:
"“They used [Ted] Turner’s check book to buy me to come back to lose a match to Hulk [Hogan]. It was repulsive, to me, when I finally realized it. And if I would have known I never would have went back for all the money that they gave me.”"
The 1998 show was also notable for ending its live feed early due to time constraints which occurred in the middle of the second main event featuring Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Page. Somewhat ironically, this match is considered one of the best to ever be held during Halloween Havoc and if shown in its entirety may have helped fans forget about the Hogan/Warrior debacle. WWE journalist Kevin Powers said of the incident:
"“It’s hard to believe that thousands of pay-per-view customers missed the main event of Halloween Havoc 1998 because WCW ran out of broadcast time. By some cruel twist of fate, fans did get to watch the disastrous WrestleMania VI rematch between The Ultimate Warrior and Hollywood Hogan, only to see their screens go black just as Diamond Dallas Page prepared to lock up with undefeated WCW World Heavyweight Champion Goldberg in what was the best match in the October event’s 11-year span.”"
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When WWE purchased WCW in 2001 it also purchased the rights to broadcast their pay-per-views and in 2015 made them all available on the WWE Network. There are no current plans to bring back Halloween Havoc but with the return of WarGames this November, it’s always possible for the company to resurrect this spooky seasonal fan favorite.