These 2 Halloween Havoc’s were very interesting since they seem to be a who’s who of former WWF stars with one that I did not realize had a stint in WCW.

 

1992 was a fun show overall with the following highlights:

Big Van Vader vs. Nikita Koloff was a good match between two big guys that showed that WCW did have some of their own talent that could compete with WWF. Same with the tag team match between Barry Windham/Dustin Rhodes and Steve Austin/Steve Williams. All four putting on a great match with Rhodes and Austin continuing their exciting feud.

The three matches featuring former WWF stars were over all good. Ricky Steamboat going against a young Brian Pillman was an excellent match and they really seemed to have a great chemistry together. Rick Rude vs. Masahiro Chono was also great with Rude not only showing his great in-ring ability but his heel personality was always very over with the crowd and provided some very memorable moments throughout his career.

The guy that I did not realize had a stint in WCW was Jake “The Snake” Roberts. He was involved in a ‘spin the wheel, make the deal match’ where early in the show his opponent Sting had to spin a large wheel to determine what type of match they had (steel cage, texas death match, etc…). It wound up being a coal miner’s glove match where whoever climbed up a pole first in the match could grab the suspended glove and knock their opponent out (it was supposedly metal lined). The match was fine for the most part until the end when Roberts used his gimmick of pulling the snake out of the bag to taunt his opponent but was instead bit on the face himself. It was an actual snake (cobra I believe) and clearly de-fanged. The problem was Roberts had to be overly physical with the snake in order to make it look like he was being bit. Let’s just say PETA would have been all over him today for how roughly he treated the snake.

Overall, a solid PPV and worth a watch.

1993 was probably the best Halloween Havoc up to this point. Just a brief synopsis of the standout matches:

Paul Orndorff vs. Ricky Steamboat – two legends put on a great match and showed that both could still work well

Lord Steven Regal vs. Davey Boy Smith – two very different styles of wrestling that really worked well together

Dustin Rhodes vs. Steve Austin – this match seemed to be a bit of a tradition for a few years and never got old since they both had such great in-ring chemistry

Nasty Boys vs. Marcus Bagwell and 2 Cold Scorpio – simply awesome…Bagwell and Scorpio had silly gimmicks at the time, but were amazing athletes and performed some very memorable high flying moves off the top rope

Sting vs. Sid Vicious – they had a feud for a while and always managed to be entertaining

Rick Rude vs. Ric Flair – two legends who kept the crowd into the match throughout

And finally, Vader vs Cactus Jack – this was a Texas Death Match which is basically no DQ’s, falls count anywhere. Both guys beat the heck out of each and really put everything in to it which made for a fun match.

I am getting close to finishing the Halloween Havoc PPV’s and there is definitely some interesting moments where you really start to see where WCW went wrong as a company. When I get to my synopsis of those shows I may briefly go down to reviewing just one since I will have a bit more commentary.

Otherwise, next week is 1994 and 1995!