WCW Halloween Havoc 92'

RATING LEVELS:

Curt Hennig Level – A “GOAT” show, as Perfect as possible

Watch It All – A consistently good show worth watching in its entirety

Watch It…With Remote in Hand – 3 or more above-average ratings

High Risk Maneuver – Mostly filler, inessential, but 1-2 good matches

DUDleyville – Zero redeeming qualities, chore to watch

HALLOWEEN HAVOC 92' - October 1992

Philadelphia, PA

CHAMPIONSHIP BACKGROUNDS: Heading into tonight’s show, Ron Simmons is the WCW World Heavyweight Champion. The WCW/NWA Unified Tag Team Champions are Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes. Rick Rude holds the US Championship (but will be challenging Masahiro Chono for the NWA World Championship tonight). Meanwhile, Rude's US Championship will be defended by a surrogate (Big Van Vader). Ricky Steamboat holds the TV Championship, having defeated Steve Austin for it at Clash of the Champions XX.

COMMENTATORS: Jim Ross and Jesse “The Body” Ventura

Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton, and Michael “P.S” Hayes take on the Z-Man, Shane Douglas, and Johnny Gunn in the opener. Jim Ross plays up how the heel trio has held multiple Tag Team Championships between them, giving them the advantage. After a cool spot where Anderson fools Zenk and the Philly crowd gives him a huge face pop, Bobby Eaton gets a roar from the crowd for an absolute cheap shot on Douglas. Later, Eaton pops the crowd again with an excellent knee drop from the top rope. The pro-heel response from the Philly crowd, as well as the respectable work of tag specialists Anderson and Eaton, especially during the finish, makes this one of those weird inconsequential "nothing" matches that exceeds expectation. (3.5/5)

Ricky Steamboat vs. Brian Pillman is next. I liked this contest a good bit, though I was anticipating a better finish. Pillman does some good heel work considering he’d only been in that role for a short amount of time and he could really ask for no better dance partner than Steamboat. Something that may have even made this relatively short match even better would’ve been to put up Steamboat’s TV Championship as that small change would’ve added urgency and purpose to this match. Still, much better than average and worth a watch for fans of either star. (3.5/5)

The US Championship Match is on the line next, with Nikita Koloff taking on Rude’s “surrogate” Big Van Vader. Rude arrives with Vader, but is quickly informed that he and Harley Race are banned from ringside. When the match does get started, it doesn’t take long for it to become very physical. This is the Vader that fans who only know his WWE work missed out on - a beast of a brawler that, at his peak, is almost comparable to Brock Lesnar in how dominant he can be. Koloff is good enough to make you wonder what he could’ve done had he jumped to the WWE at some point in his career. Don't let the brevity of this match fool you - they pack a ton of smart, well-executed action into five minutes. The crowd's engagement helps put this one over the top and makes it one of my favorite criminally overlooked gems of the Network. Superb match. (4.5/5)

“Dr. Death” Steve Williams and Steve Austin team up next to take on the reigning Unified World Tag Team Champions, Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes. Windham and Rhodes are an underrated tag team and this whole bout is very engaging and action-packed – much better than the Rhodes/Windham vs. Williams/Gordy match that headlined Great American Bash 92’ (and earned a score of 2.5 from me). Pairing with Austin, Williams quickens his pace, and, speaking of Austin, this might be his best showing in 92', though its not "peak-era" perfect – at certain points he gets a bit too fancy, particularly when attempting a hammerlock on the lanky Windham and or the awkward backbreaker submission he applies to Rhodes. As the smallest man in the ring, these maneuvers just didn’t make much sense, but its nice to see him try new things when, at the start of the year, his offense was a lot of clotheslines and snap mares. Even better than the heels, though, is Dustin Rhodes, who gets opened up “hard way” towards the end of the match, but plays a great face-in-peril throughout, changing the momentum of the match with countless lariats and flurries of elbows. The final two minutes are a wild cluster fuck that gets the audience on their feet and really makes you want to see a rematch. (3.5/5)

Before our next match, Tony Schiavone interviews Paul E. Dangerously and this is a MUST SEE promos just because Dangerously’s firing of Madusa is one of the most shocking, risqué, controversial acts that had probably ever been done on WCW or WWE PPV up to that time. It is Attitude Era-level boundary-pushing a good 5 years before the Attitude Era. As one might expect from the future home of ECW, the Philly crowd goes bananas for this unforgettable segment. If you've never seen this promo, do yourself a huge favor and YouTube it - it is absolutely insane. NSFW. (5/5)

It is “Spin The Wheel, Make The Deal” time, with Sting arriving to find out what the stipulation will be for his match with Jake Roberts later tonight. While the previous segment was astounding for being an authentic “holy shit” moment, this next one not only ends with terrible disappointment, but also is as hokey as it gets. Extra shame unto the WCW bookers at the time, who, against all common sense, decided against rigging the wheel to deliver a stipulation that fans actually wanted to see. (1/5)

Masahiro Chono vs. Rick Rude for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship is next. Before the match begins, Cappetta introduces two New Japan dignitaries who are, absurdly, sitting in the audience without any sort of separation from the drunken Philly fans. From there, we get the introduction of Chono’s selected guest referee, Kensuke Sasaki, and Rude’s choice, Harley Race.  Prior to this match, I hadn’t seen much of Chono’s work from early WCW. Rude is his dependable self, reinforcing the argument that he was better in 92’ than at any time in his career, but a disinterested crowd and a slower-than-typical pace bog down the match. While I won’t go as far as Dave Meltzer, who gave this match a NEGATIVE star, or other critics (google em’) who consider this the worst match of the year, I’m not going to praise it too much either. Maybe, like me, Meltzer (and other critics) just expected something vastly different than what we got. There are undoubtedly too many rest holds and both men move as if they’re weighed down by molasses body suits in an effort to oversell the damage they’ve taken, but I get the sense that what they were attempting – a deliberate “human chess game” where typically undersold maneuvers like close-fist punches are actually a big deal and submissions are blocked, re-attempted, and re-applied instead of just forgotten – didn’t click with the live audience. Sure, Rude locks in at least a handful too many headlocks, but there are also neckbreakers and piledrivers, all building to Rude’s finisher. Similarly, when Chono locks in the STF, you get the sense that his “overuse” of submissions was part of an overriding strategy. Like the Tag Title match, the ending is a purposeful clusterfuck that I actually thought was executed well. (2.5/5)

Ron Simmons vs. The Barbarian for the WCW World Championship match is next and, on paper, there is really nothing to get excited about. Cactus Jack, who serves as a manager to Barbarian here, has been feuding with Simmons for months at this point. In terms of muscularity, Simmons and Barbarian are nearly mirror images of each other - but no matter how evenly matched they appear, neither is an exceptional worker capable of delivering a really captivating, nuanced match. What they do provide us is rather dull, with very little to mention in regards to explosive, impressive offense. Ross and Ventura do their best to add drama to the proceedings, sharing the MVP Award for this thoroughly lackluster contest, easily the worst match on the show. (1/5)

And it comes to this…Sting vs. Jake “The Snake” Roberts in a Coal Miner’s Glove Match. Boy did they botch that wheel selection! After such a promising start to this show, by this point, the crowd has obviously had the wind sucked out of it by two sub-par title bouts and, while a cage match or Texas Death match would’ve probably given the fans something to get excited about, the “Weapon on a Pole” stip is one very few fans salivate over. From the sound of the bell, both competitors attempt to grab the glove, but when that doesn’t work, they settle into a fairly standard match. Roberts does do an exceptional job selling a damaged left arm, but, unfortunately, we’d seen the same scenario in the Nikita Koloff/Vader bout earlier in the show. What really hurts this match is the overbooked and cartoonish finish when one could argue a proper utilization of the actual Coal Miner’s Glove as the sole weapon capable of ending the match would’ve been a far better ending. While I do know Sting and Roberts had other matches on the house show circuit, they never got a chance to really show what they could do in front of a national audience. In fact, the “meat” of this match, when what we are watching is really just two guys putting on a regular contest, isn’t too bad at all, demonstrating that in the right circumstances (which may have been just a standard, "no frills" bout), Sting and Jake could’ve delivered something quite good. (1.5/5)

   

 

Throughout the night, there were “We Want Flair!” chants, but I’m not sure that necessarily means the audience hated everything they were given. Like today, “CM Punk” chants break out at nearly every show, but can transform into a "This is Awesome" chant at the drop of the hat. I wasn't in attendance and I’m only reading the crowd based on my viewing of the show via WWE Network, but there are several moments when the crowd is thoroughly engaged in the show, which contrasts with the popular narrative that WCW was floundering in the fall of 92'. In fact, the first half of the show is pretty darn stellar - it is really just the last three match that will leave viewers with a very poor taste in their mouths. One could argue that better match sequencing could have saved the show, but to do so would’ve been to admit that a non-title 6-man tag with no build was bound to be better than the WCW World Title match. What went wrong at Halloween Havoc 92' was The Barbarian was an undeserving and uninteresting challenge for the title, the main event needed no stip or a better stip to work, and Rude/Chono was a somewhat unexpected flop. With an average match/segment score of 2.77-out-of-5, this show sits firmly in the rating of…

FINAL RATING – High Risk Manuever