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Halloween Havoc 1994
Date: October 23, 1994
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 14,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan
Oy it’s 1994 WCW. This was just a bad time for the company as Hogan how shown up in July and allegedly taken over the wrestling world. The problem was this meant let’s have Hogan beat Flair for about 4 months straight after winning the title in his first match with the company. There just isn’t much going on at all around this time in the company as they’re trying to figure out what to do with everything they have but there are a ton of old guys that had nothing going for them.
This would go on for nearly two more years as both companies sucked beyond belief for the better part of the next two years, at least in the main events. I’m really not looking forward to this, so let’s get this over with.
The video is about Hogan vs. Flair, as the main event tonight is Title vs. Career. That means if Flair loses he retires but if Hogan loses he retires and loses the title. That hardly seems fair but it’s Hogan so did you expect something else? On a completely random note, remember that there is no Nitro yet. Really Gene is a commentator? Oh he leaves soon after so he’s just here for all of the opening. That makes sense.
Heenan has a neck brace on which is because of legit neck surgery that he had. He goes through this huge list of things that have happened in the history of Detroit spots. Some random guy that isn’t named of course sings the national anthem as we see random shots of the crowd. It’s never a good sign when most of the front row is comprised of middle aged men in suits.
We keep scrolling down the row and of all people, Muhammad Ali is in the front row. Ali, at one point considered the most recognizable man in the entire world and the greatest boxer if not athlete of all time and a racial pioneer, receives no acknowledgement from WCW or a graphic with his name on it or anything like that. That’s WCW for you though.
The freaking Honky Tonk Man is in WCW now and for some reason is the #1 contender to the TV Title. Also, in the pre match promos, Badd, the TV Champion, is holding the title that would become known as the Cruiserweight Title. Badd can’t talk…at all. Both get two promos for absolutely no apparent reason.
TV Title: Honky Tonk Man vs. Johnny B. Badd
Honky is billed from Honkyland USA which is about a million jokes that write themselves. Apparently the singer was named T. Graham Brown, a country singer that I doubt anyone north of Tennessee has ever heard of. Naturally WCW puts him in front of a crowd in a state that borders Canada and expects everyone to just know who that is. Still no recognition of Ali either.
We see a huge group of middle aged men in suits which makes me think this isn’t going to go well. Badd has in fangs and that confetti shooter. Again, this is the time period where he was portraying a gay man without saying that. Yes, shooing confetti is a great way to get cheers from the crowd. Honky stalls to start, as he’s from Memphis. He hasn’t been relevant in about four years at this point so of course he’s in a title match here.
Yeah that has nothing to do with Hogan at all. To the shock of no one, the fans are more or less dead. Oh the main event is a cage match too as I forgot to mention that. He’s the exact same worker that he was when he had the IC Title for a year, but minus the heat or anyone caring. He hits a chinlock so we go to a long shot of the crowd to break the boredom I guess.
Oh hey, ten minutes into the broadcast, Heenan mentions Ali, and WHAT A COINCIDENCE, he’s here! That shows that either WCW is freaking stupid or Ali isn’t as big of a star as he used to be. Ali would light the Olympic torch in less than two years in one of the greatest moments in sports history and in 1994 WCW has Honky Tonk Man opening a PPV. You figure out the right answer.
We get the standard announcement of five minutes left in the 10-15 minute TV Title matches. And it’s obvious now. Also, I love how the Television Title is being defended on a PPV broadcast but whatever. We hit out third chinlock of the match because it worked so well the first two times.
Orton has nothing on Honky. We get to the last minute of the match and Badd goes for the Kiss That Don’t Miss. Tony’s commentary here is kind of funny: “He’s going for the Kiss That Don’t Miss! He missed it!” Ok so that passes for funny to me here. They fight to the time limit and then Honky runs. This was brutally bad.
Rating: D. Seriously, the FREAKING HONKY TONK MAN was the best you could do here? Why? What possessed you to think this was a good idea? Who booked this? Honky wasn’t good in the ring more or less ever and was ok at best on the mic. To say he’s watered down here is an understatement as this was just awful and boring as hell to boot. This just made my head hurt.
We get a LONG recap of Flair vs. Hogan, which was based around Hogan’s knee being injured and a masked man running around attacking him. The masked man would wind up being Brutus Beefcake of all people and that was the main event of Starrcade, which was where Savage made his PPV debut. This was something that could have happened in the 70s for how basic it was, meaning it wasn’t that interesting at all.
Tag Titles: Stars N Stripes vs. Pretty Wonderful
Pretty Wonderful are the former champions here as Stars N Stripes beat them about a month earlier. Good night do those teams sound generic. Pretty Wonderful is made up of Pretty Paul Roma and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff. Stars N Stripes are Bagwell and the Patriot. I really am not looking forward to this. This just sounds like a bad match on an indy show or something like that.
Heenan suggests that the Patriot is Al Gore. Something tells me that Bobby is going to be all that gets me through this match and show. Bagwell was a five time champion with four different partners. That either says he’s a great tag wrestler or he has no direction so they kept throwing him in random tag teams because he had a big contract and they had nothing else to do with him.
You can tell the announcers are just bored to death as they’re arguing over what a tag is and then there’s something about Dennis Rodman. This is just BORING. They actually say this is the last night Hogan will face Flair. That’s just hilarious. They wrestled 15 years later and likely will in TNA also. They discuss the Lions’ Super Bowl chances. This is just amusing. Nothing at all is going on in the match.
They say that Tiger Stadium and Yankee Stadium are the last great ballparks. The real last great ballparks are the ones still in use today: Fenway and Wrigley. Heenan says that once all of the matches are over, no one is going to take a shower because they’ll all be watching the cage match.
Ok, number one, why does Heenan know the showering habits of the wrestlers and why would no one take a shower after their match when they have about an hour and a half before the main event? How clean do they like to get? The fans are more or less dead for this by the way. Bagwell hits the suplex and Wonderful hits an elbow on him to get the titles. This was somehow worse than the previous match.
Rating: D-. I have never cared less about a match than I did here. I’ve always thought Bagwell was hot and there’s a former Horseman in there though so it’s not a failure. The announcers were bored too as this was just bland as all hell.
They pointed out that Bagwell had been here last year at this time with a random partner, so of course WCW does the same thing here. The faces would get the titles back in a few weeks before losing them to some team called Harlem Heat who never did anything I’m sure.
Flair and Sherri say that Flair will win. Yeah Sherri is Flair’s manager here for no apparent reason. How much of Flair’s career has been lost because of having to job to Hogan? Oh and Mr. T. is the referee tonight for no reason other than he was involved with the WWF years ago so naturally he’s a huge deal still.
We recap Dave (called Evad, since he’s apparently dyslexic and that makes sense right?) vs. Kevin Sullivan. The Boston Midget was upset that Dave was a huge Hogan fan. This would evolve into the 3 Faces of Fear which would evolve into the Dungeon of Doom which would always suck.
Kevin Sullivan vs. Dave Sullivan
This is Dave’s theme music. I wish I was making this up.
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For those of you that couldn’t get through the whole thing, one of the lines here was “Always go swimming with a buddy, work hard in school and always study.” The scariest thing: someone was paid to write this. Someone made money from this!
So, they actually had a gimmick where a guy was a Hogan fan. That’s really the best that they could come up with. When Hogan becomes the top guy in a company, his ego knows no bounds. He’s also wearing yellow and red. Apparently Hogan gave Sullivan the boots he was wearing when he fought Andre at Mania. That made my head hurt from shaking it so hard. Dave somehow is worse than Hogan in the ring.
Thankfully Dave would retire eventually and become an athletic director at a small college in Nebraska. Even Nick Patrick is taller than Kevin. Ok, so there was a Hogan bandana brought in somehow. After a bit boot, Kevin holds it up as a peace offering but Dave isn’t sure.
THIS TAKES A FULL MINUTE AND A HALF. Literally, it goes on for ninety seconds of a minute and a half match. On the floor they “brawl” until Dave is thrown into the post and then rolls in any way to beat the count. I’m at a loss for keystrokes as to how bad this was.
Rating: F-. Just…no, in every sense of the word.
Oddly enough I have Smackdown on, and Michelle McCool looks DAMN good. That’s never happened before.
So there was this really bad stable called the Stud Stable that was just flat out terrible. Somehow Terry Funk was in it but whatever. Anyway, Dustin Rhodes was feuding with them because he needed his contract to run out so he could go be the far better character in Goldust. So what does he do? He asks the man that hated his father more than anyone else, Arn Anderson, to be his partner, because Anderson is such an angel.
After accepting, to the shock of no one at the PPV, he got turned on and beaten up by the Stable and Anderson. This led to War Games (Nasty Boys, Dustin and Dusty vs. Funk, Anderson, Bunkhouse Buck and Robert Parker. Oy.) which led to this, because the greatest gimmick match ever wasn’t good enough I guess.
Arn Anderson vs. Dustin Rhodes
Anderson is with Robert Parker and Meng, who is the newly found monster bodyguard. This show is just draining the life out of me with how stupid some of this stuff has been. The worst thing has easily been the theme music though. I mean it’s just so painfully stupid. No one cares about any of these matches either and there’s more or less nothing at all related to Halloween at all here.
Well if nothing else the guys here are ok so the match should be better. Oh hey Tommy Herns is here. Good to know. Well the fans are breathing here at least. Naturally Tony references things that happened in 1985 and 1987, because they’re perfectly relevant today right? These old and Southern guys know how to wrestle a decent match at least.
Rhodes works on the arm a lot, prompting Tony to say: It’s clear that Rhodes is working on the arm. I really, really hate commentators some times. They’re wrestling a far more technical and old school style here and it’s working rather well I’d think. There’s not a lot to note here but it’s coming off just fine with no glaring errors.
Arn gets control and goes for the DDT but it doesn’t work. He covers but uses the ropes which gets broken up by the referee, allowing Dustin to roll him up for the pin. Post match he gets the hell beaten out of him for his troubles.
Rating: B-. Not bad at all. It’s not great, but it’s by far and away the best match of the night thus far. Old school will work most of the time and it certainly did here. It’s not a great match by any means, but after some of the stuff I’ve had to sit through tonight, this was excellent. It held my interest if nothing else.
Hogan, Hart and Brutus get booed pretty loudly as they’re in the back. Brutus looks annoyed. He’s the Big Brother or something like that. In an odd line, Hogan says they tried to sneak in and he and Jimmy were camouflaged, but Brutus only tried to be camouflaged. That’s just odd as possible. They talk about Mr. T. potentially being bought off. Apparently Hank Aaron is there too. There’s no point to that but he’s there anyway.
Heenan says that Flair will win for about the 1000th time.
We recap Duggan vs. Austin. Yes, that Austin and that Duggan. Even back in 1994, Austin was cussing like no other and talking in the third person, so the gimmick was at least partially there. He was supposed to fight Steamboat for the title but since Steamboat was hurt, Austin was awarded the title. Duggan showed up and beat him in 30 seconds to win his only major singles title (not counting the TV Title that he claimed in 2000 or whenever which he never actually won).
Duggan was another guy that showed up and was considered a big deal despite having won one thing of note in seven years. When I say they recap it, they show the whole match which is a backdrop and a splash for the pin and the title. DAMN they had no idea what they had with Austin.
US Title: Jim Duggan vs. Steve Austin
Heenan calls Duggan the blue collar champion. The lines they say about Austin here amuse me to absolutely no end as more or less everything they say about Duggan would be what made Austin a legend in just three years or so. Austin is in black boots and black tights and he’s arguing with an old guy and cursing a lot. Yeah there’s no future in that at all. Duggan fights back with some very basic offense.
Austin is freaking tiny here with next to no muscle match. He looks like a shorter HHH when he first hit the big time. Austin takes over and just beats the hell out of Duggan for a bit which does nothing at all. This is a very formula based match and that’s fine I guess.
Duggan starts his comeback and sets for the Three Point Clothesline but Austin thinks he’s in a wrestling company that makes sense and backdrops Duggan over the top rope for the DQ which was always the dumbest rule in wrestling, keeping the title on Duggan who needed it SO much.
Austin was worthless in WCW after this, as he would be released in a few months before going to ECW and then the WWF, where the rest is history to say the least. In VHS exclusive interviews, Duggan says he’s happy and Austin says he’ll be back.
Rating: D+. What the hell man? Again, this was like the match didn’t even happen. It felt like it was over before it started but then again his career in WCW was over the second Hogan showed up because Austin was young and talented, so clearly he had no business being in WCW anymore. It was clear that the future was in guys like Orndorff and Duggan, who are both going to leave with titles. That’s not saying much is it?
Sting, in a tux of all things, comes out to talk about how he’s going to be here in the front row watching the main event and he goes to sit by Ali. Now THAT is cool. Think about it. You get to go and sit by the most famous athlete of all time. Of course Sting couldn’t wrestle. We of course can’t have the most popular guy in the company and one of the best workers of all time wrestling on a show where Hogan is the one retiring one of Sting’s big rivals now can we? That would just be stupid right?
Vader is apparently number one contender. We get a recap of Bash at the Beach where Vader beat Guardian Angel (Big Boss Man, ANOTHER Hogan guy) and then they feuded forever for no apparent reason, leading to this.
Guardian Angel vs. Vader
The Guardian Angels are an organization that are kind of like a citizen’s army but they have no weapons. They’re more or less unarmed policemen without any official authority. The group has been a big source of controversy as they have no authority and kind of seem like they’re undermining the police but that’s neither here nor there. It didn’t last long as he would be heel again in a few months anyway.
In a VERY cool moment, Vader, the monster heel and playing to the crowd as a heel, walks around the ring to where Ali and Sting are sitting. Remember that Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and severe brain damage at this point and likely doesn’t remember that he’s in Detroit let alone why he’s there.
Vader does his WHO’S THE MAN thing, then drops to a knee, does the Vader sign to Ali and says “You’re the man” to Ali who smiles and waves at him. That is just completely awesome on so many levels. To those of you that don’t know, Ali is more or less the most famous athlete in the history of the world, surpassing any soccer player or Yankee or Michael Jordan by far.
It is so cool to see one of the dominant big men in the sport at the time say screw the storylines or whatever and pay homage to a true legend like that. I am truly impressed with Vader and have about 100x more respect for him now. Oh yeah the match. While Vader is doing that, Race, his manager which I forgot to mention, jumps Boss Man and gets beaten up, likely to try to cover for the breaking of kayfabe that Vader is doing, which is perfectly fine for a change.
Oh and now the bell rings. Heenan’s voice is messing up because of the neck surgery he had. That was the main reason he left: insurance, which makes a lot of sense really. Since this is still in WCW, Vader is allowed to dominate. If this was in the WWF, Vader would have been pinned already. For the second time in about three minutes, Boss Man beats up Race.
He manages to slam Vader onto Race, which is kind of cruel when you think about it. Race was only 51 at this point so if he hadn’t gotten injured it’s perfectly possible that he could still have been wrestling a bit at this age, maybe in the indys somewhere. I’m liking Boss Man’s offense here as it’s all designed to work on big men, which is what it has to do here.
The slams work well here as Boss Man is just big and strong enough to make them look plausible. They mess up a clothesline spot where I think Boss Man forgot he was supposed to fall. Either that or he got hurt as he’s barely getting up at all. The Vader Bomb hits for two as I really thought that was the end of the match. That upgrades it by a bit I think.
Vader Bomb II gets knees and I’m far more into this than the crowd is. Boss Man hits a spinebuster which is called a sidewalk slam. The Boss Man Slam gets no count as Race jumps on the apron. He audibly shouts oh shit when Boss Man chases him. Vader catches him with a splash coming in for the pin. Vader goes and stands in front of Ali again in a nice little homage but yells at Sting to stay in character this time, which is fine as well.
Rating: B. It was a good old fashioned battle of the big men here, but you had two big men that could make such a match work which is all I could ask for here. It was just a power match but it worked very well. Also, Race helps a lot here as the interference helps things out very well as it makes perfect sense for him to be there and cheat. This was fun and the Ali thing helps a lot.
Thomas Hearns comes out and says nothing of note while sticking to the script very well.
Knobs and Sags say they’re ready for Buck and Funk.
Nasty Boys vs. Bunkhouse Buck/Terry Funk
I’m sure there will be a typo with the heels’ last names somewhere in here. Buck pretty much was just a guy that was a hillbilly but a heel and not that talented. Again, War Games can’t end a feud anymore apparently. The Nastys are from New York City now. Is that where teams move when their self named town goes away? The Dudleys moved there too. Sags has a pumpkin to try to make this a Halloween themed show.
Terry Funk is the best technical wrestler in here and it’s the 1990s. What does that tell you? Heenan has already messed the names up once. First person to spot a wrestling move here wins. They do the Pit Stop which brings more cursing from Funk.
Shockingly, we have a ton of brawling and Funk hits himself with a chair a bunch of times. This is just a waste of time and a hardcore match or something like that. When Buck tries to use a foreign object of some kind, Meng hits Funk by mistake and a piledriver on a pumpkin ends this.
Rating: D. Even at nearly seven and a half minutes, this wasn’t a match but just a brawl, which I have no interest in. Buck was a guy that was boring beyond belief and no one cared, but he was a southern hillbilly so he always had a job.
We go to the ring where Bill Shaw, the president of WCW who gives Ali a check for his charity. Ok, this has nothing to do with Ali but it’s a great example of why WCW sucked so much for so long. WHO IN THE HELL IS BILL SHAW??? For those of you that don’t want to look him up, he was the president of TBS at the time. This would be like a guy from USA being on TV but not in a storyline or anything, but rather just there because he’s an executive from USA.
We have no reason to care about him or Bill Watts or anyone like that. See, Vince had guys like Jack Tunney or Gorilla Monsoon do this role. They were guys that were on the payroll but has no official authority. Do you know what happened? THEY WORKED! No one cares about Bill Shaw and no one has a damn clue who he is, so naturally he’s put in front of a camera because he works for a channel that this show isn’t even on.
ANYWAY, thankfully the next guy to get that job, Eric Bischoff, is there also and gives an award to Ali for his work with the youth of America. Ali shakes his hand and poses a bit, but never actually talks. That’s not being rude from WCW mind you. Ali was in such bad shape that it would be embarrassing for him to address the crowd here. That’s just very sad, and this was probably the best he would look for the rest of his life.
Bobby and Tony talk about the main event and that no one, not even the Yankees have been world champions 11 times. That’s true. It was about 20 at the time. Hogan does a traditional big match interview that’s very toned down. I love how Tony is a Hulkamaniac all of a sudden when Hogan has been in the company all of three months here.
WCW World Title: Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair
It’s in a cage, it’s loser retires and Mr. T. is the referee. I guess the overbooking wasn’t just an NWO thing. We have a HUGE Hogan Sucks chant before the match that doesn’t exist because everyone LOVES Hogan remember? We get about a million veiled WWF references which is just known as some place at some time here. Buffer doing the introductions ups the value of the product about 1000%. Heenan: “This is a match everyone wants to see but I don’t think anyone wants to see this.”
Hogan has dropped about 40 pounds off his standard weight, proving what steroids do for you. Cena is by far more muscular right now than Hogan was at this point. Hell Sheamus might be. The arms are twigs here which is the biggest difference. They actually try to make Mr. T. seem like a celebrity. He’s of course booed as he hasn’t meant anything in about 10 years at this point, much like Hogan today.
The cage, which looks like it’s about to fall apart, is lowered down and we waste time by having the crew attach it to the ring. They’re really trying to make this out to be an epic match, which is the point I guess. They do have one thing right though: they were the first to have the big match between these two, not Vince. Oh and remember, T might have been bought off by Flair but there’s no actual proof of it.
He and Hogan are about to fight maybe three minutes into it, I’m assuming over who made Stallone look better. Nick Bockwinkle, who was commissioner despite having absolutely nothing to do with WCW ever and was fired for forgetting the name of the PPV he was at in a few months, is at ringside with a clipboard. You know, because he, a wrestler, had no business doing the presentation earlier.
Hogan’s knee, which was the selling point of the match, isn’t even mentioned for about five minutes or so but there we go as I type this. We get a random as hell Horseman sign which wouldn’t be around for nearly a year. T of course keeps messing things up because that’s all he’s good for here.
We go into a standard Flair match which is fine as it means that everything should be fine. Tony talking about Hulkamania is just kind of pathetic as he’s just miles behind Monsoon and Heenan with it. Why do we always have to see Flair’s ass?
I think getting out of the cage means nothing here. Either that or the announcers are freaking morons as Flair tries to go over the top and they wonder why he’s doing that. Mr. T. cannot count to save his life. They try to cover that but it just fails.
There’s no point to having him there, which of course they can’t just say that because there’s a great point to having him there. I have no idea what that is, but according to WCW we should see it right away so there we are. Flair finally gets Hogan down and works on the knee. This is an interesting situation here as both guys are known for having their own style of match and just plugging someone else into their formula to get their standard match out of it.
The good thing here though is that Hogan is being plugged into Flair’s formula, which is by far and away the better choice and it’s making this a decent match. Heenan’s rants against Hogan and T’s completely abysmal performance out there are balancing each other out though. Oh shut up Capetta with the time thing. No one buys that at all in anything other than a TV Title match. Flair gets the figure four to a big pop. That doesn’t exist though remember? Only Hogan can get pops.
Hogan gets out and T gets bumped, this making the match much better. Flair beats him up so we have a clear designation on where T lies. Sherri tries to climb in but Jimmy tries to stop her, but only gets her dress. The reaction from him is hilarious as he sees it in his hands and looks like he’s saying if I’ve got this then…OH SHIT! She beats him up anyway which puts Jimmy back in his element.
He’s very underrated for his career resume I think. Sting jumps the railing and stops her from getting in but we have a masked man from under the ring to beat Sting up. Sherri and the masked guy hit the cage as the fans are INTO this. The heels cuff T to the ropes and a lead pipe, the masked man’s weapon, shot to the head have Hogan down. Hogan of course Hulks Up to a mini pop. Ok make that a big ass pop as the fans are here for the comeback if nothing else.
The fans boo T waking up. Hogan beats the hell out of Sherri, even hitting the big boot on her. Hogan initiates his ending sequence and drags Flair to where T is cuffed so he can count the pin to a HUGE pop. Flair would of course be back in a few months because this is pro wrestling.
Post match, Hogan shakes hands with Ali which is classy if nothing else. Heenan is nearly in tears. It never gets old to me when Hogan turned heel and Heenan keeps saying he told us so. That’s just hilarious on a lot of levels. While Hogan is posing, the Masked Man comes back and stands behind Hogan for at least 8 seconds with the pipe pulled back but never swings it, because that makes perfect sense right?
Hogan avoids it and beats on him for awhile before pulling the mask with Heenan screaming that it’s Anderson and it’s Brutus which stuns the crowd. He gets his like 10th name as Heenan says he’s butchered a friendship. Tony says the building is shaking, “like an avalanche”, which makes no sense but then John “Earthquake” Tenta debuts to beat up Hogan along with Beefcake and Kevin Sullivan, completing the Hogan Circle of Friendship.
Sting runs out to make the save as the commentators’ mics mess up I think. Heenan insists the masked man was under the ring all day despite us seeing Brutus a few times already.
Over a year and a half later, Hogan would say that he sent Brutus in as a spy, which made sense then as the stable he was spying on was well established, but now seeing this, it makes NO SENSE as the stable that evolved into the one he was spying on didn’t even form until after Hogan had made him a spy. That’s Hogan’s “creative” input for you though.
Rating: B+. This was very solid and it’s Mr. T. that holds it back. It finished the angle and started a new one which is all you can ask for from a PPV main event. It worked well as it was Flair running things and putting Hogan over which he didn’t need but that’s what you’re always going to get I guess. This was a good cage match where the gimmick helped a good amount. This was fine and I liked it quite a bit. Not enough to save the show, but a good match.
Overall Rating: D+. This just wasn’t a good show at all. There are two or three good matches, but only one means anything and the rest are so bad that they bring the rest of the show down. Seriously, the Sullivan showdown? The show just isn’t that good which I guess can be attributed to Hogan taking over.
Let’s go with this: three months ago, the midcard was focused on guys like Ricky Steamboat (41 so certainly still someone that had a lot of miles left and still better than 90% of the wrestlers in the world), Mick Foley (29 at the time and a completely revolutionary character to say the least) and Steve Austin (30 and with the character that would make him a legend being created very clearly in front of our eyes).
Instead they’ve been replaced with Earthquake, Jim Duggan and Paul Orndorff. Oh and Brutus Beefcake is main eventing the biggest show of the year now. Yeah, Hogan didn’t change a THING. To anyone that thinks TNA isn’t going to be harmed by Hogan taking over, I present to you Exhibit A. Watch the main event which is on a DVD somewhere but other than that take a pass.
Date: October 23, 1994
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 14,000
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan
Oy it’s 1994 WCW. This was just a bad time for the company as Hogan how shown up in July and allegedly taken over the wrestling world. The problem was this meant let’s have Hogan beat Flair for about 4 months straight after winning the title in his first match with the company. There just isn’t much going on at all around this time in the company as they’re trying to figure out what to do with everything they have but there are a ton of old guys that had nothing going for them.
This would go on for nearly two more years as both companies sucked beyond belief for the better part of the next two years, at least in the main events. I’m really not looking forward to this, so let’s get this over with.
The video is about Hogan vs. Flair, as the main event tonight is Title vs. Career. That means if Flair loses he retires but if Hogan loses he retires and loses the title. That hardly seems fair but it’s Hogan so did you expect something else? On a completely random note, remember that there is no Nitro yet. Really Gene is a commentator? Oh he leaves soon after so he’s just here for all of the opening. That makes sense.
Heenan has a neck brace on which is because of legit neck surgery that he had. He goes through this huge list of things that have happened in the history of Detroit spots. Some random guy that isn’t named of course sings the national anthem as we see random shots of the crowd. It’s never a good sign when most of the front row is comprised of middle aged men in suits.
We keep scrolling down the row and of all people, Muhammad Ali is in the front row. Ali, at one point considered the most recognizable man in the entire world and the greatest boxer if not athlete of all time and a racial pioneer, receives no acknowledgement from WCW or a graphic with his name on it or anything like that. That’s WCW for you though.
The freaking Honky Tonk Man is in WCW now and for some reason is the #1 contender to the TV Title. Also, in the pre match promos, Badd, the TV Champion, is holding the title that would become known as the Cruiserweight Title. Badd can’t talk…at all. Both get two promos for absolutely no apparent reason.
TV Title: Honky Tonk Man vs. Johnny B. Badd
Honky is billed from Honkyland USA which is about a million jokes that write themselves. Apparently the singer was named T. Graham Brown, a country singer that I doubt anyone north of Tennessee has ever heard of. Naturally WCW puts him in front of a crowd in a state that borders Canada and expects everyone to just know who that is. Still no recognition of Ali either.
We see a huge group of middle aged men in suits which makes me think this isn’t going to go well. Badd has in fangs and that confetti shooter. Again, this is the time period where he was portraying a gay man without saying that. Yes, shooing confetti is a great way to get cheers from the crowd. Honky stalls to start, as he’s from Memphis. He hasn’t been relevant in about four years at this point so of course he’s in a title match here.
Yeah that has nothing to do with Hogan at all. To the shock of no one, the fans are more or less dead. Oh the main event is a cage match too as I forgot to mention that. He’s the exact same worker that he was when he had the IC Title for a year, but minus the heat or anyone caring. He hits a chinlock so we go to a long shot of the crowd to break the boredom I guess.
Oh hey, ten minutes into the broadcast, Heenan mentions Ali, and WHAT A COINCIDENCE, he’s here! That shows that either WCW is freaking stupid or Ali isn’t as big of a star as he used to be. Ali would light the Olympic torch in less than two years in one of the greatest moments in sports history and in 1994 WCW has Honky Tonk Man opening a PPV. You figure out the right answer.
We get the standard announcement of five minutes left in the 10-15 minute TV Title matches. And it’s obvious now. Also, I love how the Television Title is being defended on a PPV broadcast but whatever. We hit out third chinlock of the match because it worked so well the first two times.
Orton has nothing on Honky. We get to the last minute of the match and Badd goes for the Kiss That Don’t Miss. Tony’s commentary here is kind of funny: “He’s going for the Kiss That Don’t Miss! He missed it!” Ok so that passes for funny to me here. They fight to the time limit and then Honky runs. This was brutally bad.
Rating: D. Seriously, the FREAKING HONKY TONK MAN was the best you could do here? Why? What possessed you to think this was a good idea? Who booked this? Honky wasn’t good in the ring more or less ever and was ok at best on the mic. To say he’s watered down here is an understatement as this was just awful and boring as hell to boot. This just made my head hurt.
We get a LONG recap of Flair vs. Hogan, which was based around Hogan’s knee being injured and a masked man running around attacking him. The masked man would wind up being Brutus Beefcake of all people and that was the main event of Starrcade, which was where Savage made his PPV debut. This was something that could have happened in the 70s for how basic it was, meaning it wasn’t that interesting at all.
Tag Titles: Stars N Stripes vs. Pretty Wonderful
Pretty Wonderful are the former champions here as Stars N Stripes beat them about a month earlier. Good night do those teams sound generic. Pretty Wonderful is made up of Pretty Paul Roma and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff. Stars N Stripes are Bagwell and the Patriot. I really am not looking forward to this. This just sounds like a bad match on an indy show or something like that.
Heenan suggests that the Patriot is Al Gore. Something tells me that Bobby is going to be all that gets me through this match and show. Bagwell was a five time champion with four different partners. That either says he’s a great tag wrestler or he has no direction so they kept throwing him in random tag teams because he had a big contract and they had nothing else to do with him.
You can tell the announcers are just bored to death as they’re arguing over what a tag is and then there’s something about Dennis Rodman. This is just BORING. They actually say this is the last night Hogan will face Flair. That’s just hilarious. They wrestled 15 years later and likely will in TNA also. They discuss the Lions’ Super Bowl chances. This is just amusing. Nothing at all is going on in the match.
They say that Tiger Stadium and Yankee Stadium are the last great ballparks. The real last great ballparks are the ones still in use today: Fenway and Wrigley. Heenan says that once all of the matches are over, no one is going to take a shower because they’ll all be watching the cage match.
Ok, number one, why does Heenan know the showering habits of the wrestlers and why would no one take a shower after their match when they have about an hour and a half before the main event? How clean do they like to get? The fans are more or less dead for this by the way. Bagwell hits the suplex and Wonderful hits an elbow on him to get the titles. This was somehow worse than the previous match.
Rating: D-. I have never cared less about a match than I did here. I’ve always thought Bagwell was hot and there’s a former Horseman in there though so it’s not a failure. The announcers were bored too as this was just bland as all hell.
They pointed out that Bagwell had been here last year at this time with a random partner, so of course WCW does the same thing here. The faces would get the titles back in a few weeks before losing them to some team called Harlem Heat who never did anything I’m sure.
Flair and Sherri say that Flair will win. Yeah Sherri is Flair’s manager here for no apparent reason. How much of Flair’s career has been lost because of having to job to Hogan? Oh and Mr. T. is the referee tonight for no reason other than he was involved with the WWF years ago so naturally he’s a huge deal still.
We recap Dave (called Evad, since he’s apparently dyslexic and that makes sense right?) vs. Kevin Sullivan. The Boston Midget was upset that Dave was a huge Hogan fan. This would evolve into the 3 Faces of Fear which would evolve into the Dungeon of Doom which would always suck.
Kevin Sullivan vs. Dave Sullivan
This is Dave’s theme music. I wish I was making this up.
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For those of you that couldn’t get through the whole thing, one of the lines here was “Always go swimming with a buddy, work hard in school and always study.” The scariest thing: someone was paid to write this. Someone made money from this!
So, they actually had a gimmick where a guy was a Hogan fan. That’s really the best that they could come up with. When Hogan becomes the top guy in a company, his ego knows no bounds. He’s also wearing yellow and red. Apparently Hogan gave Sullivan the boots he was wearing when he fought Andre at Mania. That made my head hurt from shaking it so hard. Dave somehow is worse than Hogan in the ring.
Thankfully Dave would retire eventually and become an athletic director at a small college in Nebraska. Even Nick Patrick is taller than Kevin. Ok, so there was a Hogan bandana brought in somehow. After a bit boot, Kevin holds it up as a peace offering but Dave isn’t sure.
THIS TAKES A FULL MINUTE AND A HALF. Literally, it goes on for ninety seconds of a minute and a half match. On the floor they “brawl” until Dave is thrown into the post and then rolls in any way to beat the count. I’m at a loss for keystrokes as to how bad this was.
Rating: F-. Just…no, in every sense of the word.
Oddly enough I have Smackdown on, and Michelle McCool looks DAMN good. That’s never happened before.
So there was this really bad stable called the Stud Stable that was just flat out terrible. Somehow Terry Funk was in it but whatever. Anyway, Dustin Rhodes was feuding with them because he needed his contract to run out so he could go be the far better character in Goldust. So what does he do? He asks the man that hated his father more than anyone else, Arn Anderson, to be his partner, because Anderson is such an angel.
After accepting, to the shock of no one at the PPV, he got turned on and beaten up by the Stable and Anderson. This led to War Games (Nasty Boys, Dustin and Dusty vs. Funk, Anderson, Bunkhouse Buck and Robert Parker. Oy.) which led to this, because the greatest gimmick match ever wasn’t good enough I guess.
Arn Anderson vs. Dustin Rhodes
Anderson is with Robert Parker and Meng, who is the newly found monster bodyguard. This show is just draining the life out of me with how stupid some of this stuff has been. The worst thing has easily been the theme music though. I mean it’s just so painfully stupid. No one cares about any of these matches either and there’s more or less nothing at all related to Halloween at all here.
Well if nothing else the guys here are ok so the match should be better. Oh hey Tommy Herns is here. Good to know. Well the fans are breathing here at least. Naturally Tony references things that happened in 1985 and 1987, because they’re perfectly relevant today right? These old and Southern guys know how to wrestle a decent match at least.
Rhodes works on the arm a lot, prompting Tony to say: It’s clear that Rhodes is working on the arm. I really, really hate commentators some times. They’re wrestling a far more technical and old school style here and it’s working rather well I’d think. There’s not a lot to note here but it’s coming off just fine with no glaring errors.
Arn gets control and goes for the DDT but it doesn’t work. He covers but uses the ropes which gets broken up by the referee, allowing Dustin to roll him up for the pin. Post match he gets the hell beaten out of him for his troubles.
Rating: B-. Not bad at all. It’s not great, but it’s by far and away the best match of the night thus far. Old school will work most of the time and it certainly did here. It’s not a great match by any means, but after some of the stuff I’ve had to sit through tonight, this was excellent. It held my interest if nothing else.
Hogan, Hart and Brutus get booed pretty loudly as they’re in the back. Brutus looks annoyed. He’s the Big Brother or something like that. In an odd line, Hogan says they tried to sneak in and he and Jimmy were camouflaged, but Brutus only tried to be camouflaged. That’s just odd as possible. They talk about Mr. T. potentially being bought off. Apparently Hank Aaron is there too. There’s no point to that but he’s there anyway.
Heenan says that Flair will win for about the 1000th time.
We recap Duggan vs. Austin. Yes, that Austin and that Duggan. Even back in 1994, Austin was cussing like no other and talking in the third person, so the gimmick was at least partially there. He was supposed to fight Steamboat for the title but since Steamboat was hurt, Austin was awarded the title. Duggan showed up and beat him in 30 seconds to win his only major singles title (not counting the TV Title that he claimed in 2000 or whenever which he never actually won).
Duggan was another guy that showed up and was considered a big deal despite having won one thing of note in seven years. When I say they recap it, they show the whole match which is a backdrop and a splash for the pin and the title. DAMN they had no idea what they had with Austin.
US Title: Jim Duggan vs. Steve Austin
Heenan calls Duggan the blue collar champion. The lines they say about Austin here amuse me to absolutely no end as more or less everything they say about Duggan would be what made Austin a legend in just three years or so. Austin is in black boots and black tights and he’s arguing with an old guy and cursing a lot. Yeah there’s no future in that at all. Duggan fights back with some very basic offense.
Austin is freaking tiny here with next to no muscle match. He looks like a shorter HHH when he first hit the big time. Austin takes over and just beats the hell out of Duggan for a bit which does nothing at all. This is a very formula based match and that’s fine I guess.
Duggan starts his comeback and sets for the Three Point Clothesline but Austin thinks he’s in a wrestling company that makes sense and backdrops Duggan over the top rope for the DQ which was always the dumbest rule in wrestling, keeping the title on Duggan who needed it SO much.
Austin was worthless in WCW after this, as he would be released in a few months before going to ECW and then the WWF, where the rest is history to say the least. In VHS exclusive interviews, Duggan says he’s happy and Austin says he’ll be back.
Rating: D+. What the hell man? Again, this was like the match didn’t even happen. It felt like it was over before it started but then again his career in WCW was over the second Hogan showed up because Austin was young and talented, so clearly he had no business being in WCW anymore. It was clear that the future was in guys like Orndorff and Duggan, who are both going to leave with titles. That’s not saying much is it?
Sting, in a tux of all things, comes out to talk about how he’s going to be here in the front row watching the main event and he goes to sit by Ali. Now THAT is cool. Think about it. You get to go and sit by the most famous athlete of all time. Of course Sting couldn’t wrestle. We of course can’t have the most popular guy in the company and one of the best workers of all time wrestling on a show where Hogan is the one retiring one of Sting’s big rivals now can we? That would just be stupid right?
Vader is apparently number one contender. We get a recap of Bash at the Beach where Vader beat Guardian Angel (Big Boss Man, ANOTHER Hogan guy) and then they feuded forever for no apparent reason, leading to this.
Guardian Angel vs. Vader
The Guardian Angels are an organization that are kind of like a citizen’s army but they have no weapons. They’re more or less unarmed policemen without any official authority. The group has been a big source of controversy as they have no authority and kind of seem like they’re undermining the police but that’s neither here nor there. It didn’t last long as he would be heel again in a few months anyway.
In a VERY cool moment, Vader, the monster heel and playing to the crowd as a heel, walks around the ring to where Ali and Sting are sitting. Remember that Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and severe brain damage at this point and likely doesn’t remember that he’s in Detroit let alone why he’s there.
Vader does his WHO’S THE MAN thing, then drops to a knee, does the Vader sign to Ali and says “You’re the man” to Ali who smiles and waves at him. That is just completely awesome on so many levels. To those of you that don’t know, Ali is more or less the most famous athlete in the history of the world, surpassing any soccer player or Yankee or Michael Jordan by far.
It is so cool to see one of the dominant big men in the sport at the time say screw the storylines or whatever and pay homage to a true legend like that. I am truly impressed with Vader and have about 100x more respect for him now. Oh yeah the match. While Vader is doing that, Race, his manager which I forgot to mention, jumps Boss Man and gets beaten up, likely to try to cover for the breaking of kayfabe that Vader is doing, which is perfectly fine for a change.
Oh and now the bell rings. Heenan’s voice is messing up because of the neck surgery he had. That was the main reason he left: insurance, which makes a lot of sense really. Since this is still in WCW, Vader is allowed to dominate. If this was in the WWF, Vader would have been pinned already. For the second time in about three minutes, Boss Man beats up Race.
He manages to slam Vader onto Race, which is kind of cruel when you think about it. Race was only 51 at this point so if he hadn’t gotten injured it’s perfectly possible that he could still have been wrestling a bit at this age, maybe in the indys somewhere. I’m liking Boss Man’s offense here as it’s all designed to work on big men, which is what it has to do here.
The slams work well here as Boss Man is just big and strong enough to make them look plausible. They mess up a clothesline spot where I think Boss Man forgot he was supposed to fall. Either that or he got hurt as he’s barely getting up at all. The Vader Bomb hits for two as I really thought that was the end of the match. That upgrades it by a bit I think.
Vader Bomb II gets knees and I’m far more into this than the crowd is. Boss Man hits a spinebuster which is called a sidewalk slam. The Boss Man Slam gets no count as Race jumps on the apron. He audibly shouts oh shit when Boss Man chases him. Vader catches him with a splash coming in for the pin. Vader goes and stands in front of Ali again in a nice little homage but yells at Sting to stay in character this time, which is fine as well.
Rating: B. It was a good old fashioned battle of the big men here, but you had two big men that could make such a match work which is all I could ask for here. It was just a power match but it worked very well. Also, Race helps a lot here as the interference helps things out very well as it makes perfect sense for him to be there and cheat. This was fun and the Ali thing helps a lot.
Thomas Hearns comes out and says nothing of note while sticking to the script very well.
Knobs and Sags say they’re ready for Buck and Funk.
Nasty Boys vs. Bunkhouse Buck/Terry Funk
I’m sure there will be a typo with the heels’ last names somewhere in here. Buck pretty much was just a guy that was a hillbilly but a heel and not that talented. Again, War Games can’t end a feud anymore apparently. The Nastys are from New York City now. Is that where teams move when their self named town goes away? The Dudleys moved there too. Sags has a pumpkin to try to make this a Halloween themed show.
Terry Funk is the best technical wrestler in here and it’s the 1990s. What does that tell you? Heenan has already messed the names up once. First person to spot a wrestling move here wins. They do the Pit Stop which brings more cursing from Funk.
Shockingly, we have a ton of brawling and Funk hits himself with a chair a bunch of times. This is just a waste of time and a hardcore match or something like that. When Buck tries to use a foreign object of some kind, Meng hits Funk by mistake and a piledriver on a pumpkin ends this.
Rating: D. Even at nearly seven and a half minutes, this wasn’t a match but just a brawl, which I have no interest in. Buck was a guy that was boring beyond belief and no one cared, but he was a southern hillbilly so he always had a job.
We go to the ring where Bill Shaw, the president of WCW who gives Ali a check for his charity. Ok, this has nothing to do with Ali but it’s a great example of why WCW sucked so much for so long. WHO IN THE HELL IS BILL SHAW??? For those of you that don’t want to look him up, he was the president of TBS at the time. This would be like a guy from USA being on TV but not in a storyline or anything, but rather just there because he’s an executive from USA.
We have no reason to care about him or Bill Watts or anyone like that. See, Vince had guys like Jack Tunney or Gorilla Monsoon do this role. They were guys that were on the payroll but has no official authority. Do you know what happened? THEY WORKED! No one cares about Bill Shaw and no one has a damn clue who he is, so naturally he’s put in front of a camera because he works for a channel that this show isn’t even on.
ANYWAY, thankfully the next guy to get that job, Eric Bischoff, is there also and gives an award to Ali for his work with the youth of America. Ali shakes his hand and poses a bit, but never actually talks. That’s not being rude from WCW mind you. Ali was in such bad shape that it would be embarrassing for him to address the crowd here. That’s just very sad, and this was probably the best he would look for the rest of his life.
Bobby and Tony talk about the main event and that no one, not even the Yankees have been world champions 11 times. That’s true. It was about 20 at the time. Hogan does a traditional big match interview that’s very toned down. I love how Tony is a Hulkamaniac all of a sudden when Hogan has been in the company all of three months here.
WCW World Title: Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair
It’s in a cage, it’s loser retires and Mr. T. is the referee. I guess the overbooking wasn’t just an NWO thing. We have a HUGE Hogan Sucks chant before the match that doesn’t exist because everyone LOVES Hogan remember? We get about a million veiled WWF references which is just known as some place at some time here. Buffer doing the introductions ups the value of the product about 1000%. Heenan: “This is a match everyone wants to see but I don’t think anyone wants to see this.”
Hogan has dropped about 40 pounds off his standard weight, proving what steroids do for you. Cena is by far more muscular right now than Hogan was at this point. Hell Sheamus might be. The arms are twigs here which is the biggest difference. They actually try to make Mr. T. seem like a celebrity. He’s of course booed as he hasn’t meant anything in about 10 years at this point, much like Hogan today.
The cage, which looks like it’s about to fall apart, is lowered down and we waste time by having the crew attach it to the ring. They’re really trying to make this out to be an epic match, which is the point I guess. They do have one thing right though: they were the first to have the big match between these two, not Vince. Oh and remember, T might have been bought off by Flair but there’s no actual proof of it.
He and Hogan are about to fight maybe three minutes into it, I’m assuming over who made Stallone look better. Nick Bockwinkle, who was commissioner despite having absolutely nothing to do with WCW ever and was fired for forgetting the name of the PPV he was at in a few months, is at ringside with a clipboard. You know, because he, a wrestler, had no business doing the presentation earlier.
Hogan’s knee, which was the selling point of the match, isn’t even mentioned for about five minutes or so but there we go as I type this. We get a random as hell Horseman sign which wouldn’t be around for nearly a year. T of course keeps messing things up because that’s all he’s good for here.
We go into a standard Flair match which is fine as it means that everything should be fine. Tony talking about Hulkamania is just kind of pathetic as he’s just miles behind Monsoon and Heenan with it. Why do we always have to see Flair’s ass?
I think getting out of the cage means nothing here. Either that or the announcers are freaking morons as Flair tries to go over the top and they wonder why he’s doing that. Mr. T. cannot count to save his life. They try to cover that but it just fails.
There’s no point to having him there, which of course they can’t just say that because there’s a great point to having him there. I have no idea what that is, but according to WCW we should see it right away so there we are. Flair finally gets Hogan down and works on the knee. This is an interesting situation here as both guys are known for having their own style of match and just plugging someone else into their formula to get their standard match out of it.
The good thing here though is that Hogan is being plugged into Flair’s formula, which is by far and away the better choice and it’s making this a decent match. Heenan’s rants against Hogan and T’s completely abysmal performance out there are balancing each other out though. Oh shut up Capetta with the time thing. No one buys that at all in anything other than a TV Title match. Flair gets the figure four to a big pop. That doesn’t exist though remember? Only Hogan can get pops.
Hogan gets out and T gets bumped, this making the match much better. Flair beats him up so we have a clear designation on where T lies. Sherri tries to climb in but Jimmy tries to stop her, but only gets her dress. The reaction from him is hilarious as he sees it in his hands and looks like he’s saying if I’ve got this then…OH SHIT! She beats him up anyway which puts Jimmy back in his element.
He’s very underrated for his career resume I think. Sting jumps the railing and stops her from getting in but we have a masked man from under the ring to beat Sting up. Sherri and the masked guy hit the cage as the fans are INTO this. The heels cuff T to the ropes and a lead pipe, the masked man’s weapon, shot to the head have Hogan down. Hogan of course Hulks Up to a mini pop. Ok make that a big ass pop as the fans are here for the comeback if nothing else.
The fans boo T waking up. Hogan beats the hell out of Sherri, even hitting the big boot on her. Hogan initiates his ending sequence and drags Flair to where T is cuffed so he can count the pin to a HUGE pop. Flair would of course be back in a few months because this is pro wrestling.
Post match, Hogan shakes hands with Ali which is classy if nothing else. Heenan is nearly in tears. It never gets old to me when Hogan turned heel and Heenan keeps saying he told us so. That’s just hilarious on a lot of levels. While Hogan is posing, the Masked Man comes back and stands behind Hogan for at least 8 seconds with the pipe pulled back but never swings it, because that makes perfect sense right?
Hogan avoids it and beats on him for awhile before pulling the mask with Heenan screaming that it’s Anderson and it’s Brutus which stuns the crowd. He gets his like 10th name as Heenan says he’s butchered a friendship. Tony says the building is shaking, “like an avalanche”, which makes no sense but then John “Earthquake” Tenta debuts to beat up Hogan along with Beefcake and Kevin Sullivan, completing the Hogan Circle of Friendship.
Sting runs out to make the save as the commentators’ mics mess up I think. Heenan insists the masked man was under the ring all day despite us seeing Brutus a few times already.
Over a year and a half later, Hogan would say that he sent Brutus in as a spy, which made sense then as the stable he was spying on was well established, but now seeing this, it makes NO SENSE as the stable that evolved into the one he was spying on didn’t even form until after Hogan had made him a spy. That’s Hogan’s “creative” input for you though.
Rating: B+. This was very solid and it’s Mr. T. that holds it back. It finished the angle and started a new one which is all you can ask for from a PPV main event. It worked well as it was Flair running things and putting Hogan over which he didn’t need but that’s what you’re always going to get I guess. This was a good cage match where the gimmick helped a good amount. This was fine and I liked it quite a bit. Not enough to save the show, but a good match.
Overall Rating: D+. This just wasn’t a good show at all. There are two or three good matches, but only one means anything and the rest are so bad that they bring the rest of the show down. Seriously, the Sullivan showdown? The show just isn’t that good which I guess can be attributed to Hogan taking over.
Let’s go with this: three months ago, the midcard was focused on guys like Ricky Steamboat (41 so certainly still someone that had a lot of miles left and still better than 90% of the wrestlers in the world), Mick Foley (29 at the time and a completely revolutionary character to say the least) and Steve Austin (30 and with the character that would make him a legend being created very clearly in front of our eyes).
Instead they’ve been replaced with Earthquake, Jim Duggan and Paul Orndorff. Oh and Brutus Beefcake is main eventing the biggest show of the year now. Yeah, Hogan didn’t change a THING. To anyone that thinks TNA isn’t going to be harmed by Hogan taking over, I present to you Exhibit A. Watch the main event which is on a DVD somewhere but other than that take a pass.
