WCW, for me, wasn't a rival wrestling promotion to WWF; it was an alternate reality. Here's professional wrestling - but in a universe where hype videos didn't evolve properly, where Hulk Hogan never stopped being relevant, and where sometimes they put two steel cages together for some reason. Growing up in the UK, I didn't know people who exclusively or predominantly watched WCW, but there was a channel that showed Nitro (one hour before Raw, on Fridays) so I can assume they existed. I changed over to that channel once and Ric Flair was forming a tag team with his twelve-year-old son. Never again. My brother once got WCW/nWo Revenge for the N64 and I experienced the same existential horror that characters in The Mist do when something with a hundred legs and fifty eyes lays eggs in their thigh. Still, Rey Mysterio looked cool. Looking back at WCW therefore means it doesn't have the same protective, nostalgic shield that WWF from the same period does, but it does have the novelty of being familiar but just a little bit off. That basically summarises Halloween Havoc, or most WCW pay-per-views, for me: there's some (very) good, some (very) bad, but the main feeling I get is one of... oddness. It's like I'm tapping into the mind of my alternate self who grew up watching WCW, who drinks Pepsi, and who can grow a full beard. If I watched too much, the two realities might clash and I might have an aneurysm.
I'll point out the ways I think WCW was, or is, superior to WWF as we go. In 2017, we get WWE presents WWE Cars on the Road: Pedal to the Metal, featuring a set that an intern's left a spare tire on - if you're lucky. Put this show on for five seconds and you'll see gravestones, a giant fucking pumpkin, and graphics being flown onto the screen by witches and-- well, you're not going to confuse it for Christmas Chaos, are you? Bring back Backlash! Bring back the giant swinging blades!
Another difference I'd have found weird at the time but wouldn't seem out of place now: commentary teams that are more than two people. At this time, commentary to me would have been Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler. It just was. You should have seen my face when Paul Heyman showed up on Raw one night. Tonight, you have a grand total of four commentators, most of whom are decent in their own right, but who only talk over matches three at a time, which is a blessing. Bobby Heenan has, for obvious reasons, had his praises sung to high heavens recently, and rightfully so. A personal favourite touch: how he didn't suddenly change his opinion on Hulk Hogan after Hogan turned heel but instead pointed out that Hogan had, as Heenan had always pointed out, being a snake all along. Mike Tenay is one of the more underrated announcers in the business. That guy was a trooper to stick with TNA for as long as he did (a sentence that admittedly applies to a lot of people).
Something I often note about WCW is how costume designers whose sole source of inspiration was apparently Mortal Kombat. The most notable thing about what is by all means not a bad first match between Yuji Nagata and Ultimo Dragon is that Nagata comes out dressed in what I can only describe as Sub Zero's alternate outfit. Perhaps the most surprising aspect is that it goes about ten minutes, which is at least five more than I was expecting. I like how Nagata got a little bonus for badly injuring his opponent. That’s cute.
Something especially weird about WCW was how they used Chris Jericho’s WWF music before Jericho was ever in the WWF. Either that or it’s been dubbed into the Network version of the show, and surprising well. That’s all beside the point, which is this: Jericho fights a man dressed as a banana, who has a really good show of it. We do get treated a few pre-WWF Jericho trademarks, like the deadlift powerbomb, which is apparently easier to do on a banana than it is Kane. There’s also his patented botched top rope frankensteiner, notable because it makes you worry that both participants might have landed on their god damn heads.
There are certain areas where I just have to be a bigger man and admit WCW had the right idea. Light heavyweights had some underrated matches. You're not going to find me saying X-Pac, Jeff Hardy, Christian or even Scotty 2 Hotty are bad wrestlers. That said, you're also not going to find me saying they were producing anything close to Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero's level. That said, you're also not going to find me saying that many wrestlers produce anything close to the classic that Mysterio and Guerrero produce on this show.
I don’t like matches where masks are at stake because I think they make the winners obvious nine times out of ten. Rey Mysterio’s WCW music is obviously supposed to evoke mystery - because of his name, innit - but it’s so slow and ponderous and unfitting. Those are the two criticisms I can summon for his match. No hot take here: this match is revered as one of the best ever, and that's because it's one of the best ever. It starts at 100mph and it does not let up. It’s hard-hitting, it’s high-flying, it’s near-flawless. A personal favourite moment is Mysterio’s corkscrew moonsault headbutt, as Mike Tenay refers to it, because I’m pretty sure it’s a botch but it might well not be because it looks absolutely incredible. The main reason I wanted to watch this pay-per-view is because it’s the twentieth anniversary of this match. Come for the wacky Rey Mysterio costume, stay for the wrestling clinic.
Speaking of which, Mongo is not a good wrestler but people popped for his tombstone. They might have popped more for Goldberg kicking the shit out of him but a) it looked terrible and b) it was embarrassing the lengths to which the referee went to ignore said shit-kicking, looking directly at Goldberg several times and then pretending not to have seen him.
WrestleZone alum (seriously) Disco Inferno early in the evening says he’ll fight a woman and, later in the night, fights Jacqueline. A man of his word was ol’ Glenn. The match itself is… lengthy. Probably unnecessarily so. Points for Disco actually selling, and I will say that it was actually rather enjoyable.
Curt Hennig is so good. I remember immediately thinking he was a badass when I saw him hanging in the Royal Rumble with Triple H and Steve Austin, which is odd to look back on now. His match with Ric Flair was, predictably, a lot of fun. At one point, Flair uses his robe as a sort of power-up and Hennig sells a chop by doing a standing somersault. That tells you most of what you’d need to know about this one. It’s unclear why Flair intentionally gets himself disqualified or why WCW referees stop him from beating up a member of the nWo. It’s probably not a good sign when your commentators start several sentences with, “I don’t understand why…”
It’s difficult to take Larry Zybsko seriously ever since Jericho mugged him off so thoroughly in his first book. It’s always nice to see alternate universe Razor Ramon, accompanied by alternate universe 1-2-3 Kid. It’s rarely nice to see Lex Luger, who’s accompanied by a preposterous fireworks display. Listen, the sight of Luger triggered some sort of instinctive glazing over and I’d lost interest by the finish. Scott Hall’s music was playing so I’ll just assume he won by raw sexual magnetism.
It’s weird for someone to become your favourite wrestler in retrospect. You wouldn’t say that about an actor or a musician, but my favourite wrestlers are typically people who I watched wrestle at the peak of their career. Diamond Dallas Page was someone who I went back to after seeing them at very much not the peak of the career, after disbelievingly discovering that he was WCW champion from a documentary, and became a fan of after watching matches like this. Like with music, there’s little joy like discovering a great new artist and being able to wander through an extensive back catalogue at your leisure. If I remember correctly, a recurring motif between these DDP and Randy Savage was them putting each other through tons and tons of scenery. It was definitely a motif tonight. Getting put through styrofoam gravestones must be one of the roughest bumps going. A great match ending with a fake Sting hitting DDP in the ribs with a baseball bat is about as WCW as it gets.
WWF's 1996 commissioner, as I would have had Roddy Piper described if I'd asked my brothers who he was at the time, is apparently challenging Hulk Hogan, the WCW champion, but not for the WCW title. Hogan is the champion but Roddy has the title. WCW’s quite light on my favourite thing about wrestling - recap packages - so I’m not quite sure why. Something about legal challenges, I dunno. I had absolutely no idea who Roddy Piper was when he turned at WrestleMania 19 and started beating people with a pipe. I've since seen It's Always Sunny and They Live, and love the man, but can you imagine how confusing that was to me at the time? It was unclear why these guys were fighting, unclear what they were fighting for, unclear what the rules of the match were - not helped by Michael Buffer saying “the survivor will be the winner” - and it was unclear why there were so many people dressed up as Sting. At one point, Randy Savage jumps from the top of the cage and hits no-one. Roddy won with a sleeper, which I wasn’t sure was possible, to little fanfare, and much confusion. Hogan puts on a Sting mask. A “fan” wearing Sting facepaint jumps in the ring and Hogan and Savage beat him up. That’s how the show goes off air. It’s all distinctly terrible, and confusing, and frustrating.
MVP would probably have to go to Randy Savage, who cut several good promos throughout the night, had the only match that came close to Mysterio/Guerrero, and dove off the full height of the cage for no apparent reason. Not bad for a forty-five year old.
Although my childhood, or the early parts of it, might have been cruelly devoid of Diamond Dallas Page and Rey Mysterio, it was also blessedly devoid of Mongo, Lex Luger and five hundred damn Stings who may or may not have been on Hulk Hogan’s side. On the strength - or lack thereof - of that ending alone, I feel like I was on the right side of the dimensional rift.
