Revisiting WCW’s Halloween Havoc ‘94 spectacular — back when pro wrestling wasn’t afraid to be spooky AND silly!
WCW Halloween Havoc ‘94 is one of those things that will appeal to a VERY niche group of people and absolutely no one else. And that’s the point; pro wrestling in general isn’t for everybody, and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1994 was appetizing to even fewer people than that.
You get the feeling that WCW was content being a distant second promotion behind the WWF juggernaut in the early ‘90s. One of the things that WCW did do to make itself stand out from the competition, though, was host an annual Pay-Per-View extravaganza called Halloween Havoc, which, as the name suggests, was a tribute to all things creepy, kooky and patently ridiculous.
The first few Havocs were amazing in the worst possible way. The sets were populated with crappy looking styrofoam tombstones, the announcers wore absurd costumes and most of the matches were saddled with borderline insane gimmicks — including a match one year where the only way to win was to electrocute your opponent in “an electric chair” (read: a regular old chair with some sparklers shooting out of it.)
So of course I looked forward to this nonsense every year when I was a kid. How could I not?
Halloween Havoc ‘94 is something of a turning point for WCW. By now Hulk Hogan had signed with the promotion and the new company leadership was poised to start challenging the WWF monolith for real in the ratings (long story short, it’d take a few more years but it eventually happened.) So this year’s Halloween Havoc was a bit more subdued than the events of years past … but that doesn’t mean it was devoid of several awesome and preposterous moments.
In fact, I can think of at least five of them off the top of my head …
THE OPENING MATCH!
WCW was behind the times in ‘94. To give you an idea just how stuck in the past the company was, look no further than the Halloween Havoc curtain jerker. Remember, this was a show that aired months after Kurt Cobain died, when gangsta rap and grunge were still the pop cultural vanguard. So naturally, that meant WCW was going to give us a clone of Elvis wrestling a clone of Little Richard. To be fair, The Honky Tonk Man and Johnny B. Badd (which isn’t even the RIGHT pioneering rock and roll musician, for crying out loud) are accomplished pro wrestling icons, but seeing caricatures of holdovers from the ‘50s duking it out for supremacy in 1994 is kinda like seeing next year’s WrestleMania headlined by a Phil Collins wannabe and a ripoff of Boy George. Which, I know, would be awesome, but it’s kinda’ besides the point here.
THE FANS!
A lot of times the only thing more outrageous and animated than the wrestlers at a mid-‘90s WCW show are the people in the audience. And Halloween Havoc ‘94 did not disappoint in that regard. For example, there’s this one middle-aged woman in the audience who is absolutely mugging the camera for all its worth — even Blanche from Golden Girls would be telling her to dial down the thirst a little. There’s another dude in the crowd dressed like Hulk Hogan who looks insanely like the real Hulk Hogan, to the point the cameraman has no choice but to zoom in on him a couple of times because the likeness is that uncanny. And if that wasn’t enough, guess who is sitting front row and seeming to legitimately enjoy all of the shenanigans on display? None other than boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who looked unironically so happy to be there witnessing all of this cartoonish tomfoolery.
THE MAN MEAT!
One of the things I don’t like about modern wrestling is pretty superficial and petty. But hey, it’s true: compared to the titans of my youth, today’s pro wrestlers are maddeningly tiny. Well, that’s not the case for our co-co-main event matchup, which pits Vader — he of the Big Van variety, no relation to Darth — against The Guardian Angel (who used to be called “The Big Boss Man” in the WWF, but hey, you’ve got to do something to work around those pesky trademark issues, don’t you?) Pretty much all you need to know here is that the Angel is well over 300 pounds and he’s still visually smaller than Vader, who had to have been a legit 400-pounds-plus at this point in the his career. This is basically King Kong versus Godzilla if they were people. And they weren’t really trying to hurt each other. But they still wanted it to look really rad and brutal to everybody watching, anyway.
PUMPKIN-RELATED VIOLENCE!
The co-main event of Halloween Havoc ‘94 saw the tag team of the Nasty Boys (and one look at them and you’ll KNOW why they’re called that) taking on the tag team of Bunkhouse Buck and Terry Funk. Pretty much all you need to know here is that not only do the Nasty Boys bring Halloween masks of Beavis and Butt-Head to the ring with them, they also bring a real, full-sized Jack O Lantern, too. And since it’s a show literally called “Halloween Havoc,” of course the match ends with the aforementioned Funk getting piledriven on said Jack O Lantern and sending an explosive blast of gourd fruit all over the front row like it was a Gallagher concert or something. Of course, WCW being WCW, nobody in the announce booth makes an obvious “Smashing Pumpkins” pun, which is to be expected, sadly.
MR. T, FOOL!
OK, so the main event should be remembered for pitting Hulk Hogan against Ric Flair in a “loser must retire for real, we’re super duper serious this time” match inside a steel cage. It’s a big deal, considering Hogan and Flair were pretty much the Jason and Freddy of pro wrestling in the ‘80s. And while the match is pretty entertaining, pretty much the only thing non-fans are going to notice about it is the guest appearance of MR. T as the special appointed referee for the all important championship contest. This would’ve made a lot of sense in 1984, when The A-Team was still on TV, but trotting out Mr. T as your people-will-pay-money-for-this celebrity attraction in 1994 is downright baffling. Still, it does a pretty good job hamming it up for the soirée, and you gotta dig that rad Detroit Red Wings windbreaker he sported to the ring. Which kinda begs the question: since the show was held in WCW and Robocop is canonically on their payroll, what stopped him from making a quick cameo that evening?
