WCW Halloween Havoc: 1989-1994

For you wrestling fans out there, maybe the VHS box art will refresh your memory even more of one of the coolest wrestling pay-per-views from back when I was a young street tough…. HALLOWEEN HAVOC!

1989

To be honest, I’m not too familiar with the inaugural edition of the show. I wasn’t really into wrestling until 1990 and before that I pretty much only knew about the WWF’s cast of cartoon wrestlers. I didn’t see this until a couple of years later.

Match Highlights:

Lex Luger vs. Brian Pillman – Fantastic match with Luger defending the United States title against Pillman. This was one of those matches that really made you think Luger had “it”. He didn’t, of course, it was his opponents that usually did.

Ric Flair & Sting vs. The Great Muta & Terry Funk – Ah, the Thunderdome Match. A fun, goofy gimmick match to cap off Halloween Havoc.

1990

I have a lot of fond memories of this pay-per-view because I was so into the hype for it at the time. How could our superhero world champion Sting possibly overcome the odds against the unstoppable monster Sid Vicious?

Match Highlights:

The Steiner Brothers vs. The Nasty Boys – United States tag team title match. Yes, the Steiners were so good they got a great non-brawling match out of the sloppy Nasty Boys. I think the Hart Foundation is the only other team to do so. Pretty much the swan song for the Nasties in WCW, they shortly popped up in WWF.

Doom vs. Ric Flair & Arn Anderson – World tag titles. I can’t remember the details, but I was really into this Doom/Four Horsemen feud. I thought it was really cool to see heel vs. heel, or as I would have called it then — “rulebreaker vs. rulebreaker”.

Lex Luger vs. Stan Hansen – I HATED Stan Hansen, he was such a disgusting looking and acting man, surely the company’s #2 superhero “good guy” come overcome him? Nope. Shockingly, Hansen won the U.S. title from Luger, and shockingly, he did it convincingly. I was DISTRAUGHT over this one.

Sting vs. Sid Vicious – World title. Sting *almost* lost. The Four Horsemen concocted a plan to switch Horsemen member Barry Windham with Sting during the middle of the match and have him let Vicious pin him. The real Sting was able to make his way to the ring though and ended up beating Vicious. Kinda silly looking back, but at the time, I ate it up.

WCW Halloween Havoc

Being a wrestling fan, I cannot put off discussing the obvious this month — World Championship Wrestling’s Halloween Havoc pay-per-view! Halloween Havoc is dead and gone and so is WCW (bought from AOL Time Warner by World Wrestling Entertainment in 2001), but back when I was a young misfit, this was one of my favorite PPVs each year and it was certainly one of WCW’s signature events.

Halloween Havoc was WCW’s annual October (duh!) PPV and it always featured some cool props. For instance, the first year or two, the ring canvas was orange, which was just so cool when any other time of the year all you ever got to see was a blue or gray canvas. WCW also did a pretty good job of making the entrance look really fun and spooky with tombstones, skeletons and what have you throughout the years. People knock WCW for their low-budget and technical mishaps, but they usually hit the nail on the head for the look of the show up until the late ’90s.

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the very first Halloween Havoc, but the first show I remember is the 1990 edition where Sting defended the world title against Sid Vicious (not the punk rocker!). I didn’t see the show (I wouldn’t get PPVs until later in the year when I discovered an old black & white UHF TV we had could pick them up for free), but I remember being on pins & needles wondering if Sting walked out that Sunday evening with the belt still in his possession.

In those days, if I didn’t catch the show, there was no way of knowing the details until the next batch of wrestling shows come around, which in the case of WCW, wouldn’t be until the following Saturday! Then, if I wanted an even more in-depth analysis, I’d have to wait about a month or two until the wrestling magazines covered it with a more unbiased eye (would I would usually beg my mom to buy me on our weekly trip to the grocery store). Then, it’d be maybe 3-4 months before the show would be released on VHS so I could FINALLY see it for myself.

At first, WCW tried to do gimmick matches that would fit the Halloween/horror theme of the show like 1990’s Thunderdome match, 1991’s “Chamber of Horrors” match and 1992/1993’s “Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal” match but once the mid-90s hit, the Halloween theme because less and less important. It had really been reduced to being just another WCW pay-per-view by then, but the show gave me a lot of great memories as a kid and even creeped me out with this promo for the 1990 show:

I intend to get a bit more in-depth with the shows later in the month, but until then, you can get your pro wrestling & Halloween fix by reading these:

Monsters of Wrestling
Monsters of Wrestling II
Monsters of Wrestling III

Where’s the love for Galoob’s WCW action figures?

By the dawn of the 1990s, the World Wrestling Federation was firmly entrenched in action figure business. They already had one successful line from LJN that ran from 1984-1989 and they quickly ran to Hasbro for their second line that ran from 1990-1994.

But what about WCW? They never seemed to have quite the same merchandising aspirations in those days that the WWF did. Or, perhaps it was interest from vendors that was lacking (WCW was a distant second in popularity to WWF in those days)? Well, the stars aligned in 1990 because we not only had Hasbro’s WWF line, but we ended up with WCW line of figures produced by Galoob.

As much as I loved the then-current WWF line, many of those figures were goofy, clunky and not well sculpted. I blame most of this on the action features each figure had (Hasbro would continue to recycle those very same action features/body sculpts for new figures up until the day the line died). In short, the action features prevented those toys from becoming good action figures.

For the sake of simplicity, and more likely monetary reasons, the WCW line featured no cute little movements. These figures were rock solid pieces of plastic pre-posed for your convenience– Arn Anderson was sculpted perfectly to deliver a classic “Double A” spinebuster to his foes or even a DDT, if you preferred! I thought the sculpts were great, there was a lot of realism and detail to these figures that the cartoony WWF line couldn’t compete with and their poses didn’t seem out of character as was the case with many of the WWF figures.

One other neat thing about the WCW figures is that they ALL came with a championship belt. Nice touch, so if you only had one WCW figure, you’d at least always have a WCW World champion of your very own.

Sadly, like all good things in life tend to do, the line left us way too soon. We only got a “Series I” here in the States featuring these figures: Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Sting (two color variations), Lex Luger, Sid Vicious, Barry Windham, Brian Pillman, Tom Zenk, Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner, Ron Simmons and Butch Reed. I really wanted to add Windham, Zenk and Pillman to my collection as well, but I could never find them. Zenk and Pillman were one of my favorite teams back in the day (they were young high-flyers) and I wanted Windham to complete the Four Horsemen group.

Some of these figures were also packaged in tag team sets: Flair/Anderson, Sting/Luger, Rick & Scott Steiner (Rick had a color variation) and Doom (Reed/Simmons). Not sure why they didn’t release the remaining four figures as teams. Zenk & Pillman were regular partners (once winning the United States tag team championship together!) and Windham & Vicious were members of the Four Horsemen group alongside Flair & Anderson.

Not my photo, but subtract Pillman and add Arn, that's my whole collection.

The line was also released in the UK in 1991, but their series was a bit different. They had El Gigante, Big Josh, Dustin Rhodes, Michael Hayes, Jimmy Garvin, a Hayes/Garvin team set and two new sculpts of Sting and Luger. All of that was in addition to getting the entire U.S. line, with the exception of Tom Zenk and Butch Reed.

Seriously, why would the UK get an exclusive release of a Texas wrestler?

There was also the “Slam-Action Wrestling Arena” to host your WCW battles. The ring was pretty cheap though. In fact, come to think of it, I think I got it from Big Lots, so that should tell you something right there. The ropes were never tight, the cage was always falling off and the mat had no give! Yes, I know it’s plastic, but the WWF ring wasn’t hard as stone and when you figures would drop to the mat, there was a nice sound that carried. Plus, that weird springboard feature didn’t seem to work so well given that the figures were so heavy. The ring bell was a nice touch though.

So the line wasn’t a runaway hit, but as you can see, they selected well from the roster and the designs were really good. I got many years of enjoyment out of those figures and I still own them all. They may be scuffed and have paint wearing thin in some places, but at least they aren’t chipped or have had a finger break off like some of my WWF toys!

WCW wouldn’t try out their own action figure line for another 7 years or so once this line folded, during the late ’90s wrestling boom. Those figures were garbage and I was too old/cool to be messing with ‘em anyway, so we won’t get into that mess.

Thanks to FigureRealm.com for the use of some of these images!

WWE Judgment Day 2009 Predictions

Judgment Day looks like a solid, if not fresh, show. We’ve seen various versions of Orton/Batista, Edge/Hardy, Christian/Swagger and Cena/Show over the past few weeks, months and even years (!!!) but at least the non-RAW will be solid.

Bold is my predicted winner.

WWE Championship Match
Randy Orton (c) vs. Batista

Much like everything else in this lame Legacy/McMahons feud, this will suck. I suspect HHH will make a “brave” and miraculous return (keep in mind a kick to the head kept Batista out for MONTHS) and will accidentally or not so accidentally cost Batista the win and the belt.

World Heavyweight Championship Match
Edge (c) vs. Jeff Hardy

We’ve seen this match way too much lately, and while they haven’t really delivered a blow-away match like I thought they would, the matches have been good. I think it’s time to remove Jeff from all these title matches though since it’s obvious they don’t actually plan to put the belt on him anytime soon. He’s becoming this generation’s Lex Luger.

ECW Championship Match
Christian (c) vs. Jack Swagger

These two have great chemistry and I’m a fan of both, though I’m actually starting to like Swagger more. Well, all the brands’ main titles changed hands last month, so I’ll keep with the tradition of my two previous predictions and go for the trick shot and say all the champs retain this month.

John Cena vs. Big Show

Yeah, yeah, Cena’s supposed to be filming another movie or whatever, but I’m still predicting a win for him. They can do another more serious injury angle (more serious than being thrown though a 1.21 gigawatt spotlight) anytime afterward to put the heat back on Show. Plus, with the two heel champs retaining, the crowd needs a little something to be happy about.

Intercontinental Championship Match
Rey Mysterio (c) vs. Chris Jericho

Jericho seems to be the Smackdown whipping boy right now, but I have a feeling that it’s only temporary and the second half of 2009 will be a great one for Jericho. I’m guessing we’ll eventually get a full blown conspiracy-mode Jericho again and he’ll try to collect on Rey’s mask as another “trophy”, but first, Rey scores a win that pushes Jericho over the edge…

CM Punk vs. Umaga

Umaga is in desperate need of something to make him look like a serious threat again. Injuris and just sloppy and forgetful booking has ruined him on Smackdown, but a brutal beatdown on Punk should put him back on track.

John Morrison vs. Shelton Benjamin

They seem determined to make Morrison one of the new faces of WWE. I’m okay with that, I think it’s time for a lot of time to sink or swim for a lot of their younger talent. See what catches on and see what bombs. Morrison definitely is an entertaining performer, but lacks personality. He did fine as a part of MNM, but his Jim Morrison delivery was stilted and this past Friday his lines sounded like he had learned them while attending Vanilla Babyface 101. Oh well, at Judgment Day, he’ll get the chance to say “GOTCHA!” to Shelton.

WWE Backlash 2009 Predictions

Bold is my predicted winner.

World Heavyweight Championship (Last Man Standing Match)
John Cena (c) vs. Edge

Hm. That match that should have taken place at WrestleMania. These guys have great chemistry together and their promo on Smackdown a few weeks ago was gold. I have no doubt this is going to be a very entertaining match and that Edge will bring a title home to Smackdown.

…if CM Punk doesn’t cash in. Cashing in at the end of (during?) a last man standing match would be a perfect time to do it. >=)