10 Worst Wrestling Matches In Halloween Havoc History
Ill-advised rematches, terrible costumes, boredom, egos, and pumpkins.
At its best, Halloween Havoc allowed WCW - and later, NXT - to mix their wrestling product with funny costumes and daft stipulations. Halloween - like wrestling - should be fun, and the finest matches in the PPV’s history achieved this. At its worst, Halloween Havoc produced, well, this lot.
Like a lot of WCW’s material, Halloween Havoc was often a half hearted affair. They’d dress Tony Schiavone up as a ghost or a monster, stick some plastic pumpkins on the entrance ramp, and call it a day. Many of the event's worst moments aren’t down to goofy, seasonal business - they’d be boring any time of the year.
More enjoyable - but equally bad - are the horror-themed matches that the bookers sometimes felt obliged to slot into the event. There can’t be many shows that boast so many legendarily bad bouts as Halloween Havoc; there’s some genuinely astonishingly bad stuff in there.
A decade of Halloween Havoc gave WCW plenty of time to put on some appalling wrestling content, for all manner of reasons - lazy performers, oversized egos, ambition outstripping reach. They put on some horror shows, alright, but not for the reason they hoped.
10. Chamber Of Horrors Match (1991)
This gimmick-laden encounter is one of the most legendarily bad matches in wrestling history, but its reputation is a little unfair. While it’s certainly goofy, embarrassing, and objectively not a good wrestling match, to lump it in with the very worst of wrestling is unfair; it’s not even the worst match on this card.
That said, it’s absolutely a terrible match, doomed to fail from the off. The concept is a non-starter: 14(!) superstars pile into the ring, complete with extra large cage. After a while, an electric chair descends from the roof. Your task is to force a member of the opposing seven man team into the chair, then flip the switch.
The is described by the announcer as a “fatal lever” - so, for clarity, your goal is to murder one of your colleagues. It’s Abdullah The Butcher who winds up eating the volts; for some reason they decide to have his teammate Cactus Jack flip the switch in error, and Sting’s team win the day.
Abdullah sells this for all of five seconds before storming off, laying into the white coat-wearing creeps (“the ghouls”, per Tony Schiavone) and making his exit. Best of all, the match uses up most of the fed’s A list talent, leaving the rest of the show pretty light. It’s absolutely not boring, but it’s dumber than dumb.