Every WCW Halloween Havoc Ranked Worst To Best

Yetis, electrocutions, and Cruiserweight classics: Halloween Havoc was a riot.

Article lead image
WWE

Professional wrestling once again dips into the WCW nostalgia well this week as NXT revives Halloween Havoc for its 28 October episode, reviving the spooky old concept for the first time in 20 years.

A year that has already brought us a Bash at the Beach would've likely yielded one of WWE's weird, watered-down Starrcade shows if not for the ongoing global health crisis. AEW's Cody Rhodes, meanwhile, has filed for trademarks on Battlebowl and Bunkhouse Stampede, and is at legal loggerheads with WWE over The Match Beyond and Slamboree. Atlanta's legacy yet lives.

Halloween Havoc has a mixed history. While Eric Bischoff recently claimed it was "one of the more important pay-per-views of the year in WCW," it played host to some of the most maligned moments in company history - and think of the ground that covers. Introduced in 1989 and running until 2000, it was a gaudy, gimmicky holiday special that yielded plenty of decent-to-good wrestling (plus the odd transformative classic) but is mostly remembered for its tweeness and innumerable grand disasters. Don't even try to name a PPV brand with more so-bad-it's-actually-great trainwrecks on its résumé, because there isn't one.

Let's hope WWE plays into Havoc's dumb charm with the NXT revival. Until then, let's relive the, uh... classics.

(In the spirit of Halloween Havoc, pay-per-views will be ranked primarily on how much fun they are to watch, whether "good" or "bad". This is a weird, silly brand, and most of its appeal comes from that, not some opaque standard of "quality".)

Advertisement
Channel Manager
Channel Manager

Andy has been with WhatCulture for six years and is currently WhatCulture's Senior Wrestling Reporter. A writer, presenter, and editor with 10+ years of experience in online media, he has been a sponge for all wrestling knowledge since playing an old Royal Rumble 1992 VHS to ruin in his childhood. Having previously worked for Bleacher Report, Andy specialises in short and long-form writing, video presenting, voiceover acting, and editing, all characterised by expert wrestling knowledge and commentary. Andy is as much a fan of 1985 Jim Crockett Promotions as he is present-day AEW and WWE - just don't make him choose between the two.