(Quick note: This was originally going to be posted in July, but then Hulk Hogan passed away and to publish musings on one of his worst outings would have been too soon… so I held it off until now, which is October and thus makes it appropriate for the time. My grace period over the Hulk Hogan Creative Control Card has ended. It’s back to the schlocking, which you can find more of in my weekly WCW Nitro musings posted every Thursday.)
Before anyone asks, yes, the entire show can be viewed on the WWE Vault YouTube Channel… for free, no less. And yes, before anyone else asks, yes, I’m skipping over the Fall Brawl ’98 PPV… one day, we’ll get to that one, but this one is the bigger deal.
So yes, consider this an out-of-season bonus for this final week of July before we start jumping into some recent PPVs that I’ve witnessed or am going to witness next month.
And so we begin the show with Rick Steiner coming out for an interview with Mean Gene, no doubt about to reminisce about the time he challenged horror icon puppet Chucky (yes, that fucking Chucky) to a match before Buff Bagwell comes out and promises to be in Rick’s corner because he’s had a change of heart. Even back in 1998 watching this show, I did not believe Buff had truly abandoned Scott Steiner. Imagine how much of a dumb fuck this made Rick to fall for this rouse later on.
WCW World Television Champion Chris Jericho defeated RAVEN to retain the title in a great opening match. It was a short match, but it was fun while it lasted.
Wrath beats Meng in a short brawl of sorts that nobody cared about.
Disco Inferno defeated Juventud Guerrera to earn himself a Cruiserweight title match against champion Billy Kidman later that night. Cut to later that night and Kidman retains the title over Disco. Neither match was particularly special, but were both perfectly acceptable little wrestling matches and that’s about all you could ask for from talented workers… and also Disco. (Just kidding. Disco is usually very solid.)
Alex Wright defeated Fit Finlay in a short, but straightforward brawl of sorts. Kind of a weird match because I was expecting it to be longer, but not really. Eh.
Perry Saturn defeated Lodi in a short match. Nothing to do this one. It’s just there.
So Scott Steiner and The Giant are the WCW Tag-Team Champions and Rick Steiner is challenging both for the titles with supposed “turned a new leaf” tag team partner, Buff Bagwell… who immediately turns on Rick Steiner as easily as Ric Flair turns on Sting, because Rick Steiner is a fucking idiot along with anyone else stupid enough to fall for this ruse, which does not include the audience who saw this coming because they’re not stupid. Despite this, Rick overcomes the odds and pins Giant to win the titles… one of which ends up on Judy Bagwell, who was Buff Bagwell’s octogenarian mother.
But wait, it doesn’t end there. Per an earlier show ruling by JJ Dillon, if Rick won the tag titles, he got his singles match with Scott, who tries to run away but gets caught by Rick, who then gets ambushed by Buff Bagwell in a Bill Clinton mask, but then Rick overcomes the odds again and pins Scott for the win. Say what you will about this whole trainwreck, but the crowd was at least into this one, so it had to work on some level.
Scott Hall defeated Kevin Nash via countout after Nash powerbombed Hall a bunch of times before walking out on the match. Was this during Hall’s Last Call phase where he was pretending to be drunk? Or maybe he was drunk? It’s really hard to tell during those days. This dragged on for to long. It’s really, really boring. And I didn’t like it. Unfortunately, it gets worse.
WCW United States Champion Bret Hart defeated Sting to retain the title via sharpshooter submission after Bret hit Sting in the legs with a baseball bat. At another point in time and space and all of reality, a match between Bret Hart and Sting should be really good. But this is apparently the “dark” timeline as the kids call it, where you have a Bret Hart who didn’t give a shit (though he’d be first to tell you otherwise) and even Sting looked to be off his game a bit here. I think they’d have a better match later down the road, but I’m not really sure.
Hollywood Hulk Hogan defeated the Warrior to get his win back in one of the most infamous matches in the history of wrestling. To go into a deep dive into this match by this point is completely and utterly worthless, because it’s a fairly good bet that you’ve either heard about this match or you’ve watched and dissected this match. There is absolutely nothing I could say about this match that hasn’t already been said before or better. But you know what? I’m gonna try.
They tried to do the match they did in 1990, but it’s nowhere near as smooth or as good. Both guys are older, Warrior hasn’t been keeping up with his wrestling – his schtick in WCW was doing magic tricks like appearing in mirrors that all but one person couldn’t see or popping in and out of the ring via smokescreens and trap doors that damaged the back of Davey Boy Smith, and Hogan is… well, he’s Hogan, for fuck’s sake. We see all the “classic” stuff; the fumbling log rolls, the misfired flash papers, and then Horace comes out and clobbers Warrior to give Uncle Hulk his win back. They did a thing on Nitro where Hogan beat up Horace for a bit, and so this was intended to be a swerve where Horace would come out, expected to side with Warrior, but instead turn on him. Needless to say that this was NOT a surprise because the audience isn’t stupid. Please stop being fucking morons and booking swerves that even Stevie Wonder could see coming a mile away.
WCW World Champion GOLDBERG defeated Diamond Dallas Page to retain the title in one of Goldberg’s few genuinely great matches in WCW that wasn’t just the typical “Goldberg Squashes Some Dude” stuff that you were usually getting. There’s some psychology where Goldberg’s arm is injured and he tries going for the Jackhammer, but couldn’t quite pull it off… and then on the second try, DDP escapes and counters into the Diamond Cutter in one of the legitimately biggest pops on the show. The reaction was such that people genuinely thought that DDP would be the one to break the vaunted Goldberg win streak and at the time, I almost believed it. Hell, even today, given the benefit of hindsight and all, I would’ve been all for that instead of how the streak actually ended. But alas, Goldberg makes his comeback and gets the win.
This would’ve been a fine main event if people actually saw it at the time, but the show ran longer than the three hours allotted and by the time, both men were ready to lock up, the feed cut off. To their credit, WCW tried to make good and aired the match on Nitro for free the next night. But really, did we really need two Disco Inferno matches on this show to justify the extra length? I don’t think so.
The really sad thing about Halloween Havoc ’98 is that if you were to remove that ONE match out of the equation, it would’ve been an otherwise perfectly fine WCW Pay-Per-View offering. I wouldn’t call it a must-show by any means, but there’s some good wrestling in here and DDP/Goldberg is worth watching if nothing else than to say that you’ve seen one of the few Goldberg matches in WCW that went longer than the usual runtime and was actually BETTER for it. But because you had THAT ONE MATCH and the entire focus of the show and the promotion leading up to the show was on THAT ONE MATCH, that is Halloween Havoc 98’s only real claim to… well, infamy, as it were. And it’s a shame, because there’s a good show to be found under the Hogan bullshit that it ended up being buried in.
dtm666 