Halloween Havoc (1997)

Background

Halloween Havoc was an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) since 1989. As the name implies, it was a Halloween-themed show held in October. The 1997 event was the ninth event in the Halloween Havoc chronology and it took place on October 26, 1997, from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada for the second consecutive year.^[5]

Storylines

The event featured professional wrestling matches that involve different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Professional wrestlers portray villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that build tension and culminate in a wrestling match or series of matches.^[6]

One of the major stories involved the rivalry that had developed between Larry Zbyszko and the nWo over the course of the previous several months. Earlier in the year, in one of the many instances where the nWo ran the WCW Monday Nitro broadcast crew out of their position, Eric Bischoff was on commentary mocking The Giant, who was in the ring cutting a promo. Zbyszko decided he had had enough of Bischoff's antics and returned to the desk, demanding Bischoff to leave. Bischoff responded by picking a fight with the former wrestler, which allowed Zbyszko to apply a front facelock on Bischoff and drag him to the ring for Giant to chokeslam him.^[7]

A match was signed pitting Scott Hall against Lex Luger for Halloween Havoc with Zbyszko as the special guest referee. Later, on the October 13 edition of Nitro, Hall and Syxx were defending the WCW World Tag Team Championship against the Steiner Brothers, with the team using Wölfpac Rules to allow Syxx to substitute for Kevin Nash. Zbyszko got involved after Hall pulled referee Charles Robinson out of the ring, chasing him into the ring where he counted the pin for Rick Steiner on Hall; Roddy Piper, who had recently returned to television as the onscreen WCW commissioner, upheld the decision after an nWo protest. ^[8]

Piper himself, meanwhile, still had a problem with reigning WCW World Heavyweight Champion Hollywood Hogan. Since Piper made his WCW debut at the previous year's Halloween Havoc, the two wrestlers had squared off three times in pay-per-view main events. Piper won the first match, a non-title match at Starrcade in December 1996, while Hogan won the rematch to retain his title at SuperBrawl in February 1997. Piper had also been part of the three team elimination battle royal at Uncensored in March of 1997, but his team was eliminated. Had his team won, Piper would have received a third match with Hogan inside a steel cage; since he was now in power, Piper decided to make that match for Halloween Havoc. Since Hogan was slated to defend his championship against Sting at Starrcade in December of that year, the title was not on the line in this match.

Another longstanding feud involving the nWo and WCW was the rivalry between Randy Savage and Diamond Dallas Page, which began shortly after Savage betrayed WCW at SuperBrawl. In an intensely personal rivalry, which also involved attacks on Page's wife Kimberly and the meddling of Miss Elizabeth, Savage's valet, as well as some trickery by Page, the two men had already met twice in 1997. At Spring Stampede in April, Page defeated Savage in the main event with a Diamond Cutter. Savage got his return victory at The Great American Bash in June in a falls count anywhere match. A last man standing match, called a Las Vegas Sudden Death Match for this event, was signed for Halloween Havoc to settle the feud.

Two separate feuds centered around the splintering of the Four Horsemen. The first involved the aftermath of the War Games match at Fall Brawl the previous month. The match was originally supposed to feature Ric Flair, Chris Benoit, Arn Anderson, and Steve McMichael facing the nWo's Nash, Syxx, Konnan, and Buff Bagwell. Anderson, however, had been dealing with significant arm injuries due to years of physical contact and was forced into retirement over the summer of 1997. In his retirement ceremony, which aired on the August 25 edition of Nitro, Anderson asked Curt Hennig, who had recently returned to professional wrestling competition after a multi-year hiatus due to injuries and had also signed with WCW, to take "his spot" as the Horsemen's enforcer. Hennig agreed, but conspired with the nWo to betray the Horsemen and assist them in handcuffing Benoit and McMichael to the cage while mercilessly assaulting the helpless Flair. McMichael eventually surrendered in the hopes that it would stop the attack, but Hennig instead punctuated it by slamming the cage door on Flair's head. The next night, Henning presented Flair's robe to Hogan, then defeated McMichael to win the WCW United States Championship. Flair would return to challenge Hennig several weeks later.^[9]

McMichael, meanwhile, had his own concerns that revolved around his former wife and valet, Queen Debra. Entering 1997, McMichael and Jeff Jarrett had been quarreling over Jarrett's being included in the Horsemen. Shortly after Jarrett beat Dean Malenko for the United States Championship, he was kicked out of the Horsemen and then joined by Debra after she betrayed McMichael in their match at Bash at the Beach. The continued feud was to culminate at Halloween Havoc, with Jarrett and McMichael to fight one last time. However, Jarrett's WCW contract had expired shortly before Halloween Havoc and he had decided to return to the World Wrestling Federation. Since Debra had also begun managing Alex Wright in the intervening weeks, Wright was inserted into the match to take the place of the departed Jarrett. ^[10]