Review-A-Wai
WCW Halloween Havoc 1998 Released Sept 27, 2009 --- Copyright (C) 2009 John Pollock and Wai Ting. All rights reserved.
Review-A-Wai and all its related broadcasts belong to Live Audio Wrestling. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
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JOHN POLLOCK: Welcome everyone to Review-A-Wai, the name has officially stuck. We have our logo now on our Facebook group. It is set in stone, Wai. Review-A-Wai.
WAI TING: Yeah, that's right, genius.
JOHN POLLOCK: It's very clever. We do have some feedback from last week. A lot of people seemed to enjoy the format last week, so some of the feedback we got, the first one from Scott Thompson. 'Hey, John, don't feel so bad, I have Ground Zero on VHS too. Compared to a lot of the crap that is on today, I would give it a 5.5. I think later you should review the Bad Blood pay-per-view, however, I've recently watched both WCW Wargames, '95 and '96, and would enjoy listening to you and Wai review one of those.' So those are ones we can, we got a lot of requests for things to review.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Heroes of Wrestling I have found, I have the VHS copy, and we'll be doing that in a few weeks to commemorate the 10 year anniversary.
WAI TING: When is that? When is the anniversary?
JOHN POLLOCK: It's October the 10th.
WAI TING: Whoo.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah. So coming up. Tick tock. I also, another request, I got an obscure request on Facebook about the A & E secrets of wrestling-
WAI TING: Oh yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Which I also happened to find.
WAI TING: Very nice.
JOHN POLLOCK: I taped that somehow. So I was going through old tapes and I did find that. This one comes from Thor, who's a regular LAW listener, and says 'Dear friend, strangely enough I've listened to every single Ask-A-Wai episode. I was a bit perplexed to see you two pose as two dudes with attitudes though. Where is the attitude in Wai Ting? That guy is so mellow it makes you feel like a marshmallow listening to him. If anything, you two should pose as the Orient Express, you as Paul Diamond, Wai as Tanaka and bring in Mouth as Mr. Fuji. I would like for you two to review WrestleMania Six. This was the first pay-per-view I ever watched. I snuck up in the middle of the night to catch it on Eurosport. I was hooked on wrestling from that day on. Nowadays I watch at least two WWE pay-per-views a week. I try to get as much wrestling over on digital media before I eventually burn it on Blu-ray. A question for Wai: If you take an oriental person and spin him around several times does he become disoriented?'
WAI TING: I don't think that's funny. I think that's-
JOHN POLLOCK: It's disgusting. Signed a Hulk-o-maniac forever, Thor.
WAI TING: Very rude. The God of Thunder should not be racist.
JOHN POLLOCK: It's gross. If you spin him around, does he become disoriented? Terrible. All right.
WAI TING: But of course Thor was referring to that photo that our friend Deborah took.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yes.
WAI TING: That's on your profile pic, John.
JOHN POLLOCK: It's a great picture.
WAI TING: Yes.
JOHN POLLOCK: I enjoyed it.
WAI TING: Apparently I'm doing the Shawn Michaels thing wrong. I'm supposed to be lifting my arm up.
JOHN POLLOCK: But the Shawn Michaels, you posed the way Shawn always did. I'm sure that was, there's just no correct picture.
WAI TING: There's no-
JOHN POLLOCK: I'm sure that multiple times, maybe Shawn did it wrong that one time.
WAI TING: You could see the attitude from inside my head.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah. Two dudes with attitude, and these two dudes are now going to reveal Halloween Havoc 1998.
WAI TING: Yeah, originally we wanted to do the WCW DVD but you took a look at it and-
JOHN POLLOCK: I didn't think there was that much really to review. I mean, all the reviews are out right now kind of just covering it. It's kind of hard to review a serious documentary.
WAI TING: And the way we do these DVDs, we pretty much give a rundown of the whole thing and I wouldn't want to ruin the DVD-
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah.
WAI TING: For a lot of people who haven't seen it yet.
JOHN POLLOCK: I gotta tell you, after doing Ground Zero last week, I have much more fun looking at these old pay-per-views of stuff you've forgotten. I have actually, I had this on tape, I have never watched this pay-per-view.
WAI TING: Really?
JOHN POLLOCK: I really, I had never seen it. So this was something else. Halloween Havoc 1998 from Las Vegas, Nevada.
WAI TING: I'm holding in my hand the actual physical copy, VHS physical copy that John Pollock recorded on his own off of pay-per-view. And this is pretty much proof of the childhood that John Pollock lived.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah.
WAI TING: Because I'm holding a Fujifilm HQ 120 VHS tape, and on the front of the box is a very beautifully formatted, properly bolded, you know, small piece of paper cut out in a perfect square, glued, not taped, glued onto the front cover with the match list and the date of the event, the location. So John Pollock-
JOHN POLLOCK: Dude, when you have a lot of tapes, you've gotta label or else we'd be having a hell of a time finding some of these.
WAI TING: And when you have a lot of time on your hands and go to an all-boys school, I'm sure you have a lot of time to do that.
JOHN POLLOCK: It does help do that. It does help when you don't have any girl issues when you're a teenager.
WAI TING: We've all been there, John, we've all been there. So.
JOHN POLLOCK: Well let's go on now to Halloween Havoc 1998. This was built around what Tony Schiavone called the biggest rematch in history. What was this rematch? It was a match from WrestleMania six, Thor just mentioned. WCW was building an entire pay-per-view around a match that happened in another organization.
WAI TING: Why not?
JOHN POLLOCK: Why not?
WAI TING: Why not?
JOHN POLLOCK: Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior part two.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: What else?
WAI TING: This is Snickers presents.-
JOHN POLLOCK: Snickers was the-
WAI TING: Halloween Havoc.
JOHN POLLOCK: The title sponsor. They were talking about an angle they had shot this past Monday on Nitro where Hulk Hogan attacked Horace Hogan and Schiavone asked how Hogan could attack his dead brother's nephew.
WAI TING: Yeah, I thought it was Heenan who kept doing that?
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, maybe it was Heenan.
WAI TING: But repeatedly, throughout the pay-per-views, Heenan was just like -
JOHN POLLOCK: He was just-
WAI TING: He saw what Hogan did to his dead brother's nephew, imagine what he would do to you.
JOHN POLLOCK: And this would prove to be, come into play later during this match. We then cut to the Nitro girls.
WAI TING: Which I thought was awesome.
JOHN POLLOCK: On pay-per-view.
WAI TING: Yeah. Which I thought was awesome, John, because I don't know, maybe just because I'm watching this now, but like, a lot of this stuff, while watching it 10 years later, I just, maybe I felt nostalgic for it. I mean I really enjoyed even seeing the Nitro girls.
JOHN POLLOCK: Well, you got to see them about seven different times during this pay-per-view come out and do a dance routine.
WAI TING: Which I did not mind. This is the future Mrs. Hickinbottom.
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, that's true. She was there. Gene Okerlund predicts that this will be one of the greatest pay-per-views in history. That prediction would not be seen through. Rick Steiner came out for an interview.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: He said that he's the hound in the pound and he's gonna get down.
WAI TING: That's hilarious.
JOHN POLLOCK: And he barked.
WAI TING: I wrote that down too.
JOHN POLLOCK: Then we got Marcus Alexander, Buff Bagwell, coming out who was, this was 1998, and he was sporting a FUBU shirt. And Wai, maybe you could give us a little background on the culture at the time, because FUBU was very big at the time.
WAI TING: For Us, By Us.
JOHN POLLOCK: Is that what it stood for?
WAI TING: That's what FUBU stands for.
JOHN POLLOCK: I never knew that.
WAI TING: For Us, By Us. And I don't know, it was just, hip hop was blowing up.
JOHN POLLOCK: That's back when those people wore the FUBU shirts and they wore the goggles on their head.
WAI TING: I'd never seen anybody walk around the streets with the goggles, but FUBU was very big back in the days.
JOHN POLLOCK: For Us, By Us.
WAI TING: For us, as in you know, people like Buff Bagwell.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yes, exactly. He told Rick 'I'm sorry that I've turned on you so many times, but give me one more chance, I want to be in a tag match tonight.' Because Rick was supposed to fight brother Scott Steiner, and Bagwell, who had turned on Rick earlier, multiple times, of which the announcers even pointed out this guy cannot be trusted, Rick Steiner was a moron and said, 'Okay'. And Bagwell, all he did to convince him was say, 'Look into my eyes. Do you see what's in my eyes? A guy who wants to beat up Scott Steiner.' Rick Steiner. They started woofing together.
WAI TING: Woof woof.
JOHN POLLOCK: Like dogs. This was so lame, so lame.
WAI TING: Two grown men barking like dogs. That's all it takes. That's all it takes to gain Rick Steiner's trust.
JOHN POLLOCK: So all of a sudden, the big brother versus brother match was now going to be a tag match. Great. We go to our first match of the evening, Chris Jericho against Raven for the Television Title. Raven's gimmick at this time is that he's on a losing streak so he's received the title shot.
WAI TING: Oh, yeah. Geez, I didn't even realize that.
JOHN POLLOCK: They started off great, to really get you enticed with this match. They cut the following promos, which made you really interested.
PROMO
RAVEN: I went to bed at 11 o'clock this morning, and when I got here, I found I was scheduled in an unscheduled match. I wasn't informed ahead of time. Once again, forces working against Raven. Well, you know what? I don't feel like wrestling tonight. I wasn't told ahead of time, and I'm not gonna.
CHRIS JERICHO: You know what, Raven? Since you don't really feel like wrestling, to be quite honest with you, I don't really wanna be here either.
JOHN POLLOCK: So there we have it, two promos where both men said that neither wanted to wrestle on this pay-per-view against one another. Do you recall this?
WAI TING: Oh, I thought you were gonna go to the clip.
JOHN POLLOCK: No, I've already thrown to it, we're already back. So Raven says that he woke up at 11am this morning, or he went to sleep at 11am this morning, got to the arena and found out he was booked and didn't want to work. Jericho came out and said I don't want to be here either. And said that he needs ratings, so they're gonna wrestle.
WAI TING: Yeah. Okay. I mean, I understand your point, John, but I thought this was a pretty original style of promo, two guys who didn't really want to be there.
JOHN POLLOCK: That was a shoot, though.
WAI TING: Yeah, well.
JOHN POLLOCK: At this point in WCW.
WAI TING: I was very entertained, though, by this match. I thought Raven, back then, was a very, you know, intriguing character and then they had a good match, I thought.
JOHN POLLOCK: Tony Schiavone had what might have been the line of the pay-per-view when he said 'We're gonna do this on the fly. That's how it works around here.'
WAI TING: What was he referring to?
JOHN POLLOCK: That the match was just being thrown together, I guess and just a state of things in WCW.
WAI TING: All right.
JOHN POLLOCK: What else? Yeah, this was a fairly good match. It ended with Jericho... Chris Kanyon came out to ringside, got onto the apron. This was weird though, because Raven threw Jericho into Kanyon, so one would think that Jericho would be affected by bumping into a man unexpectedly. He turned around after knocking into Kanyon and immediately put the Walls Of Jericho onto Raven and Raven tapped out.
WAI TING: That is a bit odd. Yeah, I didn't even realize that. I-
JOHN POLLOCK: Gotta pay attention to this stuff, Wai.
WAI TING: Well, I was just, kind of just marking out, I guess , the nostalgia was still very, very fresh to me.
JOHN POLLOCK: We go to another promo, Hulk Hogan comes out with Eric Bischoff.
WAI TING: Hold on a second, before we do that.
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh.
WAI TING: Raven plotted the Evenflow DDT on Jericho, so is it ironic that Raven used the Evenflow DDT on Jericho, who comes out to Evenflow by Pearl Jam?
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, that's a coincidence.
WAI TING: It's not that odd?
JOHN POLLOCK: I don't think so, because it's really not the opposite of one thing or another.
WAI TING: Run past it.
JOHN POLLOCK: We will double check, but that is interesting, actually, that you pointed that out.
WAI TING: Yeah, you should pay more attention to the music in these matches.
JOHN POLLOCK: I know, I should. You pay attention to the music, I'll pay attention to Tony Schiavone's lines. Hulk Hogan comes out with Eric Bischoff. This was such a nothing promo.
WAI TING: Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't
JOHN POLLOCK: Bischoff called Hulk Hogan, I don't know what this means, but it's definitely not correct given how things are in 2009, called Hogan 'the Millennium of family values'.
WAI TING: The Millennium of family values?
JOHN POLLOCK: What does that mean?
WAI TING: Did he really say that? Those exact words?
JOHN POLLOCK: He really did say that. And then Hogan buried Warrior's promo saying if you want to hear the Gettysburg Address, then you can listen to the Ultimate Warrior.
WAI TING: I enjoyed Hogan here though. Again, it could be in the style -
JOHN POLLOCK: A great delivery.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: He just, there was nothing he was saying of any relevance.
WAI TING: For the live crowd though, and maybe for the audience, maybe that's all it takes, you know? That's all it takes. They just want to see Hulk Hogan do his thing, and he did it.
JOHN POLLOCK: I groaned at this next match. We got Meng vs. Wrath. This match was way better than I thought it was going to be.
WAI TING: Exactly.
JOHN POLLOCK: This blew away anything that the great Khali and Kane have done. For two big guys that can barely move, we saw Wrath do a somersault dive off of the apron, to Meng, which by this point was five stars in my book.
WAI TING: Yeah, yeah. And definitely -
JOHN POLLOCK: Brian Clark of KroniK fame, doing a somersault off the apron, to Meng.
WAI TING: I thought those guys really worked hard here. They had just a good series of power moves, which they both should be doing. And then you really noticed a slowing down though, towards the middle of the match, when both guys pretty much kind of you know ran out of steam.
JOHN POLLOCK: When we say the middle of the match, that would be at about the three minute mark.
WAI TING: Yeah, this was a short match.
JOHN POLLOCK: It ended with Wrath hitting the Meltdown.
WAI TING: Yes.
JOHN POLLOCK: Basically, he was receiving the same Bill Goldberg push at this time, they were just trying to push a bunch of monsters like this. Tony Schiavone upping his one line from earlier when he just decided to go a little too far and said 'That's one for the highlight reel in 1998'. I don't think we should go that far. This was a very passable match with two guys who should not be having passable matches.
WAI TING: It was short and that's a good thing.
JOHN POLLOCK: Remember Disco Inferno, Wai?
WAI TING: I do remember.
JOHN POLLOCK: He was in the next match.
WAI TING: Glenn Gilbertti.
JOHN POLLOCK: Glenn Gilbertti was taking on Juventude Guerrera and the winner of this match was going to get a Cruiserweight title shot later in the evening against Billy Kidman. One of the worst things about Disco Inferno's entrance was that they would just cut to terrible dancing by white people.
WAI TING: Yeah, I mean, it really seemed like a thing in WCW back then, a surefire way of getting over or at least something that they would give to guys without any type of gimmick is just say, go out there and dance. I mean they did this with Disco Inferno, with Alex Wright, which we saw later on.
JOHN POLLOCK: Mm-hmm.
WAI TING: With Ernest Miller.
JOHN POLLOCK: And when all else fails, bark.
WAI TING: Yes, yes. And these guys don't talk., they don't talk into the microphone, they just dance and that's how they get over it. They dance in the middle of the match, they dance after their matches on their way-
JOHN POLLOCK: It's like a ripple effect. Once one guy dances, the crowd starts dancing and all of a sudden you're over.
WAI TING: That's how you get noticed in this world, just by dancing.
JOHN POLLOCK: Disco Inferno. The third man in the ring here, Charles Robinson, what a head of hair this guy had.
WAI TING Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: In 1998.
WAI TING: Yeah, yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: This guy was a-
WAI TING: Well does, he still did by the end of his WWE run.
JOHN POLLOCK: It's thinned out.
WAI TING: Has it really?
JOHN POLLOCK: Well he's 11 years older, Wai.
WAI TING: I haven't really noticed.
JOHN POLLOCK: He's probably post 40 now. Juvi I thought was excellent in this match, one of the more, I wouldn't say underrated guys, but a guy much like Teddy Hart, whose attitude is definitely curbed his progression in this industry.
WAI TING: Absolutely. In the ring his talents are undeniable and-
JOHN POLLOCK: Disco.
WAI TING: Well.
JOHN POLLOCK: Not a whole lot.
WAI TING: Well, hold on John. Like this is a... Disco won this match.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yes.
WAI TING: And so it's understandable why he didn't work as hard as Juvi did. Juvi carried most of this match, because Disco had to wrestle twice in this night. So that's passable for me.
JOHN POLLOCK: We saw Disco did a Macarena dance, which was big at the time. I hated that fucking dance.
WAI TING: Yes, I did too, but you know it, don't you? You've done it before?
JOHN POLLOCK: I think everyone knows it.
WAI TING: Have you ever done the Macarena?
JOHN POLLOCK: No, I have never.
WAI TING: You've never done it in your whole life?
JOHN POLLOCK: Why would I have ever done it?
WAI TING: I don't know, maybe you did like a school-
JOHN POLLOCK: I Went to an all guys school in high school, why would we be doing the Macarena by Los Del Mar?
WAI TING: Did you not-
JOHN POLLOCK: We were wearing FUBU shirts. For Us, By Us.
WAI TING: All right.
JOHN POLLOCK: I'm gonna try and find an old FUBU ad to play.
WAI TING: Good.
JOHN POLLOCK: In this show someday.
WAI TING: I want you, John, just, you know, maybe this could be by yourself in your apartment later this evening, just YouTube the Macarena and try it out for yourself. Just, I want you to just to experience it, and then imagine experience it in a room full of 30 people all doing it.
JOHN POLLOCK: I'll do that Wai.
WAI TING: It's an amazing feeling.
JOHN POLLOCK: Disco Inferno won this match. Jumping spike pile driver by Disco. This came after a top row park and run and then a spinning heel kick by Juvi off the top rope. Juvi worked out very strong in this match. Usually when Juvi was not going over he wouldn't really put his best effort forward, but this was a very, very good performance, I thought, by Juventud Guerrero. Disco Inferno gets the win. So we'll see Disco later in the night. Then I got angry at this next segment, Wai. Scott Steiner came out.
WAI TING: Oh no, before that.
JOHN POLLOCK: What happened?
WAI TING: We had the Nitro girls.
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, I didn't note the Nitro girls one more time after this.
WAI TING: We had the Nitro girls do a chair dance, on a chair.
JOHN POLLOCK: All right. They danced on chairs. Why were they on the pay-per-view? Could they not be called, couldn't they be called the Havoc Hotties for one night or something?
WAI TING: No, you can't do that. These are the Nitro girls. And I don't think they took anything away from the pay-per-view. At the time, if I was watching it, perhaps I would have felt definitely, but hey, this is cool.
JOHN POLLOCK: So Scott Steiner comes out and he wants a tag match with Rick Steiner and Buff Bagwell, with the giant, and he says, 'If you wrestle us in a tag match, we'll make it for the tag titles'. I was very confused at this point. I said, 'What tag titles?' These tag titles are so prestigious, that Scott Steiner and The Giant are up for their promo and they're not even wearing their titles.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: I didn't even know if they were the Tag Team Champions. I didn't know what was going on with the Tag Team Championships at this point. JJ Dillon came out, and this was just so ridiculous. He stated that, okay, you can have your tag match, but if Rick happens to win, then he gets a 10 minute match with you, Scott. Why aren't we just having the singles match? Why are we adding a tag match?
WAI TING: Because he wants to humiliate the Steiners. Scott Steiner.
JOHN POLLOCK: This pay-per-view was just getting annoying at this point.
WAI TING: Really?
JOHN POLLOCK: They started the show off by saying we've added three more matches to the pay-per-view. Then they added this one. By this point, every match that had happened thus far was not advertised.
WAI TING: Really?
JOHN POLLOCK: And one that had, had now been changed to a tag match where you weren't even guaranteed you were going to get the singles match.
WAI TING: Sure.
JOHN POLLOCK: Typical WCW at this point.
WAI TING: I gotta say, though, John, by this point, I was not not entertained. I was entertained throughout his whole thing.
JOHN POLLOCK: Well I'm glad.
WAI TING: And maybe again, it was just the nostalgia of seeing all these people, maybe it was the comedy of seeing Scott Steiner say Big Poppa Pump is in town and he's ready to pound. But like jeez like, I didn't mind any of this stuff.
JOHN POLLOCK: Alright.
WAI TING: I was really going along with it.
JOHN POLLOCK: We go, next matchup, Fit Finlay against Alex Wright, and I miss Alex Wright. His armpit dance was always a highlight, his music, he was just like this euro pop dancer.
WAI TING: With a leather jacket. A bit of a trivia for MMA fans, King Mo Lawal happens to be a huge WCW fan. And actually, before his last fight, he had talked about to Ariel Helwani, he had talked about doing the Alex Wright dance on his way to the ring.
JOHN POLLOCK: Wow.
WAI TING: Yeah. Yeah
JOHN POLLOCK: Alex Wright had a huge impact on a lot of people's lives.
WAI TING: Oh yeah. Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: What did I write here? Finlay. This is a pretty basic match. Finlay's, of all the people on this card, who you would guess would be still working 11 years later, I'm sure there's a number of guys that I'm sure they would have still been around 11 years later, but being a strong worker, I never would have guessed Finlay, in 2009, would still be competing at a top level.
WAI TING: Totally. I mean, Finlay, back then, 10 years ago, Finlay was old back then. I mean, how old is he right now?
JOHN POLLOCK: He had the worst hair imaginable.
WAI TING: They both had pretty bad looks. I think at Oxford. I mean, I don't know. In the WWE, like they always took, I think, a bit more care for their even lower end guys, but WCW you just get some of the shittiest looking Indie type of people that they didn't care about. But a bit of history here, they actually mentioned that Finlay ended Alex Wright's dad's career.
JOHN POLLOCK: How did he do that?
WAI TING: By breaking his leg. Steve Wright is what they say.
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh Steve Wright, his father, his father. Oh, I missed that in the commentary.
WAI TING: Well, you should pay more attention.
JOHN POLLOCK: This wasn't much of a match. It ended with Finlay ran into the ring post and then Wright hit a reverse neck breaker and got the win.
WAI TING: Yeah, I thought it was decent. I mean, pretty short. Yeah, pole tackle and a reverse neck breaker. And we go to?
JOHN POLLOCK: Perry Saturn and Lodi.
WAI TING: Right.
JOHN POLLOCK: Which was, Lodi of course did the whole gimmick where he would come up with signs, some of them with insider references.
WAI TING: I like Lodi's entrance, Dave Penzer, is that his name?
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah.
WAI TING: He even adds 'A man who claims to be from anywhere but Las Vegas, Nevada.' Well like anywhere but the cities that he's wrestling in.
JOHN POLLOCK: What a heel. He would reside anywhere but this city.
WAI TING: I sense some sarcasm.
JOHN POLLOCK: This show just wasn't doing it for me at this point, Wai. Perry Saturn came out, his new gimmick was he was a crossdresser, I guess, because he was wearing a-
WAI TING: I don't think that was a gimmick. I think that's what he was actually wearing.
JOHN POLLOCK: He was wearing like this ugly -
WAI TING: Mesh vest.
JOHN POLLOCK: A mesh vest.
WAI TING: And a beret.
JOHN POLLOCK: With an Army Ranger beret.
WAI TING: And a beret that Schiavone claimed was worn to represent his dedication to the army, so I think this was legit. This was before he was wearing the dress and everything and he looked much gayer here than he ever did wearing the dress.
JOHN POLLOCK: He looked horrible. Just horrible. I don't care if it was 1998 the mesh vest with a beret, and he was wearing eyeliner, dude.
WAI TING: Yeah, yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: He looked horrible.
WAI TING: This was just a squash match, that's all you can say this was. Lodi tried to leave at one point, at one point Saturn came back, got him in the ring, hit the DVD and won.
JOHN POLLOCK: This was just a squash match for Saturn to go over, which, you know, Halloween Havoc was one of the more, one of the bigger WCW pay-per-views of the year, it was like one of their, you know, the WWE has their big four or five shows every year, this was definitely one of their big ones.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: And up until this point, I had seen nothing.
WAI TING: That's not true. I liked the Jericho - Raven match. I enjoyed that. Finlay - Alex Wright was decent. And Meng vs. Wrath was not that bad.
JOHN POLLOCK: Finlay - Alex Wright was, it was like four minutes, Wai.
WAI TING: Yeah, but, you know, it showcased both guys.
JOHN POLLOCK: All right. We move on to the Cruiserweight title defense. Billy Kidman defending the championship against Disco Inferno.
WAI TING: Yeah, you missed the Nitro Girls again, by the way.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, Nitro Girls danced. First five minutes it was all Kidman and this was actually very good storytelling, I thought, because they built up Disco building up to hit the spike pile driver for a good near fall, because everyone bought that after seeing Juvi lose to that manoeuvre earlier in the night.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Finish came when Disco Inferno went for a power bomb but Kidman reversed into a face buster and then hit the shooting star press and retained the title. This was a good match.
WAI TING: Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was excellent, actually. Disco was working much harder here than in his previous match.
JOHN POLLOCK: This is probably the biggest push he had ever gotten.
WAI TING: Yeah, yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: You please recap what happened next.
WAI TING: Well, now, let me get to my points here.
JOHN POLLOCK: Okay, go ahead.
WAI TING: Kidman was only 24 during the time of this match.
JOHN POLLOCK: So he's 35 now.
WAI TING: He's 35 now, which is crazy to believe because he-
JOHN POLLOCK: He looks very young here.
WAI TING: He's a kid.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, man.
WAI TING: Yes. But like what happened to him? This guy like had so much potential. Why did he not succeed in the WWE?
JOHN POLLOCK: Well, he's a trainer now at Florida Championship Wrestling. He's training the next generation of kids. The next Disco Inferno's are coming up through Billy Kidman, because Florida they're just churning out talent like you wouldn't believe.
WAI TING: But this guy was supposed to be, you know, a big deal. But what happened? Another thing I noted here was I actually thought the commentary was good, I thought Schiavone and Heenan had great comedic chemistry. Schiavone was really good as a straight man and Heenan was excellent. You don't agree?
JOHN POLLOCK: What happened next, Wai?
WAI TING: Next we have the Konnan music video, which I know probably, I probably know what you're gonna say, but I actually liked this song back then.
JOHN POLLOCK: Was it a good video?
WAI TING: You didn't even watch it?
JOHN POLLOCK: I did watch it. I watched the first two minutes of it.
WAI TING: The video-
JOHN POLLOCK: It just repeated itself over and over.
WAI TING: I mean, the video is not on the level of, you know, a Hype Williams directed big budget masterpiece, but I mean for WCW it was on the level of the rap is crap and everything that they'd done before.
JOHN POLLOCK: Was this a WCW produced video or was this done outside of WCW?
WAI TING: I believe it's WCW produced, because who's gonna play a Konnan video and they put NWO all in it and all that. Now I gotta say like I liked the song, I thought the beat was awesome at the time and I still think it's good, but I don't know how much rapping Konnan actually does here.
JOHN POLLOCK: It was all the other guy.
WAI TING: It was all the other guy, but like -
JOHN POLLOCK: Whose name we don't know.
WAI TING: Yeah, whose name is not advertised and the name of the song is not even advertised. But Konnan, I don't even know if he knows the words to the song, because throughout the whole video, he knows the chorus, but like throughout the verse, he just, you could see in the video he puts the mic really close to his mouth so you don't really see his mouth mouthing any of the words, so I don't even know if Konnan knows a lot of the words in this song. But I, nonetheless I think it's a dope beat.
JOHN POLLOCK: What did you think of Konnan's match on the pay-per-view?
WAI TING: What match?
JOHN POLLOCK: Exactly.
WAI TING: What does that have to do with it?
JOHN POLLOCK: He's this big star and he's not even on the pay-per-view.
WAI TING: You don't have to, you don't have to have a match on a pay-per-view to have your music showcase.
JOHN POLLOCK: They're pushing this guy as something who's succeeded outside of the company and he can't even do a promo on the pay-per-view, can't do, he has no presence other than that music video.
WAI TING: Do people -
JOHN POLLOCK: We got to make time for Alex Wright and Lodi. Lodi got a pay off on this pay-per-view and Konnan did not.
WAI TING: I don't know. I didn't really have any desire to see Konnan come out and speak.
JOHN POLLOCK: He could have done this live, Wai. That would have been something.
WAI TING: I don't know if he could have.
JOHN POLLOCK: That would have been fantastic.
WAI TING: I really don't think he could have pulled this off live.
JOHN POLLOCK: Okay, the big tag match was next, Wai. Scott Steiner and The Giant, who apparently are the Tag Team Champions, defending against these barking idiots of Rick Steiner and Buff Bagwell. The Giant came out to the ring smoking a cigarette.
WAI TING: Yeah, what the hell is that? Why did he do that?
JOHN POLLOCK: God, did he look out of shape. Like we've seen him at some bad weight in the WWE, never at, he just looked like a clump of shit.
WAI TING: I completely disagree. Completely disagree.
JOHN POLLOCK: You think he looked good here??
WAI TING: I thought he looked-
JOHN POLLOCK: Dude, did you see the size of his ass? Like, this was before he got liposuction when he went to WWE.
WAI TING: Have you seen him in 2003 in WWE?
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, he's not this fat.
WAI TING: Yeah, he-
JOHN POLLOCK: Dude, he's way fatter I think here.
WAI TING: Are you kidding me? No you need comparison pictures John.
JOHN POLLOCK: I will.
WAI TING: In 2000, mid 2000 in WWE-
JOHN POLLOCK: He looks more built because he's got like long hair, but he, no.
WAI TING: No, he is much slimmer. Big Show is huge.
JOHN POLLOCK: Okay, we'll look at pictures. I could be wrong and if I am, I will apologize, but he looked way fatter and out of shape.
WAI TING: Compare Paul Wight in his first appearance in the WWE at St Valentine's Day Massacre, compare that to how he was three years later in the WWE.
JOHN POLLOCK: Well, he might have not been a clean giant at the time either.
WAI TING: Okay, well regardless, I think he's much slimmer.
JOHN POLLOCK: Okay.
WAI TING: Much younger at this point, even though he is smoking.
JOHN POLLOCK: We go through, Rick, this match was pretty much Rick Steiner selling the entire match to build up to a hot tag for Buff to come in.
WAI TING: No shit.
JOHN POLLOCK: And he attacks Rick.
WAI TING: Shocking.
JOHN POLLOCK: Tony Schiavone even came in and acknowledged that most assumed this would happen. Like no confidence in this idiot baby face, Rick Steiner.
WAI TING: Yeah, I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was hilarious, the moment that he tagged him.
JOHN POLLOCK: It was just so predictable.
WAI TING: Yeah, which you want to happen and then when it actually happens, I think it's hilarious. So Bagwell attacks Steiner and then just leaves the ring for the other two to beat on, and then The Giant goes for a missile dropkick, which takes forever, and so of course, by the time he actually gets it off, Rick moves out of the way and Scott gets hit and then what's the finish, John?
JOHN POLLOCK: Rick hit the top rope bulldog on The Giant, so Rick Steiner won the Tag Titles.
WAI TING: Rick Steiner won the Tag Titles and I thought this was decent.
JOHN POLLOCK: I am pretty sure that him winning the Tag Titles by himself led to him picking Judy Bagwell as his partner, because remember she was once the Tag Champion?
WAI TING: No, I do not remember that.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, but that's where this leads, Rick Steiner names Buff Bagwell's mother as his partner.
WAI TING: But John, the crowd was hot for this.
JOHN POLLOCK: They were hot for this match and then this did lead to Rick versus Scott. So they did deliver the advertised match. Buff Bagwell returned during the singles match wearing a suit.
WAI TING: And a Bill Clinton mask.
JOHN POLLOCK: Dumb.
WAI TING: Yeah, I didn't really understand the Bill Clinton mask. But the match was, by this time the two of them, the Steiners, had wrestled a good, what, like 10 minutes? And so they were pretty-
JOHN POLLOCK: These two should never be working this long.
WAI TING: They were pretty gassed and everything was quite sloppy, but Rick Steiner was built to look like Superman here.
JOHN POLLOCK: He was. Won again with a top rope bulldog, so they were pushing this guy as hard as they can, too bad they booked him like an idiot with Buff Bagwell. But nonetheless, he is the Tag Champion and he defeats Scott Steiner. So Rick was definitely getting the big push as they got him ready for Judy Bagwell.
WAI TING: Yeah, the crowd was hot and I actually didn't mind this at all.
JOHN POLLOCK: Then we went to this following promo to build up Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, built around Scott Hall's drinking problems.
PROMO
WRESTLER 1: He's got a lot of personal problems. He wasn't in the right frame of mind. I know he'd been manipulated.
WRESTLER 2: Scott Hall, let him down.
WRESTLER 3: What could have caused this?
WRESTLER 2: You know that I went through a little personal crisis, and I lost a lot of money.
WRESTLER 4: Bring your big seven foot butt down here, and we're gonna get it on, big fella.
WRESTLER 2: I'm gonna say the words to you that hit a nerve like nothing else. It's last call.
WAI TING: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually forgot about this. So Hall was, pretty much hadn't had the whole drinking thing out in the open, he walked out with a glass of something.
JOHN POLLOCK: So this was art imitating life.
WAI TING: Like, at this time, was he really, did these problems actually come out?
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, he was definitely having issues around this same time, because he, going back to like '97, he missed significant time in WCW to go to rehab, and in 98, I don't know if he was on the wagon or off the wagon, but I mean with Scott Hall it's always been back and forth, but they decided to make a storyline out of it.
WAI TING: Yeah, and who are the people to decide to let's turn this guy's real serious problem into a money making storyline?
JOHN POLLOCK: Bischoff. Hall is an alcoholic, that's the feud. During this match, I could not believe, I did start laughing when Nash had Scott Hall in the corner and was delivering elbows and then would yell at him: 'Want a drink?' And then he'd elbow him. 'How about a double?' And he'd hit him with two elbows. What a prick. I would not want to be this man's friend at all. If I was an alcoholic, and you started just elbowing me in the face, mocking my drinking problem, I'd hate you.
WAI TING: Yeah, that's mean, what he did.
JOHN POLLOCK: So.
WAI TING: Yeah, it was really shitty, slow match.
JOHN POLLOCK: This was horrible. He took, Nash delivered two power bombs and then Hall -
WAI TING: Very sloppy looking power bombs.
JOHN POLLOCK: Terrible.
WAI TING: That were very dangerous.
JOHN POLLOCK: Hall then just got out of the ring and left and it was a count out finish. Kevin Nash wins by count out.
WAI TING: Well, before that, he does the X crotch chops.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, yeah, for the group that is not part of WCW at the time. So clearly this match screamed that neither guy was willing to do a job, and here you were on a big pay-per-view without a clean finish. Awesome.
WAI TING: Yeah, definitely left the crowd a bit flat, you know, to just have a count out finish like that.
JOHN POLLOCK: What did we get, another Nitro Girl segment? What happened after this match?
WAI TING: I don't think there was another Nitro Girl segment. After this we go to Bret Hart versus Sting.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yes, for the United States Title. Bret Hart was defending the Championship against sting.
WAI TING: Yeah, to me this was like, this was a supposed to be a dream match. I mean, you have two guys here who are-
JOHN POLLOCK: The masters of the sharpshooter and huge promotion.
WAI TING: Exactly, they're natural rivals. I mean, it's like when they had Marvel vs. DC and then like they put The Flash against Quicksilver, it's like two guys with the same powers.
JOHN POLLOCK: Uh-huh.
WAI TING: Going at it. So I had big expectations for this match.
JOHN POLLOCK: And did they live up to expectations, Wai, because this one was not booked to go too, too long and ended with a terrible ref bump where Sting accidentally elbowed referee Billy Silverman, and Bret Hart went to go help Billy Silverman by leg dropping him.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: And then beat the shit out of Sting with a bat and applied the sharpshooter and Silverman came to and that was the match, Bret Hart wins.
WAI TING: Yeah, I mean, no, it did not live up to expectations, because I was expecting more of, you know, just a very typical technical matchup between the two, but it seemed to be a match that focused more on Brett's heelwork, and a lot of gimmicks, including the weapons and the bats and the ref bumps and all that. So it was really not the type of match that I was hoping for, but I guess they're trying to advance storyline. What did I say? Oh, I just have a just a bit of a gripe here. Like at the beginning, you see a woman holding, this is like a middle aged, or at least like a 30 or 40 year old woman, holding a sign that reads 'Sting give Hart The Scorpion' and scorpion is spelt S-C-O-R-P-I-A-N. I mean, I figure if you're a grown woman, you probably have children, if you plan on taking the effort to make a sign to hopefully have it shown on national TV, at least take the effort to check a dictionary to learn how to spell scorpion.
JOHN POLLOCK: Gonna give wrestling fans a bad name if that reputation continues.
WAI TING: Where are all the smart wrestling fans? Honestly, John, where are all the-
JOHN POLLOCK: Not in Las Vegas. Anywhere but Las Vegas, where Lodi resides. My gripe here is that, as you said, Sting and Bret Hart, in 1998, definitely having the potential to be a very, very strong match in the ring. They were given 10 minutes. 10 minutes on a match where, on a show, where you added three matches at the last minute, you made a tag match out of the Rick Steiner - Scott Steiner match, and you keep Sting and Bret Hart at 10 minutes. Could you not have given these guys an extra 10 minutes and just told Perry and Lodi that hey, we're gonna put the squash match on Nitro tomorrow night. Did Alex Wright and Finlay have to be on this match, on this show?
WAI TING: They did not have to be on this show, no, this show -
JOHN POLLOCK: No, we had to make time for the next match, which was perhaps the worst match I've ever seen on a main event in a pay-per-view.
WAI TING: By this point, John, we had come up to about two hours and 30 minutes in the pay-per-view, with two main events left and definitely this was a long, long pay-per-view.
JOHN POLLOCK: And a note that we should throw in there, just for history's sake, everyone talks about how this is the infamous pay-per-view that got cut off because they went over the pay-per-view time. What WCW had done prior, was they had contacted certain cable companies and got their window extended so the show would go three and a half hours. The problem was they didn't contact all of the cable companies to alert them of this change and thus at the three hour mark they got cut off and that's why a lot of people never saw the Bill Goldberg match against Diamond Dallas Page.
WAI TING: Thankfully, though -
JOHN POLLOCK: We did, this tape got everything. So thankfully, we were not out in the cold. But, the next match, one I have never seen, Hulk Hogan Ultimate Warrior 2.
WAI TING: Oh yeah, this -
JOHN POLLOCK: Well first of all, Wai.
WAI TING: According to Tony Schiavone.
JOHN POLLOCK: First tell us your thoughts of the first match, Wai?
WAI TING: I've only seen the highlights of the first match, I have not seen -
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, you haven't seen it.
WAI TING: I have not even seen the whole WrestleMania six pay-per-view, so.
JOHN POLLOCK: Well let me just say it blows this one away, which isn't saying much.
WAI TING: Yeah, I mean, thinking about the crowd too, though.
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh, my phone's going off.
WAI TING: Yeah, but well, what is that theme song by the way? What is your ringtone?
JOHN POLLOCK: It's the Dallas theme song, the old TV show, Dallas.
WAI TING: Oh God.
JOHN POLLOCK: I'll turn this off.
WAI TING: Turn it off.
JOHN POLLOCK: Okay.
WAI TING: But, like, think about the crowd too, the atmosphere, I mean of the sky dome compared to the MGM Grand it's, yeah, I think that would make a big difference.
JOHN POLLOCK: I don't think that made a huge difference.
WAI TING: No, you don't think so?
JOHN POLLOCK: In how this match was executed, Wai. We saw every skull imaginable incorporated into this match. We saw the longest test of strength I have ever seen, and some great booking coming off the last match with Sting and Bret Hart. We had Hogan attack the referee. Then they built to the finish, Wai, and what a finish this was. It was scheduled to be Hogan lightning flash paper and blinding the eyes of the Ultimate Warrior. However, as you will hear right here, that's not exactly what happened.
AUDIO FROM MATCH
COMMENTATOR 1: Hulk has got something.
COMMENTATOR 2: It's a lighter.
COMMENTATOR 1: Was that like a fireball or something that he attempted to throw at the warrior. He tried to blind him. He tried to-
COMMENTATOR 2: He was going to burn that man. That's what he was going to do.
COMMENTATOR 1: Oh is The Warrior ever lucky.
COMMENTATOR 2: You're not kidding. That's how deep-rooted this hatred is.
COMMENTATOR 1: What a tragedy that could have
COMMENTATOR 2: That would have been horrible.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yes, they botched the finish. So the paper blew out in Hogan's hand and Hogan and Warrior, probably two of the least improv skilled performers.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Had to find a new finish. This sucked, Wai. This was so horrible.
WAI TING: This was a pretty shitty, shitty match. What I noticed here was just, oh, and then Horace came by.
JOHN POLLOCK: Horace came.
WAI TING: Horace came.
JOHN POLLOCK: So on the same night they did the Buff Bagwell angle, all night long they talked about Hogan destroying his dead brother's son on Nitro, Horace comes out and attacks the Ultimate Warrior.
WAI TING: With the shittiest looking chair shot that I'd ever seen. Hits, holds the chair like in the middle of the chair with no leverage at all, just basically taps Warriors back and then Schiavone claims he hit Warriors head and then knocked Warrior out for the finish but-
JOHN POLLOCK: And then Hogan gets his win back, eight years later, after WrestleMania six.
WAI TING: This match was basically just almost like rehashed all the bunch of ideas from the all the matches previous. We had Bagwell's heeled turn done again here, ref bumps, The Giant fucking up again. Well, yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah.
WAI TING: So this was just a, I don't know.
JOHN POLLOCK: This was one of the worst matches I've ever seen on a major pay-per-view. This was the co-main event, the only thing I was shocked was that this match didn't go on last. This would, it would have saved the company.
WAI TING: I was thoroughly-
JOHN POLLOCK: If people had not seen this match.
WAI TING: Yeah. And then at the end of the match, they take a thing of gasoline out and they proceed to pour gasoline on The Warrior.
JOHN POLLOCK: I was fast forwarding at this point, I didn't even see that. They poured gas on him.
WAI TING: They poured gas on him and then all the officials came out and took him away, but Heenan the whole time is like 'Well Schiavone we could have, imagine what we could have avoided here. We avoided a huge disaster, a man being burnt alive.'
JOHN POLLOCK: Could you imagine if they just sat there and let Warrior burn? This was his last appearance, by the way, everyone, in WCW. He never returned after this.
WAI TING: What a run he had.
JOHN POLLOCK: Great, the one Warrior nation.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Horrible. We then go to the main event, Bill Goldberg defending the WCW Championship against Diamond Dallas Page.
WAI TING: The limo driver from WrestleMania six.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yes. There, what a tie in.
WAI TING; Now he's main eventing.
JOHN POLLOCK: The limo driver against Bill Goldberg, the man who was put out of action for a year by a limo when he decided to punch it in.
WAI TING: There you go.
JOHN POLLOCK: After watching the last match, Wai, this was eight stars.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: In comparison.
WAI TING: This was a good match.
JOHN POLLOCK: Bill Goldberg did a standing backflip.
WAI TING: Did he really? Wow. First of all, before, did you fast forward through the intro? The Michael Buffer intro?
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah.
WAI TING: You missed a gem, because not only did Michael Buffer do his announcement, he says-
MICHAEL BUFFER: 'It's time for the WCW NWO Halloween Havoc final match of the evening, sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission Chairman Dr. Elias Ghanem, commissioners Luthor Mack, Lorenzo Fertitta, Glenn Carano and Dr. James Nave. Executive Director Marc Ratner. Physicians in attendance are Dr. Margaret Goodman and Dr. William Berliner.
JOHN POLLOCK: Are you kidding me?
WAI TING: Yeah, probably the only time you'll ever hear the name Lorenzo Fertitta mentioned on a wrestling event.
JOHN POLLOCK: That's awesome. Fuck, I am never fast forwarding through another intro by Michael Buffer.
WAI TING: That's part of the gold, it's just-
JOHN POLLOCK: Lorenzo Fertitta, Glenn Carano and who would have been-
WAI TING: Marc Ratner, I think.
JOHN POLLOCK: And Marc Ratner. Wow.
WAI TING: This is the gold that happens. This is what I watch for, actually, forget the matches and it's the stuff in between the matches.
JOHN POLLOCK: It's awesome, that's way better than anything on the whole pay-per-view.
WAI TING: But yeah, by now, it had been about three hours and seven minutes before this match started.
JOHN POLLOCK: Wow.
WAI TING: Go ahead.
JOHN POLLOCK: Fine. I was really tired. I didn't take notes during this match. I watched this at like three in the morning. But as I mentioned, the backflip by Goldberg, was, it was quite the, the guy was 265 at the time, 270.
WAI TING: Yes.
JOHN POLLOCK: So I mean, very impressive. DDP is a guy who he always gets a bad rap, but someone who worked really, really hard. He would script his matches heavily, but I mean, it worked. He was very over at this time and he put over Bill Goldberg clean, which was the right finish as they were building towards a starrcade, they were at this point building for Goldberg and Kevin Nash. But this was two months before Goldberg lost his first match, so he was still really hot at this time. And it was a good finish, I was glad that this closed the show instead of Hogan and Warrior.
WAI TING: Absolutely.
JOHN POLLOCK: Because at this time, you would have expected Goldberg and DDP to go on second from the top.
WAI TING: I was expecting that and to see the matches that happened with both, with all four guys, I'm very thankful this finished it. Goldberg, I mean, say what you will about Goldberg, but like his in ring charisma is undeniable.
JOHN POLLOCK: Oh yeah.
WAI TING: He is as popular as he is because he just looks the part and very stiff looking offence, which I'm sure a lot of times felt very stiff as well. The crowd was nuts when DDP hit that diamond cutter and they thought he was gonna win, the crowd was insane.
JOHN POLLOCK: This was a very strong crowd and considering all they had sat through, this was three hours into the show, still hot for the main event, it really is a testament to how over your main event performers were at this time.
WAI TING: Yeah. Two original WCW guys, nobody they brought over from the WWE. And yeah, this was a good main event. Schiavone ends the pay-per-view off by saying, with Paige and Goldberg shaking hands, hugging, says 'It's not about sending people to hospital, this is what it's about. It's not about sending people to the hospital. It's not about trying to burn people. It's about one-on-one competition for the title.'
JOHN POLLOCK: It's not about trying to burn people.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, unfortunately no one saw this match because it cut off on the pay-per-view. However, they did replay this match the next night on Nitro.
WAI TING: They did.
JOHN POLLOCK: And it was watched by a ridiculous amount of people on free television the next night, so.
WAI TING: That's good, that's smart.
JOHN POLLOCK: That's WCW Halloween Havoc out of 10, Wai, I'm giving this one a, I'm gonna say a four.
WAI TING: Wow. John, I -
JOHN POLLOCK: Main event was really solid, some of the undercard stuff, but man there was just too much unnecessary stuff and I even feel dirty giving it a four knowing that Hogan and Warrior was on this. This was one of the worst matches I've seen in my life. This was, I would rank this lower than Jenna Morasca - Sharmell, because these are two proven headline performers, and I don't care how much you say about well, these guys can draw, it doesn't matter what they can do in the ring, this was an embarrassment of a wrestling match.
WAI TING: But John, what are you expecting from Warrior versus Hogan?
JOHN POLLOCK: At least shades of what they've done eight years prior. It's not like this is, dude, it's 2009 and Hulk Hogan is getting set for a tour of Australia.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: 11 years after this atrocious match.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: I'm sorry, in 1998, Hulk Hogan should have been able to put together something better than what this match provided.
WAI TING: Well, I had a-
JOHN POLLOCK: This was horrible. Book around it. Don't book a flash paper finish when the guy can't light flash paper. He's probably never done it in his life before. So stupid. I hated that match.
WAI TING: I think I had a drastically different viewing of this pay-per-view than you did. I mean, we talked about our grading scale last week, am I grading this from my 1998 eyes or my 2009 eyes, and for my 2009 eyes this pay-per-view deserves an eight out of ten.
JOHN POLLOCK: An eight?!
WAI TING: An eight out of 10 because I was thoroughly entertained throughout the whole thing, by the nostalgia, by Hogan versus Warrior, I was not expecting anything from it. I was expecting a shit match and that's what I got and I was entertained by it.
JOHN POLLOCK: Alright, an eight out of 10 and a four out of 10.
WAI TING: An eight out of ten.
JOHN POLLOCK: So maybe we're gonna have to average it, so then overall, the Ting-Pollak review gives us a six out of 10.
WAI TING: We don't have to average it, we can, we can-
JOHN POLLOCK: Okay, well that's our review. We should post all our reviews.
WAI TING: We should.
JOHN POLLOCK: We should put a thing on the Facebook thing, so each event we'll put down our rankings.
WAI TING: I mean, John, I thought that the undercard here was good, there was nothing terrible.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, it was okay. I mean, Raven - Jericho I thought could have had more time, it only got like six minutes. I mean Juventude looked really good in his match.
WAI TING: Yeah.
JOHN POLLOCK: Kidman - Disco was, I just, I would have much rather Kidman and Juvi. I would have condensed it into one match and give those two sometime. I would have preferred that. Nash and Hall was a wash. Everything with Rick Steiner, I'm sorry, I just, I've never been a fan of him as a performer, so watching him for 20 minutes straight selling and then going over-
WAI TING: Yeah, he was booked well though.
JOHN POLLOCK: He was booked well but it didn't mean he was much in the ring and neither was Scott Steiner, The Giant or Buff Bagwell.
WAI TING: Okay. I don't know, I just can't get, and Bret Hart staying, I think you had to have been underwhelmed by that.
WAI TING: My biggest gripes with the pay-per-view were, first of all, its length, this whole thing was three and a half hours.
JOHN POLLOCK: Way too long, way too long.
WAI TING: Way too long. There were too many rough bumps and the NWO, it was way too predictable. Two NWO members did the same heel turn in this whole pay-per-view.
JOHN POLLOCK: The biggest pleasant surprise on this card, Meng and Wrath. That was a match I was expected to do absolute shit when I saw it come out and it impressed me.
WAI TING: Really? Sure.
JOHN POLLOCK: It was booked smart, it was booked short, it was like five minutes and you were really pushing Wrath at this point. So there we go, Halloween Havoc. Next week, continue to send in your requests, your feedback to either Wai, W-A-I at thefightnetwork.com. In case they don't know how to spell your name.
WAI TING: What?
JOHN POLLOCK: Or John at the fightnetwork.com.
WAI TING: J-O-H-N at thefightnetwork.com or Facebook, Facebook both of us.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, Wai, check out Wai's logo, it's tremendous.
WAI TING: Join the Facebook group. Type in review dash a dash Wai, W-A-I, and yeah, John.
JOHN POLLOCK: Send in your request and we'll figure out something to review next week. Are you happy with this format, Wai, do you want to do a non-wrestling event or do you want to, how do you want to do next week?
WAI TING: I don't care. We could switch it up, whatever sounds appealing at the time.
JOHN POLLOCK: Because I found, when I was going through these tapes, when I went to go find this, I also found ones like a 1999 VHS release of Triple H and Chyna, On the Road with Triple H and Chyna.
WAI TING: Oh wow.
JOHN POLLOCK: It's a WWF video.
WAI TING: Jesus Christ.
JOHN POLLOCK: Called Our Time.
WAI TING: Wow, that's awesome. I'd love to review that!
JOHN POLLOCK: So there's some good stuff man that we can, I do like having the pay-per-view, I do like going to these events because the nostalgia is fun.
WAI TING: Yeah, they are fun. I mean, I will say though, that they are very long. So -
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah.
WAI TING: I almost anticipate some of these movies because I'm sure there'll be shorter than these pay-per-views.
JOHN POLLOCK: Yeah, maybe that's why the fast forward button is there. Thanks everyone for listening to Ask-a-Wai, and Mr. Ting, what are we going to go out with?
WAI TING: Well, John, in honor of Hulk Hogan versus the Ultimate Warrior number two, I think we should go out to Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Blinded by the Light.
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