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Halloween Havoc 1991: Chamber of Horrors
This is rock bottom guys. When the talk of wrestling fans shifts to bad gimmick matches, several matches inevitably come up. Matches like the WWF's Hell in a Kennel, Global Wrestling's Bungee Cord match, and the AWA's Turkey on a Pole match all come up often, but one match is ALWAYS overlooked. That match is the "Chamber of Horrors" match, the most offensive yet ironically funny match that any promotion has ever sanctioned. This is the very match took eight of WCW's brightest stars and turned them into cartoon character. Sting, El Gigante, and the Steiner Brothers took on Abdullah the Butcher, The Diamond Studd (Scott Hall), Cactus Jack, and Vader in a match of ridiculous proportions. The rules are as follows: All eight men will be locked inside of the "Chamber of Horrors" cage (aka "The Thundercage). Inside of the cage, dozens of "instruments of torture" (baseball bats, chairs, chains, handcuffs, etc..) may be used to render your opponent(s) helpless. What happens when your opponent is helpless you ask ??? Let's do the old Dusty Rhodes multiple choice approach:
If you were a booker trying to run a respectable, athletic, old-school wrestling promotion, the object of the match would be to:
1) Drag the incapacitated opponent to the center of the ring, attempting to pin him... 1,2,3...
2) Apply a shoot-style submission hold to an injured body part of your adversary, allowing the option of a quick submission.
3) Place your helpless opponent inside of a cage in the center of the ring which conveniently holds an ELECTRIC CHAIR. Once your opponent is strapped into the Electric Chair, you will have your teammate pull the switch, hypothetically KILLING YOUR OPPONENT.
Which one would YOU pick ??? I'll give you one guess as to which one Dusty picked. Old-school WCW fans spent yet another thirty dollars on this shit, not discovering until the PPV what exactly the "Chamber of Horrors" was. Just for the record, Abdullah the Butcher was the one who ended up getting "fried" as sparks flew, pyros went off, and the crowd laughed in contempt of this shit...
Other than the silly gimmick match, Halloween Havoc 91 wasn't actually that bad. Sure there was stuff like PN News and Big Josh against "The Ghoulish Creatures" (two masked, yet holiday appropriate, jobbers), but most of the in-ring action was pretty solid. Dustin Rhodes and Steve Austin wrestled to a 15 minute time limit draw so Austin could keep his heat and Dustin could continue to be pushed to the moon, (Dustin's Big Card Record: 5-0-1) and Rick Rude made his WCW debut in triumphant fashion, wrestling a match behind a mask as "The Halloween Phantom" before shocking the world with his identity.
The 2/3 falls main event between Lex Luger and Ron Simmons proved to an awesome match. Despite some of the internet criticism of the match, I really enjoyed it, and the Simmons/Luger feud on a whole was an awesome, extremely well executed angle that would ultimately give Simmons the steam needed to win the title nearly a year later.