Chris

Tonight, it's Hogan vs. Piper in a Cage!

Yuji Nagata (w/ Sonny Onoo) vs. Ultimo Dragon

Disco and Jackie Hate Each Other

Special Unadvertised Bonus Match

Gedo vs. Chris Jericho

World Championship Wrestling World Cruiserweight Championship Title vs. Mask Match

WCW Cruiserweight Champion Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio Jr

Call 1-900 909 9900

A Word With Bischoff and Hogan

World Championship Wrestling

Steve 'Mongo' McMichael vs. Alex Wright (w/ Alex Wright)

Macho is Here Because He Wants to Be

Non-Title Inter-Gender Match

WCW World TV Champion Disco Inferno vs. Jacquelyn

World Championship Wrestling United States Championship

WCW US Champion Curt Hennig vs. Nature Boy Ric Flair

JJ Dillon Gives Hogan What He Wants

Scott Hall (w/ Syxx) vs. Lex Luger

Special Referee: Larry Zybysko

Las Vegas Sudden Death Match

Macho Man Randy Savage (w/ Miss. Elizabeth) vs. Diamond Dallas Page

Cage Match

Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper

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Sure,andwere at the peak of neither their popularity nor their physical condition, and sure, the match wasn't going to be a technical classic to rival the kind of stuff we'd see on your average WCW undercard, but look, even in late-1997, Hogan vs. Piper was still a big deal, and WCW did a fantastic job of making it feel like one.Tonight, the two would collide in a steel cage match which, no matter how it may have transpired, felt like the biggest match in the world as we went into WCW Halloween Havoc 1997.Here's what happened when Hogan met Piper, when Hennig met Flair, and when two all-time greats put on the greatest Cruiserweight match ever.Months ago at Uncensored 1997 , Roddy Piper led a team into battle against Team WCW and Team NWO, with a cage match against Hulk Hogan being the reward up for grabs if Piper's team won.Piper's team didn't win, but now that Piper was in charge he could -and had- booked that cage match anyway.Our opening video tonight recapped the recent war of words between the two before taking us to the arena where Steve Blackman's theme music played andandwere there to greet us.The three, as usual, began by hyping tonight's main event before taking us down to ringside for our first match.After turning his back onat Slamboree 1997 had been at war with his former charge, first sending in an army of luchadores to try -and fail- to take Dragon down before finally recruitingto do his bidding.Nagata and Dragon went at it tonight in a very good opening match that really set the right tone for the rest of the show and was a pure joy to watch.After an excellent battle, Nagata came out on top, finally giving Onoo one up on his rival.Afterwards, Nagata and Onoo attacked Dragon's arm. This one, apparently, wasn't over yet.Out in the back,bragged to WCW.com's Mark Madden about how he was going to beatin their upcoming mixed gender TV title match.Jackie then ran up to tell Disco that he needed to shut up, and then chased him off for good measure.You've got to admire the way 'pulled together at the last minute' becomes 'Special Unadvertised Bonus Match.'You've also got to admire the wayturned up the intensity in this short -though very enjoyable- bout.Mixing lucha-style action with the hard-hitting offence of traditional puroreso, this was a very good effort from both men, apart from one moment when a top-rope hurricanrana attempt by Jericho went awry and both he and his opponent nearly died.Somewhat predictably, Jericho got the win with the Lion Tamer.Out in the back, beautiful southern belle,toldthat she was the real star between her and her husband,Though I may have this wrong (and I'm not sure it's important enough to check), it was implied that a stipulation had been put in place where Debra would have to leave WCW if her husband Mongo beat an opponent of Debra's choosing.Speaking of Mongo, he came ranting and raving onto the scene so that he and his estranged wife could have a domestic live on air about whether or not Debra could keep her diamond ring and credit cards.I don't care what anyone says, these two were pretty fun characters for their time, and yes it helped that Debra was more stunning than I think I ever gave her credit for back in the 90s.Yes, it'smatch, one of -if notgreatest Cruiserweight matches of all time and one of my own personal top five favourite matches ever.I mean, seriously, from start to finish, this title vs. mask match was an absolute masterpiece, a work of art that stands the test of time as undeniable proof thatand the lateare among the greatest in-ring performers of their generation.Plus, it helped that -unlike a lot of Cruiserweight PPV bouts- the crowd were seriously into this one all the way through.A true must-see contest, this one ended with a win for Mysterio via a sick top-top hurricanrana that looked almost as brutal as the earlier Jericho/Gedo one.Post-match, an irate Eddie Guerrero attacked the new Champion.Out in the entrance way, Mean Gene told us to call the hotline to find out who was in the newest backstage clique was in WCW.Out in the back, Hollywood Hulk Hogan andcut one of those edgy black and white promos in which they insisted that Hogan wouldn't wrestle tonight unless they got a contract saying that Sting wasn't allowed in the building.Hogan played up like WCW were the bad guys if they didn't agree to this because they'd be depriving the fans of seeing Hollywood beat Piper.This promo was far too long for what it was, and to be honest I switched off after about two minutes.The more WCW I watch, the more I find myself repeating the sentence I'm about to type below:This was a passable match with a weird finish.After a few minutes of decent but largely forgettable action (apart from one hilarious spot wheretapped Mongo on the back to push him into the ropes and Mongo sold it like he'd just been stabbed), McMichael looked to have the win when -get this-came out.Debra distracted the referee whilst Goldberg first speared, then Jackhammered Mongo, and did it so close to the referee that said referee would have to be a complete moron not to realise that he was there.Goldberg then picked up Wright and dropped him onto Mongo, the referee turned around, and this one was over.Afterwards, Debra thanked Goldberg by giving him Mongo's Super Bowl ring. Alex Wright -now celebrating his third straight PPV win in a row- went to shake the big man's hand, but got beat up and jackhammered instead.So yeah, that happened. Bill Goldberg, the man who went on to become one of the biggest stars of the 90s, starting his career in a random feud with Steve McMichael in the role of Debra's errand boy.In another nWo promo,, flanked by, rambled on about Hogan, Bischoff and the cage match before claiming that he didn't really care about that at all.What he really cared about -in his own insane way- was his upcoming Sudden Death Match againstOffering her two cents, Liz told Savage that DDP didn't belong anywhere near Savage, to which Randy replied by going on a sponsored tangent about Slim Jims.It was a typically batshit crazy Savage promo, and, weirdly, it worked.I'm never entirely sure which spelling of Jacquelyn she used, so we'll go with this one for this inter-gender match.Things began with Jackie ready to rumble but Disco stalling for about an hour on the grounds that e didn't want to hit a woman.he yelled, and I couldn't agree more.In fact, the whole first half of the match was a ridiculous -and tedious- game of cat and mouse that saw Jacqueline struggle to catch Disco.When she did, she basically kicked his ass, rolled him up and pinned him.Nothing against the future Hall of Famer, she was always fun to watch, but either she nor Disco benefited at all from this, and those of us who had to watch it suffered the most.Moving on...and US Championhad been at war since the latter had betrayed the former the previous month at Fall Brawl 1997 , turning his back on The Four Horsemen (which he'd only just joined) to become the newest member of the New World Order.Since then, the United States title had come into the picture, with Hennig getting the belt away from Mongo, and thus we had our match tonight.A few years earlier, this battle between Flair and his former Executive Consultant could have been an all-time classic.Tonight, it wasn't, but it was still the very best match that both men were capable of at this stage in their careers.That's not a criticism either, this was a very good, old-school pro wrestling match full of passion and emotion.It ended when Flair tied Hennig up in a tree of woe, put the US Title over the champ's face, and kicked it.The referee called for the bell, so Flair decked him one for good measure.Post-match, a gaggle of referees ran down to stop Flair from destroying Hennig. When they couldn't do it,andran down to help out their nWo buddy.After a brief clip that saw Macho Man Randy Savage taking tofor WCW.com, we got Mean Gene Okerlund talking toout in the entrance way.JJ claimed that everyone was sick of being bullied by the New World Order, and then when Eric Bischoff came down to once again insist that Hogan wouldn't wrestle, Dillon pulled out a piece of paper which apparently was the contract saying Hogan was legally obligated to wrestle.That caused Bischoff to rant and rave that Dillon didn't have the authority to make the match, but Dillon did, and the match was on.......but not yet. After taking it upon himself to count the winning fall in last month's DDP/Luger vs. Savage/Hall bout at Fall Brawl,was officially the erm, official, for this below average contest.The only interesting thing here was the mounting tension between Zybysko and, and Bischoff, the latter of whom came down towards the finish.The rest of the bout was so boring that I honestly stopped watching at one point.The end came when Bischoff distracted Zybysko and Syxx kicked Luger in the head.Despite not wanting to, Larry was forced to count the fall and this one was over......or was it.Suspecting something was up, Zybysko called for a replay on the big screen and, after seeing that shenanigans had been involved, restarted the bout.Hall returned to the ring, walked straight into a Torture Rack and lost the match.Afterwards, Hall and Bischoff beat up Zybysko and, adding insult to injury, Bischoff put his foot on Larry's chest whilst Hall counted to three.A commercial for next month's World War 3 1997 followed, and then it was onto our next match.Using some hitherto unknown definition of the term 'sudden death,' this was basically your typical Last Man Standing / Texas Death Match in which the only way to lose was to fail to meet the referee's count of ten.came dressed for war in jeans, boots, and ribs bandaged up to sell the recent injuries to that area caused by the nWo, Savage wore a walking advertisement for Slim Jim, which was weird given how anti-establishment the New World Order were supposed to be.Though this wasn't as good as their memorable outing at Spring Stampede 1997 it was still a decent effort from both men, and both women.A surprising highlight came when Elizabeth smashed some kind of pizza tray over the referee's head and knocked him out, then began choking out Page with a TV cable.then rushed out and dragged Liz to the back by her hair. After that, the match, which had been pretty mediocre up to this point, finally got good.At least it did until the finish, when a fake(later claimed to be Hogan) came out and blasted Page with a bat.Dallas couldn't beat the ten count, and that was all she wrote.Cue Michael Buffer, it was time for our main event of the evening...Piper came out carrying Hogan's title belt despite not being the champion and this not being a title match.I've tried not to rag on WCW for being, well, WCW, but the more I review these late-90s shows, the more I find myself seriously scratching my head.Meanwhile, the cage was the old-school WWF style rather than the mesh style preferred by the company in usual matches, with the bars so far apart that Rey Mysterio and his fellow Cruiserweights could have easily have slipped through them and still had room to wear a backpack.I mention this because it was more interesting than anything that happened in the ring for the first couple of minutes.That was until the door came open and the action spilled outside of the cage.With no referee on the inside of the ring, I'd assumed that the only way to win was to escape, but that clearly wasn't the case, so at this point, I was both bored and confused.Hogan tried to walk to the back, but Sting -or at least another, pro-WCW Fake Sting, arrived, pointed his bat at him, and kept him distracted long enough for Piper to come and beat Hollywood back into the ring.As both Piper and Hogan tried to climb out of the cage (despite showing us they could go out of the door), another Sting arrived.A bunch more also got involved, each one looking more like they bought a knock-off Sting costume from the Dollar Store than the last.The only highlight came when Randy Savage rushed down and leapt from the top of the cage, which was legitimately tall as hell, but missed Piper and nailed Hogan.Piper then slapped the sleeper on, and Randy Anderson, who had randomly decided to enter the ring despite the announcers earlier making a big deal out of there being no referee, called it.Afterwards, Bischoff ran to the ring whilst Savage and Hogan handcuffed Piper to the cage and destroyed him.To finish, a 'fan,' clearly a plant, climbed into the cage and got his Ass handed to him by Hogan and Savage before Doug Dillinger and a bunch of officials dragged him away to end this mess once and for all.1997 events reviewed so far: