[1997-10-26-WCW-Halloween Havoc] Hulk Hogan vs Roddy Piper (Cage)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Age in the Cage, JIP. I'm pretty sure this is the same cage Flair and Luger used at Capital Combat. What we see of the match is really, really bad and has no heat. I love that Eddy vs Rey got way more over with this crowd. Multiple Stings show up. Savage interferes and does his crazy jump from the top of the cage that I think tore his ACL if I remember right. What a dumb spot that didn't even get a pop. Piper wins with the sleeper. Hogan and Savage handcuff Piper to the cage after as the crowd chants for Sting. Hogan puts on a Sting masks and whips Piper with a belt. The fan climbing the cage is a holy shit moment but what the hell is going on? This is all so weird and such a disaster and clusterfuck.

[Kevin Ridge]

Same cage used at Superbrawl in 94 too it looks like. Hogan climbing the cage! Was this escape rules? They are pretty high up. No bumps off this cage though for these guys. So little crowd reaction to match. Referee is outside the cage but comes into cage to count pinfall. So dumb. Savage does an insane elbow off the top of the cage but it is for nothing as he hits neither Hogan or Piper. Roddy wins with the sleeper. He’s the commissioner and booked himself into this match but wasn’t smart enough to put the WCW title on the line. Just all around really bad and I shudder to think about how the whole match was. If that was a fan that climbed the cage they gave him a lot of TV time. Hogan and Savage try to beat him up too. There was more sympathy to this shithead than some of the beatings WCW guys are getting on weekly TV.

[Childs]

God, this was a piece of shit. I felt bad for the announcers, desperately trying to sell it as some epic blood feud while the work in the ring failed to back them up at all. The tepid crowd reaction spoke volumes I'm amazed they spent the whole year overestimating the interest in Piper. Or maybe I'm not. And why the fuck put him over at this point, when the whole focus was looking ahead to Sting-Hogan? Obviously, this didn't take away from the interest in that match, nor did the brutally overdone stupidity with the fake Stings. But it was still moronic and a glaring sign of what was to come with WCW. It's a testament to the basic power of the NWO concept that the company didn't tank far sooner.

[soup23]

OH boy, terrible action here. I had been surprised at the heat PIper has had coming into this match but these guys were too old to be rolling around in this huge cage and keep it interesting. Savages dive off the top of the cage was crazy and I have no clue why Piper went over here especially because the ending moment is Hogan and Co. beating him up relentlessly. The whole fan stuff is utterly bizarre and the sign off is rushed. This night felt designed to be NWO's last big stand before the fall at Starrcade which could had been executed much better.

[Robert S]

There are quite some really astonishing things here:

( a ) the cage is huge

( b ) the cage is shaky as hell

( c ) Savage is nuts to do the double axe-handle from the top of the cage

( d ) Schiavone after several Stings appear and one chases Hogan back into the cage: "Everywhere Hogan goes there is Sting." - "Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take I'll be watching you."

( e ) Why the hell would you try to enter or leave that cage by climbing it when there is a door? I mean you could ask that question for every cage match, but for that huge thing even more so.

( f ) The thing with the fan entering the cage was weird as hell. The camera crew stayed forever on him and Hogan and Savage were working on him with worked punches and kicks. But the way that guy was behaving it had to be a real fan. Probably the production crew thought due to the face paint that guy was part of the show.

( g ) Did they ever make it clear that this match was not for the title?

[El-P]

Awful match. Stupid booking. More fake Stings. Piper and Hogan going out of the cage together via the door 2 seconds after Tony said "If Hogan does out he wins this match !". Piper winning two months before the biggest match ever. No heat. This is right out of 98, hell, even 99. Yep. The honeymoon was over. The writing was on the wall. The fact Savage fucked up his knee which basically would end up killing his career for nothing in a godawful match is really sad too. Age in the Cage. Yeah. The WWF via Cornette really could have a laugh at this one, when they had Steve Austin on the verge of megastardom and a young hot prospect named The Rock. WCW had finally lost the plot after one year of greatness.

[PeteF3]

Yeah, what else is there to add? Terrible match with no heat, nonsensical rules, a ridiculous dive off the cage that people forgot about two seconds after it was done, and a ridiculous clusterfuck of a finish. I and everyone else are just groaning whenever we see a bogus Sting now. I have no idea if that fan was a work or not but either way it just added to the clusterfuckery and not in a good way. There's the organized chaos that the WWF has been making an art form out of on Raw, and then there's just chaos. Easily the worst PPV main event of 1997 for a multitude of reasons.