Today, WIRTB Review is being brought to you by Everclear, the drink of college dorm parties everywhere. As part of this new sponsorship, I've been tasked with a match that's been considered by many to be the worst match in wrestling history. I'm talking the match that Dave Meltzer gave negative-five stars to. We're talking Hogan v. Warrior, Part Two at Halloween Havoc 1998.
A bit of backstory before we begin. By this point, WCW was just pissing away money, if you let "the big wigs" tell it. The Ultimate Warrior was one of the last major WWF hold-overs from the 1980s and 1990s to not sign with WCW, a la Sting in the WWE up until 2014. So, when Warrior, may he rest in peace, signed with WCW, we were given everything. Cryptic messages, cult-like conversions (he ran the "One Warrior Nation," a play on the NWO), smoke tricks, trap doors that almost paralyzed the British Bulldog, and this:
Yep, we were given a scene fresh out of Looney Tunes.
Hogan, at this point, was in the middle of having the NWO run into the ground. So, when these two finally met up again one-on-one at Halloween Havoc 1998, people were legitimately looking forward to it. In some ways, it was almost like Rock versus Cena II. You knew you weren't going to get a great, or even good, match. However, the moment was probably enough to keep things in line.
And then the match actually started.
Hogan and Warrior trade armbars and whatnot. The crowd begins to shit all over this. Schiavone tries to cover by saying "you may not like it, but this is smart wrestling." Wow. We're not even five minutes in and this has happened. More grandstanding is given and we get a repeat of the Warrior/Hogan test of strength from WM 6, which results in Hogan beating the hell out of Warrior. We then get the "Hogan getting head in a test of strength" spot. I'm already losing interest in this match.
Hogan starts just laughing at Warrior, the camera angles make me nauseous, and Schiavone and Heenan pretty much call Hogan an egotistical fuckhead. We then get tons of no-selling and tons of misconnected shots. Hogan "drops" a non-existent knee on the ref, then runs into Warrior's attack. From here, we get Paul Wight, Stevie Ray, "Vincent" (Virgil), and probably some others who I can't remember running out to beat the hell out of Warrior to no avail. How does he beat them? Pretty much by doing the equivalent of Zangief's spinning lariat to everyone.
Hogan then begins whipping and choking Warrior out with a weight belt. This is retorted by...Warrior doing the same to Hogan? And after this, of course, we get one of the greatest worst spots in wrestling history. Do I really need to spell this one out to you?
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| FIREWINSLOL. |
But, this match wasn't that bad...if you look at it from a "we know this is going to be fucking horrible, let's see how badly it crashes" point of view. If you're looking for a sequel to Hogan versus Warrior from WM6, don't. Ever. Hell, even if you're looking for Royal Rumble 2015, run away. If you're looking for the shit Botchamania dreams are made of? This is your match.
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