Title stipulation being added to their match. In addition to Guerrero’s technical skill and size advantage, he had upped the viciousness of their feud leading up to this pay-per-vie- repeatedly snatching Mysterio’s mask-leading to a Mask vs. He had held the Cruiserweight Championship before, but it was hardly a given that he would win it at Halloween Havoc.
Mysterio had been wrestling since 1989, early in his teen years, eventually debuting in WCW in 1996. In WCW, he battled for the United States Championship before moving into the Cruiserweight division, where he won the title from Chris Jericho. Guerrero had been wrestling in Mexico and Japan since 1987 and had started working for WCW in 1989 (though he didn’t truly become part of the roster until 1995). The Cruiserweight Championship match that opened WCW’s 1997 Halloween Havoc pay-per-view would go down as not only one of the division’s greatest moments but a historic display of the lucha libre wrestling style in the United States and a key moment in Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio’s decades-spanning rivalry.
Lack of upward mobility would send many of these wrestlers to the WWF in later years, where they would become bigger stars, but in 1997 they were providing something exciting and different than what wrestling fans could see on the other side of the Monday Night Wars. While main events were dominated by repetitive nWo run-ins and aging stars, WCW’s undercard featured young, hungry, talented men like Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Juventud Guerrera, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho putting on great matches in their athletic primes. This week’s Classic Match of the Week is a product one of WCW’s greatest strengths that still holds up today: their groundbreaking Cruiserweight division. ’s Classic Match series takes a closer look at significant and super cool matches from wrestling history.
Rey Mysterio avoids being pinned by Eddie Guerrero at WCW Halloween Havoc 1997.
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