Smark Out Moment

Halloween Havoc just isn't the same this year with World Wrestling Entertainment deciding to forego the "Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal" gimmick associated with the premium live event, which is set to go down this Saturday, October 25, 2025 at the Findlay Toyota Center in Prescott Valley, Arizona (check out WWE NXT Halloween Havoc coverage)

Much like the golden tumbler to choose your "random" entrant number in the Royal Rumble, this has never been an entirely necessary element to put on the show, but it was always a fun bonus that helped make it stand out from the other events put on throughout the year.

For those brand new to the programming, Halloween Havoc dates back far beyond its days in NXT when it was originally created by World Championship Wrestling as one of its staple pay-per-views.

The inaugural WCW Halloween Havoc took place October 28, 1989 at the Philadelphia Civic Center. This event featured the Thunderdome cage as its primary gimmick in a main event of Sting and Ric Flair taking on Terry Funk and The Great Muta. But a few years later, for Halloween Havoc 1992, Sting would face Jake "The Snake" Roberts, and the idea of spinning a wheel to determine the stipulation for their match was introduced.

Supposedly as a concept from "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes, this wheel featured 12 different types of matches as options for their match:

1. Texas Bull Rope
2. Spinners' Choice
3. Russian Chain Match
4. Dog Collar Match
5. "I Quit" Match
6. Barbed Wire
7. Cage Match
8. Lumber Jacks with Belts
9. Prince of Darkness
10. Texas Death Match
11. Coal Miner's Glove
12. First Blood

When Sting spun the wheel at the pay-per-view, it landed on Coal Miner's Glove, which would be placed on a pole as a weapon that could be used.

The next year, the wheel would return to influence the stipulation for Big Van Vader vs. Cactus Jack, landing on the Texas Death Match option, with a few other tweaks to the lineup to include things like Falls Count Anywhere.

The wheel was retired the next year and never made another appearance under WCW for its 1994-2000 events, unfortunately.

Eventually, the concept of a wheel filled with matches was utilized both in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (dubbed the "Wheel of Dixie" in reference to owner Dixie Carter) and on WWE's flagship weekly show Monday Night Raw, but under a different name. With a more Las Vegas themed concept, this was rebranded Raw Roulette, starting with 2002.

The concept was essentially the same as before, but much more thematically relevant. After all, why was there a wheel of gimmicks associated with a Halloween event when roulette wheels have no horror element to them other than when you lose? It made some sense being brought into the mix by Jake Roberts, who frequently used different card analogies in his promos and such, but it certainly seems more like something you would use to play roulette online rather than to decide whether a match is going to be contested inside a steel cage or will only end if you make your opponent tap out.

This Raw Roulette wheel also tweaked the stipulations to fit more with the showmanship and extravagance of the new theme, replacing the more dangerous and horror-based gimmicks with more fun and silly ones like a Blindfold Match and a Las Vegas Showgirl Match, for example.

Special Raw Roulette episodes would take place in 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2013, before the gimmick once again was put on the back burner.

However, the Halloween Havoc branding was eventually repurposed by WWE as an NXT event starting in 2020 as part of a list of different WCW and ECW pay-per-view names that were eventually brought back (including The Great American Bash, Starrcade, Heatwave, Worlds Collide, and WarGames) to varying degrees.

Someone within the company (likely Paul "Triple H" Levesque) must have been a fan of the concept and decided to make the "Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal" aspect a regular thing for Halloween Havoc going forward. Sometimes, wrestlers spun the wheel directly to determine their stipulations. Other times, a Superstar who was the host of the show (such as Shotzi Blackheart) would spin the wheel on their behalf to set the gimmick.

Unfortunately, most of the different match types were effectively the same match, just with different names. Nothing primarily separated a "Devil's Playground Match" from a "Chucky's Choice: Trick or Street Fight" match as both were just No Disqualification and No Count-out. Some others, like the "Scareway to Hell Ladder Match" or "Weapons Wild Match" did have some actual other purpose to them, but again, a TLC match is no different to a regular ladder match.

This year, unless plans change, there are two stipulations for matches, which are dubbed a "Day of the Dead" match between Ethan Page and El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. for the NXT North American Championship, and a "Broken Rules" match between The Hardy Boyz and DarkState for the NXT Tag Team Championship.

Both sound fitting to the Halloween Havoc theme, but neither has had their stipulation explained, which likely means they are still generic No DQ matches. On top of that, neither was determined through spinning a wheel. Superstars simply announced the gimmick in promos, which is far less effective and interesting than the more randomized aspect of the wheel, despite how that was clearly always fixed to land on specific spots and not legitimately a game of chance.

Hopefully, this means Raw Roulette or something similar will take place in the coming months—possibly as a tie-in to all the WrestleMania 42 festivities which will take place in The Entertainment capital of the World when WWE goes back to Sin City in April, or that it will return with next year's Halloween Havoc, which has not yet been confirmed for 2026. 

For a rather comprehensive breakdown of this gimmick from over the years, check out QuietTry's YouTube video below:

If you'd like to see this wheel brought back into the future on WWE programming in some fashion, leave a comment below with your ideas!