NXT Halloween Havoc 2022: A Great Beginning, a Great Ending and a Haunted Middle

Halloween Havoc opens with exactly the kind of match NXT once made its calling card: too many talented wrestlers, several ladders and no interest in easing into the evening. Wes Lee, Carmelo Hayes, Nathan Frazer, Oro Mensah and Von Wagner immediately split into smaller fights that keep the ring from becoming visual traffic. The pace is aggressive without losing the championship objective.

Frazer supplies the most spectacular athletic moments. His springboard Spanish Fly onto a ladder is the first major escalation, and his frog splash through Wagner and another ladder turns the outside area into a demolition zone. Hayes remains the most natural opportunist, repeatedly finding ways to climb while everyone else is damaged.

The match is not immune to the usual ladder-match excess. Trick Williams and Mr. Stone become involved, several wrestlers spend suspiciously convenient stretches recovering outside, and the sheer number of setups occasionally makes the action feel choreographed. The crowd is invested enough that those seams rarely become fatal.

Lee's closing run gives the match the right emotional anchor. After Wagner launches him over the ropes and onto the announce table, Lee recovers, fights Hayes on the bridged ladder and lands the Meteora before climbing for the championship. The win feels like the beginning of a singles career rather than a random ladder-match result.

The reported Observer rating was 4.25 stars, and contemporary reviews consistently place the opener among the two strongest matches on the card. Slimmer went even higher at 4.5 stars, while the Pro Wrestling Dot Net readers placed it second in match-of-the-night voting. WrestleFile lands at A- / 8.8.

Apollo Crews and Grayson Waller are placed inside a casket match because it is Halloween, not because their rivalry naturally demands burial imagery. That mismatch follows the bout from the opening bell. The actual wrestling is competent enough whenever the casket remains a prop rather than the entire story.

Waller's aggression and Crews' athletic counters give the middle several useful exchanges. A pen from the commentary desk becomes a weapon, Crews uses the steps for a moonsault and both men find believable ways to tease the lid closing. The match is not short on effort.

Then Waller shoves Crews through the lid of the first casket and the stipulation stops making sense. The referee does not call the match because the lid has not technically closed, the lights go out, and Crews returns with druids carrying a replacement casket. The supernatural reset is more distracting than dramatic.

Crews eventually chokeslams Waller into the new casket and closes the lid. The victory is clean enough once the second casket arrives, but the route there makes the match feel like a Halloween sketch with wrestling inside it. The rivalry deserved a stipulation that fit the actual conflict.

The reported Observer rating was two stars, while Hall and Slimmer both treated the match as adequate rather than disastrous. The performers keep it watchable, but the broken-casket logic lowers the ceiling considerably. WrestleFile lands at C- / 5.8.

Roxanne Perez and Cora Jade have the most personal rivalry on the card, so a Weapons Wild match at least grows from actual hostility rather than seasonal decoration. Perez attacks quickly and even uses a skateboard, linking the match to the visual language that helped define the former partners' split. The first half is energetic if not especially vicious.

Jade controls with spray, a bull rope, a trash can and chairs while Perez keeps trying to accelerate the pace. Neither wrestler looks completely comfortable arranging the weapons, which occasionally creates visible pauses between ideas. The match works better when they are striking one another than when they are building scenery.

The elevated-platform sequence provides the big stunt. Perez hesitates when she has a chance to knock Jade from the balcony, Jade takes advantage, and the two crash through tables with a side Russian legsweep. The hesitation gives the spot a character reason rather than making it pure spectacle.

Perez finally backdrops Jade onto the chairs and lands Pop Rocks on the pile to win. The finish gives Perez the signature victory the feud requires and does not depend on outside interference. It is a clear improvement on the Heatwave result.

The reported Observer rating was 2.25 stars, although Hall was more generous and contemporary audience reaction is less harsh than that number suggests. The match has meaningful character stakes and a correct finish but never reaches the intensity promised by the stipulation. WrestleFile lands at C+ / 6.8.

Julius Creed and Damon Kemp are former amateur wrestlers fighting over the destruction of Diamond Mine, yet NXT places them in an ambulance match instead of letting that athletic history carry the conflict. The stipulation is overdesigned for the participants. Fortunately, both men decide to make the fight as physical as possible.

Crutches, a fire extinguisher, the ring steps, a wheelchair and the ambulance doors all become tools rather than decorative props. Kemp repeatedly tries to trap Creed in the vehicle, while Julius survives by blocking the doors with his hands or feet. The repeated escape attempts create a simple enough progression.

The match becomes better once Creed abandons cleverness and starts beating Kemp with a chair. The violence finally matches the story of a teammate who betrayed his group and threatened Brutus Creed's NXT future. A powerbomb onto the stretcher gives Julius the decisive physical advantage.

Creed loads Kemp into the ambulance and closes the doors to save his brother's place on the roster. The finish is predictable because the alternative would remove Brutus, but inevitability is not a problem when the route is this committed. Julius leaves looking significantly more credible as a singles wrestler.

The reported Observer rating was 3.5 stars, and both Hall and Slimmer viewed the bout as one of the stronger middle-card matches. It is a good brawl in spite of a stipulation that never quite fits the wrestlers involved. WrestleFile lands at B- / 7.4.

Mandy Rose and Alba Fyre arrive at the ring carrying the weight of a lengthy haunted-house segment that has spent the evening implying Fyre successfully separated Rose from Toxic Attraction. That setup creates a straightforward expectation: Fyre finally gets the champion alone. The actual seven-minute match immediately begins undoing that promise.

The wrestling itself is basic but functional. Fyre attacks quickly, Rose answers with a spinebuster and both women reach their major offense without enough time to build a deeper structure. A longer clean singles match might have justified all the surrounding presentation.

Fyre lands the Swanton and appears close to taking the championship. Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne then arrive anyway, pull the referee away and later help create the opening Rose needs. The entire haunted-house mission becomes irrelevant because the same interference that has protected Rose for months decides the match.

Rose hits Kissed by the Rose and retains. The result extends a long title reign, but the creative route feels exhausted rather than oppressive. The crowd has already seen this escape mechanism too many times for the finish to generate useful anger.

The reported Observer rating was 1.5 stars, the lowest on the card, and contemporary reviews repeatedly single this out as the night's most frustrating match. The problem is less the execution than the combination of short runtime, repetitive interference and wasted setup. WrestleFile lands at D / 4.7.

Bron Breakker, Ilja Dragunov and JD McDonagh give Halloween Havoc the main event it needs after an uneven middle. McDonagh's strategy is established immediately: let the two more explosive wrestlers damage one another, then steal whatever opening remains. Breakker and Dragunov are too proud to stop giving him opportunities.

The match succeeds because all three wrestlers have distinct roles. Breakker is the athletic power champion, Dragunov is the violent force who refuses to stay down, and McDonagh is the calculating technician constantly redirecting traffic. The triple-threat format adds strategy instead of simply increasing the number of moves.

Several sequences are exceptional. Breakker catches McDonagh for the Frankensteiner only for Dragunov to convert the airborne body into a powerbomb, McDonagh steals a cover after Breakker's military press powerslam, and Dragunov's Torpedo Moscow nearly ends the reign before JD pulls the referee away. Every interruption creates a new problem rather than resetting the match.

The closing stretch belongs to Dragunov and Breakker. Dragunov survives McDonagh's attempt to crush his ankle on the steps, hits Torpedo Moscow on JD and then trades bombs with the champion. When he launches another Torpedo, Breakker intercepts him with the Spear and scores the pin.

The reported Observer rating was 4.75 stars, easily the highest on the card, and 60 percent of Pro Wrestling Dot Net poll respondents selected it as match of the night. Even reviews cooler on the overall show consistently identify the triple threat as the main-event success. WrestleFile lands at A / 9.3.