WWE Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative Shawn Michaels discussed the NXT brand’s decision to hold cinematic matches on a conference call with the media that was held following the 2022 Halloween Havoc PLE.
The NXT Women’s Championship Match between Mandy Rose and Alba Fyre at Halloween Havoc was broken up into two halves.
In the first part, Rose was joined by her Toxic Attraction stablemates, Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne, and the three of them were attacked by Fyre and a group of creepy characters while they were in a haunted house. In the end, it resulted in Rose defeating Fyre in a regular match to retain her title.
During the post-show media call for Halloween Havoc, Michaels discussed doing cinematic matches:
“That’s one of those situations where, the team here, our creative team, and the studio guys in Stamford do an absolutely fantastic job. That’s people starting at about 8 at night and going until 3:45 in the morning. Mandy, Alba, Jacy, Gigi and about 20 other people working their tails off in the middle of the night. It is different than anything I’ve ever done, but Halloween Havoc…that’s not something I see us doing a lot, but at Halloween Havoc, it feels like it works. Everybody understands we do that to a certain point and the rest comes into the building. I don’t think that’s something we would do on a regular basis by any chance, but when you have a thematic show like Halloween Havoc, and we’ve done them in the past, it feels like it’s been an NXT thing with Halloween Havoc and we wanted to continue with that idea. It seemed to be the perfect match to do it with.”
“From my standpoint, I would find them difficult because I’m from a performing standpoint, in the moment. To have to take a totally separate night and go out there and get myself to where I’m supposed to be on Saturday…the few bad movies I’ve done, I found that to be very challenging. That’s what was so interesting about that, being able to turn that on and off without the crowd out there. I’m always very impressed when the talent can pull that off as well as the ladies did.”
You can watch a clip from Fyre vs. Rose inside a haunted house below:
(h/t to Fightful for the transcription)
