Steve Maclin is a big fan of Halloween in general, but that doesn’t mean he wants to see the Last Rites match return.
The Last Rites match is one of the more infamous match stipulations in TNA / IMPACT Wrestling history. The winner was determined by placing his opponent in a casket that was raised to the ceiling after the match. This version of the Last Rites match has only been held once in the promotion’s 20-year history, when Sting faced Abyss at TNA Destination X in 2007.
The stipulation returned in 2023 at Rebellion, but the match between PCO and Eddie Edwards was a bit closer to a traditional casket match.
Maclin spoke with WrestleZone and he was asked if he had any favorite Halloween-themed matches, whether it’s Halloween Havoc or anything that IMPACT’s done over the years. Halloween Havoc stood out, but he felt like the Monster’s Ball match also represented one element of Halloween.
“Just Halloween Havoc. Dee [Deonna Purrazzo, IMPACT Knockout and his wife] and I were walking the dogs last night, and that was one of the things of just bringing up that Halloween Havoc is happening I think with NXT soon. It’s cool that that kind of is still a thing,” Maclin explained. “I grew up loving that pay-per-view and just, you think back to Rey and Eddie on that. You had the giant pumpkin there and it was always cool just because it had a theme. It was something different from everything else.
“But with IMPACT, I would think with the Monster’s Ball,” he added. “It’s very up there as one of those matches that’s going to be close to what Halloween is. It’s just cool to be a part of that.”
Too much on the line
So he has no interest in a Last Rites match?
“No. I don’t want to be in one of those. There’s a little bit too much on the line there. We don’t need to do one of them now,” Maclin said. “Unless we had some type of sponsor like the new Exorcist movie and then had the Last Rites that way, maybe that would work. We can make that work with possession or something, but who knows?”
Watch our full interview with Steve Maclin below:
