The True Story Of WrestleMania IX

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WrestleMania IX gets a lot of heat for not being a great show, many fans diss it any chance they get.  I actually think WrestleMania IX was a good show considering the deck of cards it was dealt coming in.  Politics and departures killed what could have been a Super Card. Instead, fans got a 7 match PPV, with a bonus match added at the last second to make it 8.

It featured 24 Hall of Famers if you include announcers and managers.  Fans focus too much on the corny ending of Hulk Hogan’s surprise winning of the WWF World Championship over Yokozuna and not enough on the many bright spots of the show.

The show started with a cavalcade of glorious entrances that saw Macho Man draped on a Sudan by sexy vestal virgins.  Meanwhile, Bobby the Brain Heenan rode backwards on a camel. Both images that would last a lifetime in WWF lore.  It also was the premier of Jim Ross on the announce team.

As for the card itself, it featured hard hitting bouts with some of the best young talent in the WWF at the time as Tatanka Challenged Shawn Michaels for the IC belt and The Steiner Bros hooked it up with The Headshrinkers.  Those two matches did plenty to start the show with excrement, energy and fast paced action.

Where it began to become a big of a clunker was the third match which was a joke of a contest between Doink and Crush, followed by a squash match with Razor Ramon over Bob Backlund.  Both, could have been on Monday Night Raw or even WWE Superstars.  It seemed like a bit of a reach for them to be on WrestleMania.

While the Doink versus Crush match had a decent build up, due to the attack on Crush back in January of 1993, the Backlund versus Ramon match had zero build to it and made little to no sense.

Legend has it that the original plan was for Bret Hart to defend the World Championship against The Ultimate Warrior.  Elsewhere on the card would have featured Ric Flair against Mr. Perfect.  The thought of a Hulk Hogan comeback wasn’t even discussed at that point, but McMahon was forced to push the red and yellow panic button.  The original card months earlier would have featured Ric Flair and The Ultimate Warrior on it, but after Flair left and The Warrior was fired, McMahon had to scramble.

Thus, the entire card was then juggled around.  Hogan and Brutus Beefcake came back to challenge Money Inc for the Tag Championships despite never doing anything to actually earn the title shot.  That alone let you know they were not winning it.  The thought of Hogan’s ego accepting a secondary title was unheard of.  Sure enough, Money Inc would retain the titles as the “Mega Maniac’s” took a DQ loss and then never teamed again.

This is where the card begins to get dicey, because you have back-to-back matches with a ton of hype, that both fell just a bit flat.  First off was Lex Luger versus Mr. Perfect.  The sole heat was Bobby Heenan and his connection to both.  The athleticism of Perfect should have carried a good match between the two and did for a bit, but the weak ending of Luger winning with his feet on the ropes ruined it.

Here is where things get better however, Mr. Perfect gets knocked out by the loaded elbow from Luger and lays in the ring for a bit. After he gets up, he runs to the back where he gets ambushed by Shawn Michaels, setting up their next feud that would lead through the summer.  Perfect versus Michaels turned out to be great feud with plenty of high spots.  It also created a successful blowoff for the Luger feud and gave them the opening to take him in a different direction shortly after.

Ok, so I will not deny that The Undertaker versus Giant Gonzales match was one of the very worst of his streak.  It was clear that Gonzales had zero ability to work a quality match and The Undertaker did his best to try and make it passable.

Here’s the thing though, this match deserves more credit than it gets simply because it did wonders to get The Undertaker persona over even more.  Giant Gonzales practically committed homicide on live television and still couldn’t keep Taker down.  After that night, fans were left wondering if The Undertaker was truly already dead.

As discussed recently on the Wrestle Room podcast with Mike Rodgers and myself, the entire landscape of WrestleMania IX was once supposed to be vastly different. The original plan called for The Ultimate Warrior to win Royal Rumble 1993 and challenge Bret Hart for the title.  It would have symbolized the official passing of the Torch from muscle head wrestler to technical wrestler and The New Generation when Hart beat him to retain.

That didn’t happen because The Ultimate Warrior was fired for steroid abuse.  When Ric Flair put in his notice, the thought of that rematch with Hart was also scrapped.  Plan B was created and suddenly, Yokozuna, a guy who was on the main roster less than 2 months, wins the Royal Rumble and gets pushed to the moon.

Plan B also called for Hogan to somehow get back on the card and go over big in the end.  Hogan was staunch in his belief in the fact that fans would not cheer Hart going over with the Gold at the end of the show and talked McMahon out of the original plan for the match which had Hart going over Yokozuna to retain.  Instead, we got the infamous Yoko winning the belt only to drop it 90 seconds later to Hogan.

Bret Hart had agreed to all of this when it was promised to him that Hogan would then drop the belt back to Hart at the end of the Summer in Detroit at Summerslam.  Of course, that never happened and Hogan left the federation for 10 years after dropping the belt to Yokozuna at King of the Ring.  This also led to a stalled and ill-fated Lex Luger “Mr. USA” run that never quite paid off.

In the end, it wasn’t Bret Harts fault that The Ultimate Warrior was a roid junkie, Hogan had an ego the size of Texas and Yokozuna blew up after 4 minutes in the main event. All in all, even with the ending debacle I still give this WrestleMania 2 turnbuckles out of 4.

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