Joel: I’m not going to dance around the fact. WrestleMania IX is pretty much the worst WrestleMania of them all. Most people are eager to credit that to the whole “toga party” theme that ran throughout the show. Don’t get me wrong, that was a bad idea top to bottom. Every single aspect of the whole theme was a dud from changing people’s names to give them more “ancient roman” sounding names to the “hilarious” moment of Bobby Heenan struggling during his entrance. Pretty much everything falls flat. But if that were the main problem of WrestleMania IX, then I could look past that. Themed WrestleManias are dumb and they’ve never tried to lean into a theme as much as they did this one so maybe they learned the lesson.
No the problem here is how badly almost every match is booked on this card. Seriously, Doink the Clown has an eight and a half minute match on this card! Razor Ramon’s match was less than half that time. Undertaker has the worst match of his streak on this card as well. Sure, they didn’t know at the time that Undertaker matches were going to become a staple of WrestleMania, but that’s not really an excuse for having a bad match at WrestleMania. Even if it wasn’t part of Undertaker’s 21-0 streak of matches, it would still be a match that leaves a sour taste after it’s over. But without question the biggest problem has to be the impromptu main event at the end of the show. What could have possibly been the thought process behind this. It makes Yokozuna look terrible. It makes Bret Hart look terrible. It ignores all buildup and storytelling that happen to make you care at all about this event, all so that we can be sure Hogan is holding the title at the end of the night after beating a theoretical monster in less than thirty seconds. One of the lowest points in WrestleMania history.
Best WrestleMania so far: XIII without a doubt.
Kue: Trash. Complete trash. I can’t believe Sanders and Joel made me relive this. None of the matches were good. Michaels couldn’t get a good match out of Tatanka. Henning couldn’t get a good match out of Luger. Taker/Gonzalez was a big pile of vomit, and the only asterisk in the streak. The Steiners/Headshrinksrs match was passable at best. Not even the Ramon/Backlund match delivered, as they barely had any time.
The main event was a snooze, and the only potential saving grace was the last minute shocker with Hogan challenging for the title. But that 22 second crapfest was such a cartoonish joke, it almost undid any work rate credibility Michaels, Savage, Hart, and Henning brought in post 80s Hogan era.
Bucket of yuck.
Sanders: Yeah, you’re not going to a whole lot of constructive criticism or thought-provoking reviews with this particular Wrestlemania because there’s only so many ways to describe just how horrible this show was. Was it a wrestling event? Was it a toga party? Or was it a zoo exhibit? Who knows! Looks like Vince wasn’t exactly sure himself because by comparison to all the WMs before and after this, 9 comes across as by far the most disorganized and is if they were kind of making it up as they go along.
And nothing exemplified that feeling more than the dumb finish were Hogan gets a surprise championship match while sporting that lovely black eye that Savage allegedly gave him backstage. I think this is one of the reasons people are so leery of John Cena or the current build of Roman Reigns because we all know they’re being built in the image of Hogan’s racist image and we all remember WM9 and we’re all scared of WWE trying this garbage again sometime soon. C’mon, we both know they would simply in the name of doing something “shocking” that would get a couple more eyes to tune in on Raw.
BD: I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of bad things from the other guys on this card but honestly, this one is worth watching purely for historical relevance purely on a WTF basis. They had a clown beat a roided-up Hawaiian nimrod with help from a clone clown, Undertaker won by DQ when Great Khali smothered him with a chloroform rag like Undertaker was a date rape victim of an 8 foot guy in a sprayed on bodysuit, and then they had Hulk Hogan winning the world title in an unadvertised 22 second match from a guy who had just won it from Bret Hart, just so Hulk Hogan could lose it to the fake sumo wrestler by way of an exploding camera several months later so Hogan could go film a terrible movie and go to WCW.
So yeah. You need to watch this show right now.
