A Thorough Review of WrestleMania IX, 4/4/93

This is one of the more maligned WrestleManias in company history, but I'm not sure I've watched it with fresh eyes since renting the tape from the video store some time ago. Let's check it out?

It's great that this show was from Caesar's Palace in Vegas, and Vince just said, "Fuck it, make the ENTIRE SHOW themed after the venue that is hosting this show." Like they just went for it, even though there would have been no way of knowing it was hosted at Caesar's Palace other than them saying so. But it's great. The bright outdoor light is jarring and has the vibes of a mid-afternoon big arena county fair show. The seating arrangement was expertly set up so that 88% of the crowd had absolutely terrible sight lines, and the opening entrances were fantastic. There are a ton of large live animals, and having this many live animals (an elephant, a camel, llamas, birds, etc.) feels like the kind of insane risk that Vince would never take in 2020. Imagine a WrestleMania with the risk of an outdoor elephant rampage!! There are also huge jacked eunuchs (we can assume) carrying people out, and they're so big that I have no idea why any of them weren't recruited into wrestling (unless maybe they were unmarketable because they had no testicles). Caesar and Cleopatra come out, and nobody even talks about how stacked Cleopatra was. Randy Savage gets carried out by the same eunuchs while being fed grapes by vestal virgins, and also telling some dude through gritted teeth to get the fuck off of him when said dude won't let go of one of Macho Man's jacket tassels. Heenan comes out riding backwards on a camel, and does 3 solid minutes of high quality "guy uncomfortably dealing with an animal" comedy, doing a ton of great stumbling and physical comedy in getting off the camel. He gets his toga yanked up (to reveal his big blue Jockeys) and acts completely frazzled while bickering with Macho and Jim Ross. This is a great start.


Shawn Michaels vs. Tatanka

ER: I think this is the one match from this show that gets mentioned in kind terms, and nobody even talks about how - much like Cleopatra before her - how stacked Sherri is. And this IS a really good match, with a really bad finish. The match got actually great at one point, with Michaels' performance in the first half of this ranking among his best 10 minute performances. Michaels has a way of bringing a distinctly Texas heel vibe to his best matches from this era, with genuinely funny physical comedy worked smartly within a pro wrestling match framework. There are some really fun sequences early, like Michaels flying off the top into a Tatanka armdrag and feeding perfectly into another short armdrag right after. Michaels had a sequence of bumps that was so damn fun, truly one of my favorite stretches of any Michaels match, when he takes his super fast flipping corner bump and lands on the apron, turns around and takes a flipping bump off the apron to the mats to sell a Tatanka chop. But my favorite part of the match is right after, when Michaels tries to get back in the ring five different times and every time he gets on the apron he gets tomahawk chopped, causing him to bump to the apron and back to the floor. Michaels played this so professionally, actually factoring in the lousy sight lines and lack of screens at Caesar's Palace, so he runs to every side of the ring to try to get in, runs up the ring steps, really lets every crowd member get to see his ass get knocked to the apron and down to the ground. He finally makes it back in by eyepoking Tatanka before getting chopped.

We got a really good section of Tatanka working over Michaels' left shoulder, and I wish they would have gone further with it. It's a cool two minutes of the match, but doesn't really get followed up on (even though Savage attempts to keep it relevant on commentary). Still, it leads to some cool moments, and they built it really well until the match changed course. It started with Tatanka hitting a leaping tomahawk chop on Michael's shoulder, and escalated a short time later when Michaels threw a clothesline and immediately came up holding that shoulder, then took an insanely great bump into the corner ringpost. I rewound a couple of times to see what he did, because he ran into the corner at high speed, and the sound of the clank made it seem like his shoulder should have been splintered into his body. It was some excellent sleight of hand. And while they didn't necessarily play into his hurt shoulder the rest of the match, Michaels clearly began using his right arm for big offense (including a nice diving clothesline off the apron to the floor).

There was a little awkwardness before the great end run, with Michaels getting a little too clever and Tatanka not quite seeming on the same page, leading to a couple spots that took too long to pull off and didn't look great when they did get pulled off, most notably the weird headscissors/rolling armbar/victory roll (that they did their best to salvage). But the end run was what brought this back, as Tatanka looked like a guy who could win the IC Title, and the fans were clearly excited to see him win the title. Tatanka was really over at this point of '93, and every near fall got a bigger and bigger reaction. They really pulled the fans into this one, and Michaels couldn't have handled the big kickouts better, really nice timing to make it seem like he was narrowly escaping the loss. The finish was well set up, but the finish itself was so bad that it would have been impossible for anyone to make it work. We got the big Tatanka war dance, Michaels bumped all around for the tomahawk chops, fans were sensing the big win, and then Michaels did this great missed swan dive off the apron, crashing to the floor and almost into the ring steps. Ref Joey Marella counts him out and Michaels yanks him out of the ring to stop the count. But Marella never calls for the bell, so when Michaels gets back in and Tatanka hits the Papoose, we get the awkward moment of Marella waving the pin away, even though Marella was standing there in the ring while Tatanka hit the move. Fans are clearly confused, the announcers are confused, Marella went back into the ring way too early and should have either sold on the floor until Tatanka went for the pin, or called for the bell immediately. This was a terrible ending, handled terribly, a real set of two black eyes on what was otherwise an awesome PPV opener.

"What a bad ending to a great match" ~Macho Man Randy Savage, summing things up accurately


The Headshrinkers vs. The Steiner Brothers

ER: The Steiners' singlet game is incredible here, among the best of their Lisa Frank designs. Rick's especially is only missing acid dripping dolphins leaping out of purple waves against a neon blue sun. His singlet is all of the deepest, richest neon palm fronds. Scott's singlet looks more like a Trapper Keeper wearing Body Glove shorts, but that's only because Rick's is shining so brightly beside him. And this match also rules! It's a great match on paper, as Samu/Fatu are big guys who won't let the Steiners manhandle them, but the Steiners love manhandling big guys, so it's just the best kind of clash. All four of them had a bunch of cool stuff, and the match has one of the most career shortening deadly transitions I've seen. Fatu was really great at bumping for the Steiners (love the way he runs into a Steiner Line and bumps big but lands with heft), and Samu must have had some kind of bet going because I swear he does more back rake variations in this match than I've seen (at least in a match where they are actually delivered seriously and sold, I'm sure there's some yukfest indy match out there where someone does 70 back rakes before pretending to be eaten by an inflatable pool alligator). An island savage using his sharpened claws to deliver body rakes is awesome, and Samu's best were raking Rick from his clavicles down to his hips, raking hard down Scott's traps, and raking Scott across the eyes before popping him in the eye with a straight jab. So many spots I loved here, like Scott slamming Fatu's face into the mat only for Fatu to immediately pop up and hit a superkick (because duh, that head is impervious to slamming), or both Steiner's coming off the same top turnbuckle to hit tandem Steiner Lines that should have resulted in tandem torn ACL/MCL.

The spot of the match (and surely the spot of 1993 WWF, as not much will be able to top this) is when the Headshrinkers transition to control, and they are supposed to merely hotshot Scott. Instead, Fatu pulls down the top rope and Samu essentially launches Scott headfirst over the top rope straight down. We sadly don't get a camera angle from that side, but it's not the bump Scott prepares to take so the landing couldn't have been good. He clearly, somehow, wasn't injured from it, but both Steiners came off as invincible at this point so  - just as conventional weapons could not harm them - neither could the world's most dangerous hotshot. Headshrinkers were a fun control team and they must have really assumed Scott was cool after that hotshot because they also deliver a (much safer) Demolition Decapitation not long after! The Rick hot tag has the stiff clotheslines and big throws you'd want and expect, and the home stretch has a couple huge spots that didn't get executed 100%, but they're great spots. They really ramped the crazy when the Headshrinkers went for a Doomsday Device on Rick, but Rick caught Samu while sitting on Fatu's shoulders and fell to the mat with him for a powerslam. It didn't come off clean, but it's such a crazy spot that it really shouldn't come off clean. Samu also bumps a little too early for the Frankensteiner finish, doing a somersault bump a split second before Scott had snapped it over, so the finish doesn't come off as cool as it should. Still, the match was fun as hell and delivered on the on-paper potential.


Crush vs. Doink

ER: This one didn't really play like a WrestleMania match, but it played like a perfect Coliseum Video match, so even though it felt out of place on the card it was a style I liked. Matt Borne always had the best makeup fade as Doink, the perfect amount getting rubbed away to reveal his stubble, making him look like when Barney Gumble got hired to play Krusty. A big portion of this is Crush taking it out on Doink, kicking him around ringside, with Doink trying to stumble escape. It's a little sluggish, but Doink is a good stumbler so it works. A thing that does not work about the match is Savage on commentary. He was really on one and taking a long time to get to the point on every point he tried to make, and it got bad enough that Heenan kept having to jump in and talk over Savage just to save him. Savage was rambling on and on about how it's harder to perform on the big stage and he was taking an age to get there, so Heenan has to blurt out LOOK AT THAT! to just get him on another topic. That's the most noticeable moment, but it happens throughout the whole match. Doink goes on control by hitting a stunner over the top rope, Crush springing back nicely, and things then got really good. Doink was allowed to come alive a bit, smiling at the camera, all while hitting axe handles and punches off the top and middle ropes. His piledriver is fantastic and makes the match worthy on its own. It looks cool with the size difference, and Crush sells it well. I did wish it meant a little more to the overall match, but alas. This is the match where we get the infamous Two Doinks finish, with Steve Keirn smashing Crush in the face with a mannequin arm and doing mirror comedy with Borne. I do like how the ref was bumped, with Doink throwing a hard back elbow, hard enough that it made for a convincing knockdown. Your mileage may vary on the finish. I liked the idea but thought they could have done more with it. Using Keirn just to hit Crush with a prop isn't very creative, and WrestleMania would have been a cool time to show off Doink's more vicious side and really make the attack on Crush hurt. Overall, a fun match.


We get a brutal Talk to the Audience segment with Todd Pettengill, with the added bonus of racial Asian humor with a couple plants. Pettengill is right in the thick of the crowd, with one distractingly hot woman who looked sorta like Callie Thorne beside Pettengill the entire time, WOOOOING in a loop, while a guy next to her who looked like Fat Seinfeld kept literally trying to edge her out of frame. It didn't appear that they knew each other but it did appear that he had bad ideas about personal boundaries. Another man just uncomfortably shoves his way past Pettengill mid segment, looking like Weird Al if Al had become a copy clerk instead of a genius. Just shoved right past and walked in front of the camera with a slight shrug and look into the camera.


Razor Ramon vs. Bob Backlund

ER: Tough dynamic in this one. Fans are way into Razor to start, but Backlund is a never give up babyface. Fans are even chanting RAZOR to start, but then his beatdown on Backlund goes for a couple minutes and Backlund can't help be draw underdog babyface comeback cheers. But there appears to be a constant mix up with every bit of offense Backlund delivers to Razor, as Razor does two real late rotations on hiptosses, Backlund falls short on a dropkick that wasn't supposed to fall short, a clothesline lands weird and Razor clunkily falls straight over, everything looked a full step off and I couldn't tell who was at fault. But it confused the hell out of the fans as they were about ready to start cheering Backlund, then the the messy comeback just made them not want to root for either. Backlund does a cool chickenwing suplex and his impressive long delay atomic drop, but even the atomic drop falls a little flat as Razor falls on the landing and takes Backlund down with him. So not only is the crowd kind of silent at what is going on and confused about who they should be cheering, but then Razor wins with a freaking small package! Razor, the Bad Guy, with 40 pounds and plenty of height on Backlund, ekes one out with a small package. I couldn't believe it. He jumps up likes it a triumphant victory, even though his victory felt like Bob Backlund getting a small package on Razor. It's like that was supposed to be the finish (it obviously wasn't) and someone just said "Eh keep the finish and just let the other guy do it."


Money Inc. vs. Hulk Hogan/Brutus Beefcake

ER: This wasn't far off from being quite good, but it needed some things changed. It has a few fatal flaws, and it's a shame because it should have been an easy sell and a lot of the layout was smart. Hogan hadn't wrestled in a year, so his coming back was genuinely a big deal, and Beefcake had missed nearly three years with his face injury. I think the angle with Money Inc. immediately going after Beefcake's face was strong, and IRS's briefcase shot looked great. When you think of the kind of match build you get from WWE today, there's nothing that compares to the old school no brainer simplicity of this build. A huge star returning to the ring after a year, and - regardless of what you think of him as a wrestler - Beefcake coming back to the ring after a horrific injury. Heels immediately attack the injury, top guy returns, this is all slam dunk stuff. But the match ends up going way too long, a lot of smoke and mirrors, and another messy finish which was starting to be a problem on this show (up to this point nearly every single match has had a bad finish, whether poorly executed or indecisive).

This was a nearly 20 minute match that would have been far more successful edited down to 10. I thought Dibiase was strong throughout, especially his facial reactions to both Hogan and Beefcake. From the moment he walked to the ring in his resplendent white suit, he looked like a man who belonged, and I love how he was committed to being a heel and trying to purposely take shine away from the returning Hogan. Maybe my favorite part of the match was Dibiase jumping Hogan during Hogan's entrance, as Hogan was clearly going to soak everything up, but I liked Hogan's part of it too. Hogan basically worked this match like Jimmy Valiant, and that MAKES SENSE because Jimmy Valiant would know exactly how to work a match like this. So here's Hogan getting into the ring, dancing on the apron exactly like Valiant, and Dibiase puts a stop to it by jumping him. Now, of course, Hogan just runs him off and celebrates before the match anyway, and that's part of why I thought they were SO CLOSE to getting to something good. They clearly KNEW what they had to do, and yet they made some bad choices. 

The match goes on long enough that the announcers run out of things to talk about, and there are a lot of holds and a lot of moments with guys lying on the mat. This is not a good thing, especially with Heenan already trying to rein in Macho Man, and the match's stretches of inactivity lead to a Macho Man moment that is impossible to not laugh at. Ross and Heenan are in the middle of actually talking about something, and Savage just shouts out of nowhere "WHAT AN INCREDIBLE WRESTLEMANIA SOFAAAAAA" (he was saying "so far"). This match just didn't work, and this should have been the easiest match on the card to book. They must have known the finish was going to bum out the crowd, as after a bunch of clumsy stuff surrounding the briefcase (it looked like they couldn't decide to work Briefcase Blunder comedy spots or actually work stiff briefcase shots to the face), Hogan and Beefcake threw money to the crowd. This crowd is the first crowd in one year to see Hulk Hogan - still beloved by many - and you have to have him throw money to the crowd to get them to cheer? That is some desperation planning right there. And who would be happy with one of those "the guy I wanted to win lost but he's still celebrating like the loss isn't really a bad loss" finishes?


Todd Pettengill chats with Natalie Cole in the crowd while Real American blares and she puts over the money Hogan threw to the crowd as being real money. I don't know if she was working or not, and that's how you know Natalie Cole is legit. Was it real money? I mean probably. But why is IRS carrying around a briefcase filled with money? I just thought he had important documents in there. Why would he have needed money out there? For bribing Hogan? Pettengill also interviews the CEO of Caesar's Palace, who talks for a VERY long time about the frankly uninteresting sounding relationship between Caesar's Palace and the World Wrestling Federation. I wonder why Todd Pettengill hasn't cut him off, because the man just keeps talking, and as I'm wondering when and how the cutoff is going to happen, Pettengill puts the guy in a headlock. What the fuck! It's like Pettengill couldn't think of any other way to make him stop and just jumped on him like a friendly drunk guy after a playoff win. I'm picturing Vince screaming in his earpiece to stop this man at any cost, and Pettengill just decided the best way to do that was by jumping on the man. 


Lex Luger vs. Mr. Perfect

ER: Lex Luger gets a great entrance, flanked by four women in bikini thongs, an outdoor arena filled with 10 year olds in disbelief that they're seeing butts. They hold his mirrors with sparklers on them, and it seems windy for that. Luger poses for a really long time, and heel posing Luger is so much better than face posing Luger. Perfect gets a loud reaction for his entrance music and Luger's girls are walking out as he's walking in, and he jumps out of the way of one of them while making an ewwwwww face. Perfect just working his own bit out here. And this match feels like it should have gotten a bigger reaction. Maybe it was half the crowd looking directly into the sun, or maybe they were burnt out from a day just spent out in the sun, or burnt out from the Hogan segment. But this is quiet. It is good, but feels like it should have been better, and there were some miscommunications that looked clunky. But it still should have gotten a louder reaction. Perfect is really smart and senses the silence, so starts playing to the crowd by working stiff and making some loud noise. He hits a super loud chop in the corner and laughs along with the crowds' louder reaction, so he goes back to that in a couple fun ways. He hits another chop for the crowds' approval, slaps Luger in the stomach off an Irish whip, and starts kicking him in the hamstring all around the ring.

Perfect's knee work was really cool, and it's a shame they didn't let that play into the rest of the match. Similarly, Luger's back work was really cool, and it's a shame they didn't let that play into the rest of the match. Each had nice powerslams, Perfect almost wrecked his leg on a missile dropkick, Luger knows hot to take a catapult into the turnbuckles really well, there's a really fast rope running exchange with a slick Perfect leapfrog, a fun match. The finish is another bad one, with this cursed luck that others have had in that it's a bad idea on paper, and a poorly executed idea in reality. It was supposed to be a battle over backslides (that's not the part that sounds bad, battles over backslides are almost always cool as hell), and Luger sets it up by swinging a full 360 on a missed clothesline. Except Perfect doesn't duck or anything, so Luger just spins in a circle and then they clumsily locked arms back to back. Luger gets one and Perfect's whole body is in the ropes, but Marella counts the 3 anyway and it stands. Marella has just been given the worst finishes possible, looking like a guy purposely trying to get fired for the duration of this PPV. We JUST HAD a match end where a ref ran out and reversed a decision, and then this happens. I guess no other refs wanted to take a killer over the top to the floor bump like Danny Davis did the match before. Oh yeah, Hogan fucking THREW a referee! I didn't mention that, and it surely didn't do Perfect any favors. Luger salvages things some by blasting Perfect with the forearm after the match. I loved that KO forearm as a killshot.


Giant Gonzalez vs. The Undertaker

ER: This is the kind of thing I'm here for. I'm always gonna be about the freaks. At first the cameras totally blow this by filming right next to Gonzalez as he walks out, taking away the sense of scale. Finally they cut to the wide shot so you can see how high he is walking among the sea of fans. It's a real good Patterson-Gimlin homage. And I like this match, but I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. Gonzalez has some impressive visuals and I like his offense. He is not, however, a good seller, with big comical Wuh oh Wuh oh bug eyed facials like he's doing Don Knotts. So I like the big Gonzalez control segment, with him throwing big clubbing forearms. The clubbing looks good just because of that wingspan. He hits a big boot to stop a Taker charge, and hits a nice clothesline running out of the corner. My favorite visual is when he throws Taker to the floor, then follows, and the dude just steps from the apron down to the floor like he was navigating a slightly higher than normal step. He throws Undertaker into the stairs a couple times and Taker really slams hard knees first into them. When Taker makes his big comeback he's throwing his nice uppercuts, but it loses a little oomph with Gonzalez's selling. 

They go to the chloroform finish right away, and I think it's a smart finish that unfortunately came on a show that has had literally nothing but poorly executed or iffy or bad finishes. You don't want Gonzalez taking a ton of punishment at this point, and I thought Savage, Heenan, and Ross put over the danger of the chloroform well enough that a 10 year old would buy into it. Heenan is the one who gets it, as he knows to sell the visual of a rag over the mouth. He's the first one to go "What's that smell? What is that?" and cues the other two. Another weakness of Gonzalez, is that he does not act like enough of a bigfoot. He's yelling at fans to shut up, moving too much like a human. He needed to be more beast than man, and I am someone who is a fan of the muscle fur suit. I think the look is there, would have loved to see an even wilder beard. Gonzalez should have looked like an 8 foot tall Bruiser Brody. But it's a great moment when Taker comes back out to attack Gonzalez after being taken out on a stretcher. The fans flip out and he knocks Gonzalez off his feet with three flying clotheslines, and I would have been losing my mind if I was in attendance. Also, there were a couple of biker goths in the crowd holding up a dot matrix banner that said "Rot in Peace Gonzalez" and they were yelling at the camera and looking pissed as Taker got stretchered out.


They do ANOTHER Todd Pettengill talk to the audience routine, and while I think he handles it well considering, it's just something that's always going to be death. He asks a kid where he's from and immediately yanks the mic away and makes fun of him for not answering, but then talks to two frat guys in Motel 6 togas for an eternity. He also pie faces a 10 year old kid out of the way while he was talking to the two doofs. This kid was just trying to get through and they clearly had nobody blocking off the camera, just had Todd out there in the wilds without a net. Always a bad idea. No chance for upside, nothing but constant chances for you to look like a clown. Too risky. Nobody wants to be put in the position of shoving a kid on camera.


Yokozuna vs. Bret Hart

ER: I thought this was great, although I wish it would have had basically any other finish. This was a finely crafted match between two good characters: Hart the fighting champion and Yokozuna the monster who had hardly been off his feet. Both guys were so good here, but they always had strong matches against each other. Bret's running dropkick to knock Yoko into the corner was such a killer way to start, and I was continually amazed at how intense Bret was working while also being completely safe. Bret could have easily just worked more stiff to make up the size difference, but Hart is out here killing himself to work every move! It was really apparent when he hit his Hitman elbow off the middle rope and made it look great, but you could also tell that Yokozuna would have had no idea anyone had even touched him. This whole match was an exercise in Hart's impressive close up magic. Yokozuna's cut off spots were strong, with him just running full speed into Hart to send him flying, and later hitting a big lariat and a flattening legdrop. It was smart to set up a couple moments of Yokozuna steaming full speed into Hart, as those moments later in the match were used to stage Hart's comebacks, with Yoko missing a great chest first charge into the corner (a cool way of showing a man over twice Hart's size doing his signature bump) and later missing a flying hip attack the same way. The visual of Hart locking the Sharpshooter on Yokozuna's legs (legs that I can say with no hyperbole weigh more than I do) was so cool, and I wish we could have paid this off with a better finish. But instead we get salt in the eyes, quick pin, and you know what comes next.

I'm not going to defend the Hogan segment, because it sucks. I thought it sucked the first time I saw it (did not see this show when it aired, but later rented it from New Release Video in Healdsburg!) and it doesn't look any better now. The visual of a reeling and defeated Bret telling Hogan to take the shot was a bit too much. Hart was a real team player for even agreeing to do that and not rolling his eyes on camera. "Mr. Hogan, sir, I couldn't bring my wife to climax, please sir, could you make my wife cum while I go recharge with some Gatorade?" But the fans live exploded, every single person jumped out of their seat, and at least in the moment it felt like something that the live crowd really wanted. But I'm sure they would have leapt out of their seat had Hart pinned the monster himself, so I can't really give that reaction too much credit.


This show is much better than it has ever been given credit for. It 100% deserves criticism for a full night (afternoon?) of bad finishes. Every single match had a bad finish, whether that was intentional (making referees look like idiots in literally half of the matches in finishes that would disappoint any fan), or just poorly executed by the wrestlers, this was arguably the widest variety of terrible match finishes I have ever seen in one night of wrestling. You couldn't get this many bad finishes unless your goal was to run a card with the Most Bad Finishes record in your sights. But there was a lot of very fun wrestling on this show, and tons of memorable spectacle. And fun wrestling with memorable spectacle is never going to be something that I consider bad, let alone part of the worst WrestleMania of all time.


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