WrestleMania IX

To me, this was the beginning of the end for the WWF in the 1990's. I absolutely love wrestling, but a few more years of this and I was watching something else on my spare time. And that's exactly what happened. It's not a surprise the WCW finally caught up with the WWF after years of putting out these kind of matches. Luckily for Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, there was some life left.

Wrestlemania IX had some good matches, but to me some of the characters killed the mood. For instance, Shawn Michaels vs. Tatanka. Credit Tatanka cause he's a good wrestler. But I just couldn't get passed the Indian character and to me, it ruined a good match. Same with Crush vs. Doink the Clown. Doink as a villain was more tolerable than as a baby face, but coming off Wrestlemania VIII, I was hoping for a little bit more classic wrestling matches and not a real life cartoon. Now Lex Luger vs. Mr. Perfect was good. I did enjoy that match. The Mega Maniacs (Beefcake and Hogan) vs Money Inc (DiBiase and IRS) was good, simply because the spotlight wasn't completely on Hulk Hogan. Undertaker vs. Giant Gonzales was the birth of the Undertaker's typical match. Big guy with no skill comes and beats up the Undertaker. Undertaker recovers and challenges/stalks the big guy. Big guy fights at PPV and is never seen again. Until the late 1990's and after 2004, this would be exactly the storyline you got out of the Undertaker. The Undertaker is great, but like Hogan, I got tired of seeing the same type of match. But for the sake of the time, this was one of the first. The Steiner Brothers had a pretty good match with the Headshrinkers. But the biggest disappointment comes in the main event with Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna. When this "finale" happens, even at age 13, I was upset. Those two wrestlers had a pretty good match, only to be wasted by the end. I don't want to give anything away so I won't go into detail.

Wrestlemania IX was okay, but I had a hard time being convinced of much when a clown or an Indian were the point of interest. Fortunately, it gets better years later.

The worst Wrestlemania ever.

This had no must see bouts and many crap ones at that. This took place in Las Vegas and WWE made it's employees dress up like Egyptian gods! They even changed Howard Finkels name to Finkus Maximus, which probably doesn't mean anything. The sight of seeing Jim Ross in that terrible gown still gives me nightmares to this day and I'm 21 years old, so you could imagine it when I was 7 years old! Bobby Heenan was funny though.

Matches included The Undertaker vs Giant Gonzales in a p*ss poor match, The Headshrinkers vs The Steiner Brothers in a useless match, Doink vs Crush in a comedy match and a boring match featuring Razor Ramon vs Bob Backlund. Hulk Hogan teamed up with Brutus Beefcake to battle Money Inc. You could clearly see Hogan had a black eye. In storyline purposes Ted DiBiase and IRS beat up Hogan while he was playing poker or something like that in the casinos, which is a poor storyline, but in reality, Macho Man Randy Savage hit Hogan because Savage thinks he's like The Hulk (no pun intended) no not the wrestler but the film character.

The main event consisted of Bret 'Hitman' Hart facing off against Yokozuna in a very boring main event match. Mr Fuji threw salt in the face of Hart and Yoko won, but not until Hogan came down and squashed Yoko in 21 seconds.

Overall Grade - E

This was without a doubt the best Wrestlemania of it's time period. That period being the first half of the 90s. This is of course just my opinion. Being one of only 2 outdoor WWF events (and the only outdoor Wrestlemania) this one had a distinctive look that sets it apart from the others. It also had the smallest crowd of any Wrestlemania, since Caesers Palace doesn't seat many people. There is one big flaw here, though. The cheesy "Ancient Roman Times" theme. All the commentators were forced to dress in togas and enter the stadium riding on camels. WWF promoted the show as "The World's Biggest Toga Party", and hoped the fans would wear Togas too. That didn't happen of course. What fan would want to humiliate themself on live Pay Per View by wearing a bed sheet? Jim Ross and Bobby Heenan were the only fools dumb enough to do that.

Getting past the cheesy theme, the rest of the show was fantastic. Tatanka and Shawn Michaels kicked off the show with an entertaining IC Title match that went almost 20 minutes. Lex Luger and Mr. Perfect were brilliantly matched opponents. Their match ended with Luger nailing Perfect with his Running Forearm, which WWF promoted as being an illegal weapon due to Luger's steel plate he had surgically implanted. Who else remembers that gimmick? Undertaker and Giant Gonzalez's match was a great show. It would have been entertaining even if they just stood there. Seeing the 6'10" Undertaker in the ring with the over-7 foot tall Gonzalez was a sight to see. Of course Bret Hart delivered an amazing math as always, against the challenger Yokozuna. It seems to be a forgotten fact that Yokozuna was the fastest rising World Champion ever. It took him only 5 months in the WWF to take the belt. Bret was an averagely sized 230 pound man, and Yokozuna was 500 pounds, which makes them an unlikely pairing. But both make the match work.

Ultimately there is one reason above all else to rent Wrestlemania IX. That reason is DOINK THE CLOWN! A sadistic and violent evil clown. When I think professsional wrestling, sadistic and violent evil clown is what I think. Rent Wrestlemania IX and you get 2 Doinks for the price of one. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that's the highlight of Wrestlemania....... maybe I am alone in thinking that. Who cares. DOINK RULES!

Terrible! The Worst WrestleMania ever! WrestlMania IV even beats this out! Too much Hogan at the end really ruined it as he was just too old. Match Of The Night ironically though, went to Hogans match (**3/4). The Doink stuff was horiific.

Not Recommended.

Taking a beating in the reviews and I know why weaker than Mania 2 the worst to date of The Wrestlemania. What I will say on the positive side is for good or bad reasons this one is memorable. With moments that stand out that even in pictures you instantly know It's this mania.