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.
