As a 5 yr old, my dad recorded this for me onto vhs from sky sports because I’d just got given a Jake the snake Robert’s and Hulk Hogan hasbro toy at my birthday the month before. I watched that tape to death. My dad, a printer at the time, made a coloured paper video sleeve for the vhs, with the match card on the back. He did this with subsequent ppv, through into 95, the in your house era and monthly ppvs signalling a vhs recording and then a re recording over it for the next one. This PPV was my first experience of wrestling, so, as objectively rubbish as it is, it holds a gigantic spot in my heart
I just came here to say I appreciated your story. I can respect that. I started watching wrestling at the tail end of the Monday Night Wars so when the Invasion came, I thought it was good. I was just a 12 year old kid who didn’t know Dusty Rhodes from Harley Race. Looking back, I understand the let down but at the time, I loved every bit of it.
Those shows are the most important. Keep it in your heart and cherish those memories. Your dad was so cool, recording the show + printing a cover for you was an awesome move. I still remember the day I entered the wrestling world, and I'd be pleased to read your stories about the PPV your dad recorded after Wrestlemania IX
Awesome story!! I'm from CT, so I was "lucky" enough to have my mom randomly say to me, do you wanna go to a wwf event next month? I excitedly said of course!!! Imagine my surprise when I found out it was WrestleMania 11!!!
Honestly it would've been cool if Macho Man won the Rumble and faced Bret instead in my opinion. I have to know tho who thought it was a good idea to saddle Taker with a guy who could barely move and this no offense to Gonzalez as he was apparently a sweetheart
@@Mattyman1987 yea, Vince just wanted to sell tickets with larger than life characters.. either physically large and/or with charisma…. and i probably would’ve done the same
Randy Savage should have won the 93 Rumble. Bret vs Savage with Bret going over would have been an excellent main event and would have done wonders for Bret.
I think Yokozuna having one continuous reign from wrestlemania to wrestlemania it would have made it a little more impactful especially running Hogan out of the company
I had always heard the original plan was Bret would beat Yoko. That match would happen at the middle of the card and Last match of the card Hogan and Beefcake would beat Money Inc to win the belts and end the show. So WM9 would have ended with Hogan winning a belt anyway. But Hogan decided the tag belts were beneath him and wanted the WWF title again so Vince gave in to him.
People always say it's Hogan. Be honest, it was Vince. Vince wanted the bigger draw back. The issue was that Hogan's draw was getting old. As great as Brett was, as great as Shawn was (in the ring), neither were going to draw like Hogan before them. Vince was looking for Hogan 80s draws back and at the time in the 90s, no one was going to be able to do it. That was just facts until the lightning strike that was Austin.
@@joee7452 Yeah. Vince was clearly desperate at this time. Putting the belt back on Hogan was a big risk, for several reasons: Hogan's contract was up at the end of the year, he still had Hollywood ambitions, the steroid scandal was ongoing, and there was no guarantee that an aging Hogan would even be draw going forward.
@@joee7452 Reminds me of a joke the OSW Review lads make when reviewing this show. 'Maybe it was just Vince being a mark, he's the real Hulkamaniac' xD
@@HeyItsAJOmega I think he thought he knew best and since Hogan was his creation, that it was the best option at the time to get the numbers back up. This is Vince. If he thought he could fill an arena by getting crap dumped on himself, he would do it. I am sure he liked Hogan and Hulkamania, because it brought in large amounts of cash for him. I don't know of anyone that has said that Vince back then had anything less the both eyes on numbers and money.
@@joee7452 Yeah you’re definitely right it was Vince 100 percent he was actually pretty stupid and surrounded himself with yes men. Austin was the biggest thing to hit wwf/wwe but even that got old after 3-4 years and a lot of people forget there was well over a year between the famous 3.16 speech that is widely considered the birth of the stone cold era and him actually being the main man. It wasn’t Hulk Hogans draw it was just how lame his stuck in the 80s good guy character had become in the 90s. I didn’t watch wcw ever was always a wwf fan but turning him heel in 96 with the NWO before the stone cold shit really kicked off proved he was still a huge draw and a licence to print money. Hogan probably pulled in more money than Austin did in the NWO merchandise, plus it gave the industry a much needed boost in the short term it dragged it out of the past and I would go as far as to say it probably saved the business. WCW ripped every single cent from that angle and it killed the company because they couldn’t get past what was working in 96-97 in and just kept beating a dead horse when numbers dipped. Vince even tried to copy the idea of a hostile takeover of the company but much darker with the corporate ministry a good few years after WCW had a ring full with one stable of wrestlers and I’m convinced that higher power reveal was a course correction to disband the angle and bury it. Probably not a stroke of genius by Vince more watching what was going wrong in the opposition.
I think people forget that the Ceasers Palace outdoor arena was a major boxing event venue that held a lot of major prize fights in the 80’s and early 90’s, so while the venue itself was small and just a bunch of bleachers on a parking surface, it’s similar to Trump Plaza in the late 80’s where the venue was synonymous with major prize fight events
I actually like this WrestleMania and don't think it's the worst. But that's mainly due to the nostalgia I have associated with it as well as the Roman Empire aesthetic. I think they nailed that part. I owned this on VHS back in the day and watched it several times. Along with WrestleMania 6 it was one of the first ppv's I had seen. It just brings back good memories. But with all of that being said, I can still take an objective look and see why this is considered the worst.
@@DrSpoculus except non-finishes kill matches and the undercard were mostly just, bleh. so you cant blame people who hate Hulk Hogan due to 'gimme the wwe belt brother' as... the rest of this show was just, very meh
@woobgamer5210 in the time it was done, the show was awesome. It obviously doesn't hold weight compared to current ppvs, but for the time it was on par with everything else of the time. As a kid it was amazing. And that's who their audience was at the time. The audience loved it. You can go back and pick apart anything from 30 years ago. It's not hard.
In Kayfabe the ending made even less sense since they made a whole show and dance about the contract signing between Bret and Yokozuna before, which was the first time that I had ever seen that at that point, and I had been a fan for about 5 years already at that time, so how could it be a legit title match if they didn't had a contract for it? They explained it away in WWF Magazine with Mr. Fuji using his Manager Powers (TM) to make that match count, which really didn't help matters anymore for me.
This is cool. We're the same age, and this was also the first WrestleMania I saw live from home via PPV (I went to a friend's house to watch WM8 with him). I also loved it! I loved the Steiner Brothers, and I thought the Doink clone was the most fascinating thing ever.
*Even though it’s no secret that Hulk Hogan has always been known for being an egotistical POS but having him swooping in and hogging up the spotlight from Bret at this very show was just absolutely inexcusable and just downright stupid. Hogan’s popularity at the time was slowly fading, and people were catering to Bret Hart at the time. It makes it even worse than it didn’t really had a good payoff afterwards because Hogan didn’t even defended the WWE title for the next few months only to lose it back to Yokozuna and then automatically just leaving the company later that year. This was such a waste of time.*
Props to Frasier and Cultaholic for another great installment of the Worst Shows Ever series. For this edition, hindsight is 20/20. I remember watching this show as a teenager, live on Pay-Per-View, unfiltered from internet comment sections. While WrestleMania 9 may have lacked in modern wrestling storytelling, it made up for in aesthetics and memorable moments (for better or for worse). The Fed knew they were on the decline, and so they decided to think outside the box for WM9. Yes, there were some questionable endings and perhaps crazy Uncle Terry was being a crazy uncle throughout the whole Toga party, but if we look at the show from the context of being 1993 in a time when wrestling was at a downturn instead of from the perspective of looking back 30 years during a time when we have quality wrestling from half a dozen decent promotions, we can conclude that this WrestleMania, though not great, was unique and decent and did an adequate job of masking the troubles the Fed and the wrestling industry were facing at the time.
I'll never understand how mania 9 is on the top of folks worst lists like there isn't a whole ass mania 2 and mania 4 that aren't far greater dumpster fires.
@@maxpower2511 fair. I feel like the main thing that soured folks on 9 so hard was it was the beginning of bret getting screwed repeatedly by the company while jobbing out their top heel in the process.
Honestly, I feel Mania 2 is even worse than this show, but since I'm not a sadist, I don't want Fraser to meet his end by discussing a three venue waste of an event.
Matt Bourne blew it by getting fired. He had drug problems and was generally a pretty unpleasant guy. I agree that the character was absolutely great though. I was 12 and thought a wrestling clown was going to be horrible but Bourne's twist on the evil clown _really_ worked well. I also remember being shocked at how good he was in the ring. I thought he was going to be a normal WWF lump (even at 12 I could tell that a lot of guys couldn't really wrestle) but he wasn't at all. It's sad it didn't work out because what Bourne did with the character in ECW (basically being driven insane because playing a wrestling clown had ruined his life) after he left the WWF would have fit right in with the way Raw started changing in 96 and 97.
You have a very nice singing voice, Fraser! "Memory" is not an easy song to sing. Oh by the way, this show was sooooo lame. You do have to wonder how many wrestling fans developed coulrophobia thanks to Doink. At least I do.
Hey hold up a second BROTHER! Hulk didn’t ruin WM9 with his 5 star match with Yokozuna! All the Hulkster did that night at WM9, was come save Bret from Yokozuna, finish the job Bret couldn’t, and took the belt back. Leaving thousands of Hulkamaniacs screaming and going home happy that night. You’d think Bret would be grateful. But no! Instead, years later… The Hulkster goes out, gives it his best effort, puts on the squash match of the century beating sting, clean in the middle of the ring 1, 2, 3 at Starcade 97. Then in slides Good ole “it’s still real to me” Bret Hart to get his “revenge” against Hogan for WM 9, and help Sting cheat Hulk out of his title. Bret’s one sick individual
I agree but I will admit at least Bam Bam made the feud believable with Lawrence. Even if it was a bad match. I did like the team of yokozuna and Owen too
no, no it was not worse. Diesel/HBK was very good and even though not the best main, Bam Bam got a lot out of LT and that match is actually not that bad considering it featured a non wrestler. The Tag matches at WM 11 were also at least decent. WM 9 only had the HBK/Tatanka and Steiners/Headshrinkers as maybe the only good matches.
WrestleMania 2 is pretty bad, but it's uniquely bad for its production decisions. IX is definitely the most notorious for the Hogan booking interference.
You weren't even born when this show happened so you don't know what you're talking about. Hogan winning the title went over like crazy. Anything else is revisionist history
This was my favorite one to rent as a kid growing up in the early 90s (before the attitude era) I didn’t know about any of the politics going on, but this era reminds me of the Royal Rumble sega game and that game got me into wrestling proper. This will always have a special place in my heart - Thankfully I got to see a few Nitros and Raws in the mid to late 90s and one PPV (SummerSlam 99) so Im grateful I got to see a lot of legends. Thanks for covering this one!
I was 8 and felt the same. I was happy at the end, but the overall show still left a bad taste in my mouth with all the crap finishes. Things got worse as hogan never even properly showed up as champion only to drop the title at King of the Ring
I was 12 and was also happy because I didn't know much about Bret Hart at the time. A few years later I became a Bret Hart guy and it really started to annoy me. Decades later it _really_ annoys me and that Hogan never put Bret over makes it even worse.
To 9 year old me, this was the coolest thing ever. I was into wrestling big time, but getting any sort of wrestling was difficult. I remember my neighbours cousin had Sky and bought the VHS recording around for us to watch. It was sooo awesome!
Legit, I'm glad you pointed out how visually appealing this show was. Like for all its faults, the theming was top notch and I kind of wish WWE were more willing to do some silly theming for their shows.
I'm gonna honestly disagree with everyones opinion, take away the ending and the Taker/Giant match, its honestly one of my favourite Manias and i've been watching the product since 1989. Theres something awfully good about it with it being one of the last Manias with the cartoon type stuff, go watch it with a positive mindset and you'll see it really aint that bad. Its all BS laid out by anyone who wants an easy target. Theres actually alot of Manias from recent decades much worse than this but hey, just my opinion.
Of all the bad and horrendous wrestling shows of all time, wrestlemania 9 is the one I defend the most. It just looks too cool for me to hate on it, even if there was a ton of nonsense in the ring
This was the only wrestlemania I watched as a small child ( 6 ) during thid era when I was really into it. It wasn't until attitude in the late 90s when I returned
In 1993 I was 9 and sold on just about everything WWF. I thought The Undertaker was invincible and the Giant Gonzales' wasperfectly acceptable. I was pretty happy that Hulk Hogan beat Yokozuna because I had been too young to see the golden era.
If we'd have have Jannetty vs Michaels, Hogan didn't screw everyone and Tatanka maybe got out in with Razor I reckon opinion would have been different. Undertaker match agree was dreadful
I was 10 years old and it was perfect for someone my age. There was a freakishly tall guy who made the Undertaker look tiny, Hogan returned and gave the crowd "real" money from The Million Dollar Man's briefcase, Yokozuna was a legit monster heel and you had Jim Ross AND Bobby Heenan on commentary. All this to say that for 10 year old me, Wrestlemania 9 was great, I will die on this hill.
I bought this on VHS as a kid due to the novelty of an outdoor event. Then I found out it was in a car park, then I wished I was watching an actual car park for 3 hours.
Every retrospective of WrestleMania 9 makes me think a different thing. This one made me think “Backlund vs Razor happened too early”. Cool babyface Razor VS insane ”you’re corrupting our youth” heel Backlund would have been one of the best feuds of 1994.
My first PPV as a 10 yo was Royal Rumble 94, followed by Wrestlemania X. Probably that same year I was given a copy of Wrestlemania IX on Coliseum Video and I absolutely loved it! My 10 year old self loved all the over the top gimmicks and matches, things that people hate about it. I could equate it to video games. At the time I had an NES or maybe a Genesis. Some friends and relatives still had Atari and I could appreciate it knowing that its legacy led games to where they were at the time, even though the games were more primitive and not as fun to me. Wrestlemania IX was sort of like that. It was nice to see wrestlers who were no longer in the WWF, such as Giant Gonzales, Mr. Perfect and Brutus Beefcake. It was also cool to see some of the former gimmicks of “the narcissist” Lex Luger, “evil” Doink and “Kona” Crush. Like Atari 2600, I can appreciate WM IX’s place in history.
It didn’t start great and Giant Gonzalez v Undertaker, and the main event…. Well, you know… It still surprise me how popular the Money in the Bank match is now, considering that winning that match gives the winner the chance to “pull a Hogan at WM9”.
