Hulk Hogan vs. Yokozuna

[7.0] "An incredibly enjoyable and ultimately dramatic conclusion to Hogan's reign atop the WWF, as he plays the hits one last time before finding a new throne elsewhere. It's a familiar formula, but one Yokozuna adds a ton of colour to on both sides of the ball. ***1/2"

[3.0] "The good guy wins! Jokes aside, this is literally a match in which Yokozuna does all the work. Which is crazy to say given how big he is and how Hogan can certainly still go, but wow looking back does Hogan just does punches and a Hulk Up and not much else in this. Meanwhile Yokozuna is selling being dazed like crazy, hitting Belly to Belly Suplexes, running into the turnbuckles with impressive force, and just deflecting so much of Hogan's offense with his immense size alone. It's quite literally Hogan just bumping around Yokozuna for most of this match when Yoko isn't standing in a dazed state until he eventually regains enough wind to batter Hogan back down. It's actually quite crazy to think about how with how good at politicking Hogan was backstage that he would agree to a match like this that makes him look so out of his depth on the way out. Yokozuna becomes the second ever man to kick out of the leg drop on WWF television, and unlike Sid it wasn't because of a botch, and Hogan completely fails at slamming Yokozuna entirely. Meanwhile on commentary Heenan and even Savage or constantly pointing out how outmatched and underperforming Hogan appears in the match which was just wild to hear. But makes sense given how hard ball Hogan was out the door about losing to Bret like he was supposed to. Back to the match itself, frankly with how the booking of this match is prior to the finish, especially with the Legdrop kickout, I have to question exactly why a planted photography guy (who is very obvious when coming out with all the rest of the photographers) was even necessary. It's not like Yokozuna wasn't proving he could handle Hogan's best offense, and heck he beats Hogan with a Legdrop of his own! Not even Yokozuna's normal finisher! He stole Hogan's and beat him with it! Which is awesome by the way, but still just very odd from a booking perspective knowing what happened prior and won't happen later with any kind of follow up. In the end what you should come here for is to see Yokozuna get the prestige of beating and ending WWF Hulkamania in surprisingly good fashion, and by doing a majority of the work in the match. It's honestly pretty neat for that if you're rooting for Yokozuna instead of Hogan (which I personally think you should be). That being said, most of the match is still very basic and there's a momentum killer of a Bear Hug spot in this and the finish is undeniably silly and honestly unnecessary (I don't even think we figure out who the guy with the camera was), but it's not anything that I'd call the dregs anytime soon and I certainly got some enjoyment out of it just to see Hogan get so outperformed here and by Yokozuna of all guys. Certainly proved in kayfabe that he was the first real dominant heel threat for the ages winning the title twice now and beating Hogan like he did and running him out of the company."

[4.0] "Soyboy Hulk Hogan gets relegated to the middle of the card for Chad Bret Hart in the main. Universal justice. That said, this match is ok. The finish really does come out of nowhere and Terry isn't in his bag like he was in the 80s. Yoko lets out the monster stuff sometimes, but it's not quite effective"

[7.0] "I love this match. But for very selfish reasons. I've always despised Hogan. Even when I was a kid before all of the evidence and testimonies about what a terrible person he was came out. Conversely, I've always considered prime Yoko to be one of the best big men to ever do it. His weight problems cut his potential down early. The ending of WM9 infuriated me to no end. This was redemption. Everything about this match was about spitting in the face of Hogan. In his time in the WWF, very few people pinned Hogan to the mat for a definitive 3 count. Even when Warrior beats him at WM6, Hogan kicks out at 3.00001 seconds. But here, Yoko out powers him. Hogan can't slam him. Yoko kicks out of the leg drop, and finally, Yoko gets the win using Hogan's own finisher. And after the match, Yoko buried him with a Banzai with no retort from Hogan. Considering this was Hogan's last WWF PPV match until his post WCW return nearly 10 years after, Yoko really killed Hulkamania to many. Was this a great match? No. I'm not even sure if I'd call it a good match from a totally non biased standpoint. But any Hogan loss is a good thing. Let alone one this crushing. This match never fails to put a smile on my face. So the high mark is entirely due to the joy it brings me."

[6.0] "The more I watch this match, the more I like it. That's strange, since it's not actually a particularly pretty one, but it's historically groundbreaking. It was Hogan's last WWF match until Wrestlemania X-8 and marked the start of the Samoan's long title reign. You can already tell from its placement on the card that a title change is in the air, but Hogan really does a great job of building up the crowd once again. The finish is a matter of taste. Rounded up."

[3.0] "This match was going bad but with hopes until Hogan's ego kicks in at the end with the pin, with him trying to kick out when the match was over. That's something that shows how much Hogan was with the spotlight only him and then he loses but he got someone over, here Yokozuna after taking his moment of glory at WrestleMania 9. 3/10 [**1/4]"

[2.0] "This was a boring, long, and absolutely shitty match with a dirty finish. I literally almost fell asleep while watching it. They swapped one bad champion for another, it doesn't make any sense at all."

[3.0] "Boring match with a cheap finish to give Hogan an out for the loss. Yoko looked exhausted as usual. Going over ten minutes was too long for him. Hogan didn't put people over clean that often. They did a lot of the spots that were familiar in a Hogan match like the bearhug and other things that led to boring matches. Hogan failed to body slam Yokozuna throughout the match, so that was part of the story too. The finish was done to protect him by giving him an excuse for losing because the photographer (Wippleman) shot a fireball into Hogan's face. I will say that there was a cool moment in the match where Yoko kicked out of the leg drop, which is not something that happened very often, so at least that put over Yoko in a big way."

[2.0] "Hogan did Hogan things and Yokozuna was very fat. Hulk Hogan's low-workrate matches with Andre the Giant were uplifted by excellent selling and Andre' aura as a genuine threat, but a still-young Yokozuna wasn't a fraction of the worker that even a broken-down Andre had been. Yokozuna began to look like he was on the verge of dying from the exertion of just walking around the ring early on and this didn't get any better as it went on. The ending might've worked better if the cameraman didn't look like a bandmember of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem."

[6.0] "Oooo, a tough one to rate, the infamous "Hulkamania Died in the WWF" bout. I remember watching it a couple of years ago & it wasn't that bad. For the time, the photographer spot was pretty innovative and other than that, they really tried hard to tell a good story. **3/4"

[4.0] "What drew me to this match was the photographer's spot, not the fact that it was Hulk Hogan's last televised match before his retirement. I had heard about this spot and was intrigued to see it. The match itself lived up to my expectations, nothing special to say about it. (2*)"

[7.0] "The infamius fireball scene where Hulkamania "died". A "spectacle" of a match where Hogan drops the belt on his way out. But what made this even more "devastating" is that they had the all American hero drop the belt to the big bad Japanese heel in the middle of the American heartland.."

[6.0] "Not much to this match. Hogan drops the title on his way out of the Fed. It's a lackluster match, but it was necessary, I guess, to get the title back on Yokozuna so Bret could chase him again. Or Luger could, but ultimately fail. Long boring bearhug sequence didn't help. Harvey Whippleman comes out to snap a fireball in Hogan's face and give Yokozuna the title and end Hulkamania."

[8.0] "An unbelievable piece of business. Hogan gives Yokozuna almost the entirety of this match. The camera exploding is whatever but this is the most Hogan has put a star in his entire career. Only Luger I think comes close. The match is beautiful and made Yokozuna."

[5.0] "Hogan has apparently slimmed down to give him a speed advantage. Sure. This is your standard Hogan match, but you can tell part of the magic is gone since his eighties heyday. He simply isn't trying anything new here. The crowd are still hot for the usual Hogan antics, even if they are as stale as last month's bread. Hogan can't slam Yoko as he is still being protected for the big Luger moment later in year, but they work a halfway decent thread with Hogan trying to knock Yoko onto the mat. The business with the cameraman was interesting and I doubt many would have seen it coming."

[5.0] "This is one of those matches that is much more interesting to talk about than to actually watch. The story here is that at WrestleMania IX, Hogan had "ambushed" (or "Pearl Harbor'd") Yokozuna after he had cheated to beat Bret Hart for the title, challenging him to an impromptu match and leaving with the gold. This time around, Yoko would be fresh, making him a much bigger threat to the Hulkster. Meanwhile, behind the curtain, Hogan and Vince were having some issues. Hogan's deal was ending later in the summer, prior to SummerSlam, but I'm assuming they were still negotiating an extension at this point. Hogan had taken some time off following WrestleMania VIII, but the WWE had kept rolling, pushing the aforementioned Hitman as the next top babyface (with The Undertaker also moving higher up the card) while Hogan's contemporaries and longtime rivals, Savage, Flair, and Warrior, were either moved to non-wrestling roles or sent packing entirely. The company had also introduced Monday Night RAW in his absence, a seismic shift in the delivery system of WWE content that would eventually push things further and further into adult territory with its primetime slot compared to the emphasis on Saturday morning TV shows of the previous few years. Watching this match, Hogan stands out as a bit of a relic. The crowd is still behind him and the pop he receives in Dayton is nothing to scoff at, but the act is still undeniably stale. There's good foreshadowing at the start of the match as JR and Savage note the attendance of photographers from around the world, hyping up the global scale of this match. The action isn't great, but what one would expect from these two? It is night-and-day between what these two are capable of and what we saw in the previous bout, but its unfair to compare the two in that regard. Again, the "enjoyability" of this match doesn't really come from the specific moves or the shifts in momentum, but rather from the way it can be dissected and analyzed as a whole. Yokozuna essentially dominates the match, kicks out of Hogan's finisher towards the end, and is never slammed, which is legitimately shocking considering how much that is played up on commentary and how many matches in Hogan's career were built around him finally slamming some massive giant (literally at WrestleMania III) to score the feel-good victory. Despite how much this is played up on commentary, they don't deliver that moment. Nor do they deliver the moment of Hogan kicking out of Yoko's finish before "Hulking Up." This isn't some subtle inversion of the standard, predictable Hogan match - it was seemingly a purposeful decision to not deliver the expected match. But whose decision was it? What were their motivations? This match is a borderline burial of Hogan, especially the post-match, where Yoko does deliver the Bonzai Drop and the commentators go overboard about the "death of Hulkamania." As an angle, it would've been the perfect set-up for a rubber match...but we never got that rubber match. Hogan just "doing business" and putting over Yoko so thoroughly doesn't really jibe with his M.O for politicking, so one is left to assume that he agreed to the "burial" under the impression that Vince was going to cough up the dough to re-sign him. That, of course, did not happen. Instead, Vince essentially gave Luger Hulk's gimmick and tried to prop him up as the company's next leading man, a decision that likely also played into Hogan jumping ship to WCW. Oh, and all the messiness around the steroid trial that would rear its head in the fall. Regardless, the match itself isn't very good, but it is interesting and that's more than can be said about some of the other bouts on this card."

[7.0] "I'm actually surprised i enjoyed this match more than i thought but i can see why not many people are a fan or the matcb"

[4.0] "I actually thought this was a surprisingly decent match. I really expected this one to be way worse. This was probably my favourite Hogan match in awhile. Yokozuna and Hogan work alright together. This match got deducted a point for the silly finish to protect Hogan, but after how much time since even that didn't seem as bad as I'd remembered."

[2.0] "Boring as hell Hogan style match. Yoko looked decent for the most part but he wasn't going to bring anything great out of Hulk, who was in full play the hits and politic mode. The photographer finish wasn't necessary at all if you wanted to put over Yokozuna. Wish we had gotten the Hogan/Bret match that was supposed to happen at Summerslam instead (or that Hogan hadn't won the belt at Mania to begin with)"

[3.0] "I just can't stand Hogan at this point. Everything was the same as in his other matches and you knew exactly what was gonna happen. Heel dominates, long Bearhug, Hogan's arm doesn't fall for the third time, heel hits a finish, Hogan hulks up - you just wait when will it all happen. Thankfully Hulk's done with WWF after this, but it also creates another problem with the photographer situation that won't be resolved."

[4.0] "Over the years this match has had notoriety for being one of the worst World Title matches. I don't know if it is or not, but it wasn't great, neither was it terrible. Took a while to get anything going, and considering how limited Hogan's style was, there wasn't much actually done during the match. The fans still loved Hogan though at this point, especially the kids. Would've been better if Yoko beat Hogan cleanly to make him look like an even more dominant champion, but realistically that was probably never gonna fly."

[4.0] "Basic match that did get boring at times, but I didn't think it was bad or anything like that. I liked the powerslam teases, and Hogan being unable to do it put Yokozuna over massively. Hogan is visually unmotivated and ready to move on, and the finish was ridiculous but Hogan did put Yokozuna over like a million dollars in the post-match attack. Very historic match since it was Hogan's last televised WWF match, as he'd join WCW about a year later and wouldn't return to the WWF until early 2002. [*3/4]"

[5.0] "It's predictably boring and Yokozuna's contribution is mostly literally standing immobile, but you can't say the match wasn't over with the crowd, even if the action itself is dull."

[3.0] "Typical Hogan match from the 80s, the only difference being the result. Hogan was originally supposed to lose his title to Bret Hart at SummerSlam, but had to give it to Yokozuna due to his reluctance. On re-watching, the bout wasn't as boring, but I still didn't see anything interesting in terms of wrestling. Storytelling what it is, but personally I think it was more for show, because the main point of the match is behind the scenes. The bout is certainly historic, largely because of its ending, which, as intended, was to protect Hogan's defeat, well, and to show that even though he lost, it wasn't clean. All in all, don't waste your time on this match, another bout in which the Hulkster's decision prevailed."

[3.0] "So Hogan wormed his way into a title shot at Mania 9 and quickly pinned Yoko for the belt, then proceeded to disappear from WWF TV for almost 3 months. Hogan even went to Japan and cut a promo saying the WWF title was just a "toy". This would have been more scandalous if more people had computers in 1993 and the internet was more prominent back in the day. Instead it was just the more hardcore smarks who knew about his Japan tour and pissing on the WWF belt. Hogan didn't want to job to Bret like he supposedly promised so this match is just to get the belt off him and tell him to fuck off for a few years. Overbooking goes into effect as Hogan needs to get taken out by Marty Jannetty (possibly) in a photographer getup setting off a flash bulb in his face then the Yoko leg drop for the pin. Yoko gives Hogan a banzai drop as the commentators go on about the death of Hulkamania. Vince has had enough of this guy. Match was whatever."

[4.0] "The first BAD WWF title match on PPV in a very long time. It was very slow and boring. The fireball finish was extremely stupid as well. The only positive that comes out of this is the fact that Hogan lost the belt. [*3/4["

[6.0] "Definitely a historic match, it being Hulk's last in WWE for nearly a decade, but beyond that not a very quality one. I give it a 6 purely for the novelty of seeing the Hulkster take a pin, and for Yoko having the distinction in-kayfabe of running him out of the WWE. That fireball spot is hokey as all hell though, but whatever it takes for Hogan to lose I guess. Getting to see Bret Hart win KOTR, and see Hogan lose the WWF title' There's two good reasons for you to check out King of the Ring 1993."

[4.0] "Actually MUCH better on second viewing but still pretty bad even under the circumstances. The fireball stunt was overly absurd, but it was at least great to see Hogan losing the title once and for all. [*3/4]"

[3.0] "This is very notable for the result, of course, Hulk Hogan finally crushed out of the WWF by an overpowering heel. The action itself isn't much to speak of, it's skinny Hogan phoning it in so Yoko can only do so much, but nice that he got to squish the orange jerk at least."

[5.0] "Not too bad. The in ring work was tolerable and the storytelling was good enough to carry it through."