Jim Ross On The Booking Behind Hulk Hogan Defeating Yokozuna At WrestleMania IX, Yokozuna Regaining The Title At King Of The Ring 1993

In a recent edition of Grilling JR, Jim Ross discussed Hulk Hogan beating Yokozuna for the WWE title at WrestleMania IX, Yokozuna regaining the title at King of the Ring 1993, and much more. You can view his comments below.

Jim Ross on Hulk Hogan beating Yokozuna at WrestleMania IX: “It’s not anything new. Cowboy Bill Watts told me one time when he’d do something like that, he always gave the heel and the heel’s manager if he had one, an out and an excuse – I wasn’t ready, and this in case, he’d already had another match. The part about that was, Fuji would have a hard time language-wise explaining that. But that’s what the announcers are there for. The theory has been over the years in the territories, you have the big upset or a finish you didn’t perceive, but sometimes it’s better to beat your top heel – instead of having a match, it almost comes off like a fluke. Can it happen again? If they wrestle 10 times, is that the one time the babyface would go over? That was kind of the reason for it in that regard. If you only look at it from an isolation point of view, no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But understanding the quick loss – the fluke – was a way to protect the heel as good as you could in doing the honors at an event like WrestleMania……some people may not understand or agree, but I thought it worked really good.”

On how the storyline unfolded and Hogan taking credit for the idea: “To be for it, you’ve gotta be for Hogan being placed back into the rotation. And you have to be for Hogan becoming champion again. If you’re not for Hogan becoming champion again, you’re not gonna be for this angle. I didn’t know the long-term plans at that time for Hogan and WWE, but obviously, it didn’t last long because he was gone a few months later. I didn’t despise the angle. But here’s the thing – you’ll draw a different opinion of the angle once you get down the road a bit and see Hogan leave two or three months later after King of the Ring. If down the road you know Hogan’s gonna be gone, you wouldn’t like the angle as much. At the time, hell, I didn’t know what they were gonna do. Maybe it was gonna launch Hogan’s next run. His previous runs had been pretty damn good.”

On Yokozuna winning the title back from Hogan at King of the Ring 1993: “This is the man that not only beat Hulk Hogan and reclaimed his championship after his “fluke” loss at WrestleMania IX – not only did he win decisively, he decimated the legend. He decimated the icon. If you tell the story correctly and put people in the right position, things like that can work. The bottom line is, at the end of the day, Yokozuna defeated Hulk Hogan to regain the WWE title. Yoko has the big win and that’s what we harped on. I wasn’t privy to all the backstage machinations with Hogan and the talks with Vince and the creative – it just seemed to get Hogan back in the fold, he needed to be the champion. And the unorthodox way they went about achieving that was obviously somewhat controversial to say the least. But again, if you thought that this was gonna be the launch of another run, it’s not such a stupid idea. Because you could still go back to Bret/Hogan because Hogan never beat Bret, he beat Yokozuna. So it made sense booking-wise if you tell the right story.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit Grilling JR with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.