3. Bret Hart Loses WWE Title To Yokozuna...Who Then Drops It To Hulk Hogan In 22 Seconds (WrestleMania 9)
WrestleMania 9 was not a good show. Far from it, actually, considering it featured not one but two screw-jobs worthy of appearing on this countdown. The first was the fiasco of The Undertaker vs Giant Gonzalez; truly one of the worst worked matches in history. However, we have chosen to highlight the main event of the evening, in which Bret Hart was made to look incredibly weak in defeat to Yokozuna...who was then immediately conquered by the real-life superhero Hulk Hogan. Yikes. At the time, Bret was a new breed of WWE champion in that he wasn't an over-the-top, flamboyant character with a crazy gimmick; he was just an excellent wrestler and a fighting champion. So when he went up against Yokozuna, a man almost twice his weight, the crowd was rooting for Hart as the plucky underdog trying to overcome a much larger opponent. This is wrestling 101, and even though the match wasn't anything amazing (Yoko could barely move, after all), Hart managed to wring a decent bout out of him. Then the unthinkable happened. During this time period, Hulk Hogan's ego was massive, and he somehow convinced Vince McMahon that it would be a good idea for him to beat Yoko inside 22 seconds in an impromptu title match that, in essence, made the entire preceding match pointless. To draw a parallel to a modern context, it would be like John Cena insisting that he should leave Mania 31 as champion, inserting himself into the picture after the main event between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. Heads would roll!
