The first WM I actively followed in real time, so I will always have a real soft spot for it.
The venue looked fantastic, the only downside being that it all had to be done during the daytime because of the west coast location - the main event and Taker's entrance would have looked incredible in darkness, with roman torches as illumination.
I'll always be sorry that they didn't do the Hulk angle with Savage jumping into the ring from the commentary booth, after having gotten heat with Yoko/Fuji over the previous months on Raw. Having WM end with Hogan once again champion felt unoriginal and somewhat out of date, even back then. I'm not a Hogan hater, but was never a Hulkamaniac and I really liked the shift in trend to having just had wrestlers like Savage, Flair and Bret as champion. For me, they simply guaranteed a much better quality title match, even if Hogan undoubtedly created the bigger crowd pops back then.
Not many matches really paid off with quality on the night itself. Perfect/Luger really wasn't what it could have been and the outcome did very little to push either guy. Michaels/Tatanka was merely ok imo. Backlund/Razor was predictably pathetic, a match that belonged on Superstars, not the biggest show of the year.
A lot of the booking feels slapdash in retrospect and they really could have created a much stronger card if they had played the long game and built up the storylines that had been started earlier, but once it got to late 1992, you have the feeling that they were just throwing things out there and scrambling stuff together on the fly as the business hit stormy waters. Long gone were the days of building up to a Mania pay-off like they had done with the Mega Powers exploding, for example.
They could easily have had a card like:
Bret vs Yoko, with the Savage pay-off, opening up the potential of Savage v Bret at Summerslam, rather than ending the show with a guy holding the belt who has absolutely no intent of ever getting into the ring and putting over the "New Generation" you're supposedly building.
Flair vs Perfect as the loser leaves the WWF angle... you just gotta ask Flair to work one more month than he actually did! Come on, it's in Las Vegas! What's more "the bright lights, the glitz and glamour, the limousines, styling and profiling" than Slick Ric cruising into Vegas?! It was made for him to be there.
Hogan/Beefcake vs Money Inc. - and just let Hogan win his belt here. All the Hulkamaniacs/Vince are happy. Tag title doesn't need to feature prominently on TV every week so it's not such a strange aftermath with Hogan vanishing from view for most of May despite being champion. If Hogan signs up long term afterward, THEN you can think about putting him into the title picture, but not before. In the end, the DQ finish here did nothing but add another unclean finish to a show full of them, and Money Inc fell apart within a few months anyway. Furthermore, keep Jimmy Hart heel with Money Inc., you don't nee d a manager to do the talking for Hogan and Beefcake, that's their own forte. Have the briefcase come into play here
Even working on short-terms deals, they could have got Hogan from there to Summerslam: Have the Mega maniacs lose the tag titles at KOTR to the Headshrinkers, when Yokozuna and Fuji, tired of Hogan's jibes against "Japs" and Samoan savages come to ringside and put Hogan out of the match, leaving Brutus to struggle alone to the inevitable loss. Then Hogan can have his favourite match of facing the monster Yoko at Summerslam, you don't need the title involved though. He would probably have been open to staying with that match in store, rather than essentially quitting knowing that he would have to take on one of the "New Generation" at Summerslam.
Taker vs Bigelow - way better quality match possible. Gonzalez did look intimidating, but man, he really could not do anything in a wrestling ring, and guaranteed two stinkers for Taker. They could have had a strong Bigelow match, which builds him up even more for his run to the final at KOTR, yet ends in a DQ to open up a Summerslam rematch, guaranteeing another better match at Summerslam.
Savage vs Razor - this never had any real pay-off, except them both being involved in a tag match at Survivor Series. I mean Razor essentially costs Savage the title in September 92, yet they never actually have any one-on-one match as a result? Meanwhile Savage is more concerned in January about regaining his hat from Repo Man?! Come on, and you're wondering why ratings and buyrates are sliding?
Let's try it another way:
Have Razor in the Rumble, rather than in a title match at RR (that could have been a Bret vs Flair rematch), let Razor get close to winning the Rumble until he and Savage end up going at it hard, both eliminating each other and brawling back to the dressing room. Razor immediately losing to Bret in his first real shot at gold weakened him and relegated him to the pointless Backlund squash at Mania. He could have been looking much stronger with this booking.
Put this as the opening to WM9 so Savage can join the commentary booth later in the show and have Razor sneak the win somehow after a ref bump. Savage is already fuming on commentary later about injustices, and the referees being duped, than he sees the title change right before his eyes thanks to Fuji and the referee not seeing it, he's really irate now, now Yoko wants to banzai squash Bret after the bell to boot, he loses it and storms the ring to pull Bret out of there and then you get the challenge from Fuji... this also opens up a future Savage vs Razor title match at KOTR.
Michaels vs Jannetty - just bite the bullet and bring him back for the big event. They had an excellent match just one month later, which should have had the big stage it deserved.
Luger vs Tatanka - build the Narcissist by him being the one to finally end Tatanka's unbeaten streak. It can be with the forearm to protect Tatanka's honour of not losing fairly.
Steiners vs Headshrinkers - no complaints, was excellent.
(I wouldn't really miss Crush vs Doink not being on the card as I always found Crush utterly lame, no matter whether he was face or heel, but the two clowns angle was actually quite original and cool, so I don't mind it being here too much. For me, it would be the match you save as potential filler that you can cut if you're running overtime or you just schedule as a dark match to be shown later on TV).
All in all, just for personal nostalgia I have to say "yay", but it really could have been much better with more care. I can fully understand why many people dislike it though and I don't dispute that is a Mania without a single classic match.
The roster had suffered hugely over the preceding year, but you now had an in-ring Mr Perfect, two rapidly climbing elite talents in Bret and Shawn and a couple of great new additions in Razor and the Steiners. If they had put the pieces in better places they could have created a very credible Mania and also set up the rest of the year. As it was, they had nowhere to go afterwards thanks to Hulk's one night stand and Razor's immediate demotion to IC level matches, so they had to do the Real American Part 2 with Luger vs the nasty foreign monster, which I found "okay", but it all a bit meh and felt like something you had already seen umpteen times, plus Yokozuna was just champion for far too long a period for his in-ring limitation and lack of real charisma (the addition of Cornette at his side did help at least).