This match is the beginning of Shawn Michael’s reputation as a WrestleMania show stealer, but considering how bad WrestleMania IX was, that’s not saying a whole lot. The build to this match was pretty simple, about as simple as a championship match at WrestleMania gets: Tatanka beat Shawn Michaels twice–once in a non-title match and once in a six-man tag–and was declared the number one contender to Michaels’s Intercontinental Title. Tatanka, a “wrestling is racist!” casefile if ever there was one, was undefeated at the time, but fans would grow tired of the cartoon Indian, he’d sell out to the Million Dollar Man, and eventually that was it for his WWE career.

But here he is at his most popular, armed with chops and war dances and indian warrior yells. Part of me thinks that Tatanka’s push was part of WWF’s quest to find a replacement for the Ultimate Warrior, and Chris Chavis could have certainly fit the bill. He’s more talented than the Warrior (who’d sooner be dead than caught on the top rope for a cross body), but after losing his first televised match in 1993 (to Ludwig Borga, trivia fans), it was all but over for the Native American warrior, who limped through feuds with Lex Luger and I.R.S. The I.R.S. feud was awesome though, as ‘ol Irwin R. Shyster believed that Tatanka should have paid a gift tax on a headdress presented to him by previous Native American wrestling legends. Tatanka disagreed on the grounds that his being Native American should have made him exempt. Why that didn’t headline pay-per-views, I’ll never know.

In any case, enjoy this blast from the past. It’s before Shawn Michaels had an actual finisher (the teardrop suplex counts, I guess, but whatever), so the Sweet Chin Music is called “a martial arts kick” by Jim Ross, who makes his WWF debut at this event. The next year, Michaels would take on Razor Ramon in a ladder match, stealing the show on a card that also included Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart, and from there, his career as a legitimate main event worker was off and running. It’s almost charming to imagine Shawn Michaels opening WrestleMania now, but even in that spot, he managed to outshine the rest of the show.