Gregor

There's no way it was that much later. Millionaire didn't debut until the late '90s.

I feel like KOTR 1993 should rate pretty highly on a list of the WWF's best pay-per-views ever. It has a compelling storyline throughout the show (Bret Hart having to run the gauntlet in a series of increasingly difficult matches), there's usually something interesting going on, and it does a good job in getting over the three main points that it has to establish (Yokozuna is evil and possibly unbeatable; Bret Hart is the most skilled wrestler in the company; Jerry Lawler is a louse). It has some really good matches, too, although that's mostly a result of having Hart wrestle three times. The crowd is hot, which is either further proof that this was a good show or merely something that enhances the show's atmosphere. The tournament seemed like one of the few instances of the WWF's telling a story almost exclusively through matches. I don't really know if I can articulate this well - pretty much all of wrestling comes down to the matches in the end. I guess maybe it was that the matches mattered only for the tournament. At the end, Bret Hart really does look like the best wrestler in the company, a skilled, smart, courageous guy. Again, it's hard to put my finger on it, but it's different from, say, the WrestleMania iron man match; that match was supposed to make Michaels the best wrestler in the WWF, but there wasn't really anything in it that would make you believe that. Anyway, whatever - I'll also add the commentary crew does a great job of pushing the tournament as incredibly important and the results of the prevous round's matches as important, too, which adds to the sense of realism (with regard to realism, I'd normally have preferred the guy with the bye to have won, but that's not really an option for the first installment of the tournament). Ross, Heenan, and Savage don't mesh particularly well, but they each contribute in their own way, with Savage especially determined to portray Bret Hart as a super wrestler.

Also worth noting is that Rock, along with the rest of the Nation of Domination, became infuriated when DX told them that they'd overheard the Hart Foundation using "the n-word." Rikishi seemed to think of Rock as a fellow Samoan, although 1) I don't know how true this was, since it turned out that he actually ran over Austin for HHH, and 2) The Rock wasn't particularly grateful either way, dismissing Rikishi as a "thong-wearing fatty."