Loss

It was a great match last time I saw it, but it's been a few years and the VQ wasn't quite up to snuff. I look forward to rewatching it.

I'll probably skip the battle royal unless you think I need to watch it. I was also leery of Harts/Rougeaus since Brother Love talked FOREVER before the match started and heel ref matches are sometimes kinda weird. Should I give it a watch tonight?

According to Tim Cooke, it's 11/30/94 aired 01/21/95.

According to the Observer at the time, Hogan did that completely on the fly.

11. Completely improvised a spot at Wrestlemania VI where he'd hug Warrior in tears and raise his hand and walk out moping, which put tons of sympathy on him and kept him more over than Warrior while Warrior was champ because people felt sorry for Hogan.

From Best of the WWF Vol 4- Roddy Piper v Paul Orndorff (07/13/85) - At this point a top 5 80s WWF pick for me. There's some silly stuff with Piper's Hoganesque leg shake selling, and I find it sort of anti-climatic when Piper slaps Orndorff in the face and he does nothing, but this match is still more hate-filled and heated than Savage/Steamboat at Wrestlemania III. Some really fun spots with Piper getting a lot of mileage out of even small moves like side headlocks. He also cheats really well. Orndorff is the better *wrestler* of the two, but Piper is better at working the crowd and portraying his character to the audience. Fun match! From Best of the WWF Vol 13- Randy Savage v Tito Santana (12/10/86) - I expected far more than I got here, as the match goes under 10 minutes and Savage stalls for over half of that. BORING. From Best of the WWF Vol 19- Randy Savage v Bad News Brown (01/16/89) - Disappointing match. Brown is the heel, but he's put in the babyface position of being the moral victor when the ref is bumped. Very little actual contact between the wrestlers here, and the ref takes a better bump into the table than Savage does. Nice job from Mach' putting Bad News over, but kind of an uneventful match. Bret Hart v Ted DiBiase (03/89) - Good match. Kind of a Brad Armstrong v Mike Rotunda at Clash III vibe with DiBiase controlling most of the match and Bret kicking out and getting big heat for doing so. DiBiase is a great bumper and Bret's a great seller, putting over DiBiase's sneaked chokehold in the reverse chinlock like he's suffocating. In a nice touch, Virgil didn't even interfere. Just a minute or two before the finish, Bret misses a high knee to the corner and DiBiase starts working it over and that alone makes me wish this would have another 15 minutes, but it's quickly forgotten and Bret does a pescado to the floor without showing any weakness before they brawl their way to a double countout finish. DiBiase is just as good as he is in his matches with Duggan in Mid South, and Bret shows a lot of promise. From Best of the WWF Vol 20- Hulk Hogan v Rick Rude (01/09/88) - All stalling and comedy, which is more entertaining than it sounds. Rude challenging Hogan to the arm wrestling match and Hogan accepting is great fun, but after that, there just isn't much to see here. Nice payback with Rude repeatedly pulling the hair to take Hogan down to the ground and Hogan getting him back by doing it to him multiple times. Rude hadn't fully developed into the great worker he'd be in a few years, but he's moving in that direction. Not a total waste of time, but not worth going out of your way to see. More soon.

Still out of order. Rey/Juvi is the first match, then the trios match, then the Misterios/Guerreras match. I sent a PM to Brian.

Thanks. I'm sure it's one of those, but I know that listing doesn't reflect what's on Brian's set. This one starts with a Rey/Juvi match, then is followed with a trios match involving Psicosis and then goes to what I think is a Misterio Sr & Jr v Juvi/Fuerza.

Well, singles matches are giving me no trouble at all. Just watched the first match on the Rey/Juvi set (unsure of the date -- finish is Rey's second interfering and beating up Juvi's second and Rey getting his hand raised) and it was a great, great match that I understood completely. Unbelievably hot false finishes and a great build to get there. Some of the better matwork I've ever seen coming from two guys that seem to be mostly renowned for high flying, and tons of hate with a very hot crowd. I loved, loved, loved this match -- somehow, the lucha I've liked has a way of seeming better than it really is, which makes me love it even more.

Watched Misawa/Kawada from 10/21/92. Great match, but it wasn't at the level I was expecting it to be. Spots being called on camera, repeating the Tiger Bomb spot, opening matwork that was too stationary for my liking ... maybe I need to see more surrounding footage. Weird that I'd still call it a ****1/4 match, but I would, as the build was totally logical and once they got to the final stretch, the match was tremendous. Opening sequence with Kawada headdropping Misawa when he tried something as simple as a side headlock rocked. Loved the struggle for moves and instinctive ability each man has to counter the other. I'm not sure I share jdw's sentiment that this is better than any Bret Hart match ever, though, as I think at least Bret/Owen from WM X is a better match. After watching surrounding footage, I'll come back to this and give it another look. Also watched Punk/Gibson from FIP Florida Rumble and was completely underwhelmed. Maybe it was the lack of a crowd, but more than that, I just felt it was too back and forth without any semblance of a layout going in any direction at all. The finish just sort of happened.

Maybe it's best for it to end, but I think it's been pretty peaceful. My views are based entirely on the facts. Anyway, any other news in the Observer?

And if a pencil had ink, it would be a pen.

I agree with you, as you probably figured out. It would be a different situation if Bret was arguing that he should never lose because "the people want me to be bulletproof". He was willing to lose anytime to anyone after getting back in the States.

Watched Fantastics/Malenkos from 7/15/89. There is some really awesome matwork here and the crowd is awesome, but it's too Brisco/Funk-ish in terms of never letting either team gain a sizeable advantage. Still a really good match for the exchanges and the offense, but no sense of urgency. It's weird to see Bobby Fulton outwork Dean Malenko, but it happened here. Believe it or not, Dean was the sloppiest of the four on the mat. Joe ROCKS, though, and I am on a mission to see more of his matches. I thought the match on this disc was Fans v Malenko/Kikuchi, which is what I said earlier, but it was this one. I still want to see the other match sometime soon.

In addition, I'm also hoping that they will consider their match from the first King of the Ring, which I think is better than this one. I know Bret has a lot of respect for Andre's mythical standing, so I think this is a case of Bret wanting a singles match with Andre on his set. Definitely a worthy addition. I think the match they had at Wrestlefest '90 was even better, but this is still a good choice. Yeah, that date would be 10/12/92. It was a disappointing match, but it was also a big moment in Bret's career, so I can understand why he wants it here. That said, he and Yoko would go on to have some great cage matches later on house shows, one of which made the Inside the WWF commercial release I believe. I believe this is from a UK tour and only aired locally on Sky Sports, or whatever the channel is over there. Absolutely. Hmmm ... 9/28/94 is when they had Owen's Last Match, which aired on Action Zone on 10/23/94. According to Cawthon's site, Bret faced Jim Neidhart in Providence, RI, on 09/29. So I'm assuming this date is incorrect as well. The match I'm thinking it is (since it's only one day off) was even the very first match to ever air on the Action Zone show. Excellent match I'd like to see again, actually. Haven't seen it since 1995. That seems appropriate to me too.

How was Styles/Joe?

That wasn't intended to be Hogan's last match, sek. He was intended to still be working with the company afterward. And the Hogan/Yoko angle is not analagous to Bret's storyline in '97. The only thing that comes close is Hogan/Slaughter at WM VII, and losing that match would have hurt Hogan quite a bit.

Another candidate is Clash I. Midnight Express v Fantastics Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard v Lex Luger & Barry Windham Strong main event too, but it's the worst of the three.

Hogan losing to Sgt Slaughter at Wrestlemania VII cleanly *would have* killed him. That's even a different situation, but that's the closest thing to Montreal I can think of. Hogan never ran an angle nearly as American-based as Bret's Canadian-based angle. Hogan wasn't going in other countries talking about how America was better.

I already have. It's in the 150s.

I think the context of the time has to be taken into consideration as well. It's only been since the rise to the top of The Rock that top guys have done jobs in the buildup to big matches as a regular thing, and now, we have an environment where main eventers aren't totally protected and after HHH and Undertaker, there are about 10 guys who are largely booked on the same level. In 2005, it probably would have been unreasonable for Bret to put up a stink about it, but at that time, top guys were far more protected, and doing a job on the way out after being booked as a national hero in your home area ... I can see where he's coming from. Bret *was* willing to lose to Michaels six days after they got back in the US, and this was in an era where title changes did still sometimes take place on house shows. Totally different landscape now with guys jobbing one month and getting their win back the next, establishing them as equals. Far more of a sense of hierarchy in 1997 WWF. It's not about marking for his character so much as it is knowing that he would be Just Another Wrestler if he started doing jobs in Canada. To form a more recent analogy, Japanese mags were writing all sorts of great articles on dream matches Kurt Angle could work back in 2002. WWF did a tour and he did a few clean jobs and that demand was no longer there. It's no big deal for a main eventer to do a clean job now, but it was totally different in 1997. Do you think Davey Boy could have headlined in England again after One Night Only?

I do like having it be an ongoing thing though. Interesting to see a match like Benoit/Jericho v Austin/HHH completely fall out of the top 100, as it just did for example, so I know I could say, without hyperbole, "I can name 100 better matches than that match." I know I can still do that later, but I like this being ongoing.

I don't know if it's unreasonable, but I can understand why Bret thought it was, because he was thinking WCW was going to use him to try to take over the Canadian market, and doing this job would take away from his market value there considerably. I think it would have. If Bret didn't have the contractual clause, if Bret asked to leave himself and if he hadn't been lied to, I'd probably side with Vince 100%.