Bret Hart

[Matt D]

His work has aged far better than Shawn's, though.

[El-P]

His work has aged far better than Shawn's, though.

That's true. But Bret was a much better worker than Shawn anyway. Not even close actually. Then again, I don't want to get into yet another thread about Shawn freaking Micheals.

[JerryvonKramer]

The other little bit of context to consider there is that Shawn has had 10 years of the WWE ramming home the message of him as the best ever wrestler, Mr. Wrestlemania and all that crap. Bret hasn't had that (at least not to the same extent). I think that will affect the way people see him to some extent too, if only on a subliminal level. For example, it might pre-dispose certain fans (such as some of those that post here) to think more negatively of Shawn. Agreed, let's not talk about Shawn though.

[Loss]

As a big show performer, I think Bret is on the periphery of the GOAT conversation, actually. So I don't fault anyone for thinking that. Additional footage and exposure to wrestlers not seen by as many people as much has broadened the perspective of quite a few of us. Bret still has a place, but some of us have seen better now.

 

With the possible exception of Vader, Bret was the best in-ring main eventer in the U.S. of the 90s. He was easily the best worker in his company for several years, and he deserves credit for having high quality main events in a promotion that hadn't really had them consistently until Bret became a headliner.

 

1997 is probably the best year of his career. I would hold it up to just about any year any wrestler has ever had.

 

So in short, I get the Bret praise. I agree with lots of it. I'm a fan, too. But he was the best in *his* world, as OJ said, not really the best in *the* world at any point.

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

Bret is my favourite ever wrestler, by about a million miles. There are probably 5 Bret matches in my top 10 matches, including my number one, he was a part of my all-time favourite feud, and my favourite year in wrestling was '97, in large part due to his run with the Hart Foundation. I don't know that I'd call him the best ever (there was a time I wouldn't hesitate to do so), given, as has been touched upon, his relatively short run of being a great wrestler, but I think he's earnt a place at the table. I reject the claim that he hasn't had that many great matches, and at any rate, I think his very best are amongst the best ever.

 

As has been mentioned, his selling was always so great, and what I particularly liked would how he would sell, not just a specific injury or move, but the physical exertions of a match. He had a great "fuck, I'm knackered" sell, the heavy breathing, open mouth and pained walk, just to get over the physical toll of a wrestling match.

[jpchicago23]

Yea my top ten would be about half Bret matches as well. The two Austin matches are my all time favorites and they are completely different. He adapted very well to almost any style and has good to great matches with a laundry list of guys. Not a lot of people can say that. The Hart Foundation in 97 is my favorite group of all time and him playing smarmy heel in the US and beloved son in Canada is the best heel/face parrallel i've ever seen.

[soup23]

His work has aged far better than Shawn's, though.

 

I don't agree with this. I think Shawn's Rockers stuff is pretty incredible in how good it is and his other big matches from 1994-1996 ( two ladder matches vs. Razor, 10/30/94 Action Zone Tag, Survivor Series vs. Sid) held up really well for me. Everything on the level of Bret's stuff except for WM 10 vs. Owen and the two Austin matches.

[Kostka]

My take on Bret is this -

 

He was my favorite wrestler as a kid.

 

As a teen, I thought he was a great worker, maybe the best of all time (that I had seen).

 

Going into my twenties, I watched a fuck load of wrestling from the past 30+ years. I discovered a lot of great wrestlers.

 

I no longer think Bret is one of the best of all time. It isn't so much because I watch Bret matches and am disappointed, but more for the sheer fact that there have been a lot of REALLY great wrestlers that are just better.

 

So, his matches age well for me. I still enjoy him. But due to educating myself on a wider variety of great wrestling, he kind of drops down the ladder a few pegs. He doesn't compare to Lawler/Flair/Jumbo level types to me.

 

Great wrestler, no doubt. But nowhere near the best of all time.

[ohtani's jacket]

The thing I think that hurts Bret more than anything else is his association with the "first wave" of wrestling smarkdom back around 2000 or so. Bret back then, along with Shawn in some quarters, was the be all and end all. Anyone put in that artificially lofty position is going to suffer a comparative decline in reputation as received wisdom is questioned and the status quo is assessed and reassessed.

 

Another way of putting this is that Bret has gone from being a lot of people's GOAT pick 10 years ago to "a guy who had a very good peak 94-97". And even then not everyone agrees.

The first wave of wrestling smarkdom was in 2000? You're asking for trouble with that one.

 

I don't know that there were that many people touting Bret as the GOAT ten years ago. What I would say is that back in the day there were a lot of Bret vs. Shawn debates and nowdays I'm not sure it's that relevant a debate outside of nostalgia. One thing that kind of hurt Bret is how quickly and effortlessly the WWF moved on from him. Blink and suddenly Austin, Rock and Foley are carrying the company. There's probably a lot of people who started watching in that period that only know the Hitman retrospectively and the Bret era probably doesn't have the same resonance to it if you didn't live through it. The most I ever popped for wrestling (since I usually knew the results ahead of time) was either Bret winning the title at Survivor Series '95 after the monstrosity that had been 1995 or Rey beating Eddie at Halloween Havoc '97 after I'd fallen for the Bischoff leak that Rey would lose. Maybe I'm wrong, but you kind of had to be in the moment. You can kind of get a feel for it by how much people love and remember '97 despite the amount of absolute shit the WWF put out that year. The WWE doesn't glorify the Next Generation era the way it does the Attitude era and the steriod trial era is presented as Vince beating the rap, so that really cuts into a lot of Bret's prime.

 

Plus we're 16 years removed from the end of his prime. Of course he's going to lose his allure a little, but I don't know if his reputation has really taken a hit. People say he's boring -- he is boring if you're not in sync with what he does. People who love how he sells and the logic they claim he brings to his matches will always dig Bret, but I'm not sure there are too many people who think he's a bad worker. Just dull. There's not a lot of avenues left to explore with Bret, though Matt D sure is tempting me to watch some matches. I can't really see a big re-evaluation of Bret at any time, though. Bret Hart is so overwhelming in his Bret Hart-ness that you can't really find matches where he works a different way or that give a different take on his character. Jerome's re-evaluation of his WCW work or maybe the Hart Foundation coming back into style is probably the only places we can go with Bret unless people start suddenly proclaiming him the GOAT.

[Matt D]

It's also vaguely personal with Bret and myself. And this note is as good a place as ever to put it.

 

I'm sure I've told this story but I was lucky enough to have a friend growing up who had an uncle who worked for Titan. I don't know in what regard. I barely remember the guy but the kid was the younger sibling of a friend of my older sister and we were often on the same youth soccer team together or what not, with his dad as the coach and mine as the assistant coach. He had certain developmental issues and I like to think even as a kid I was always good to him. And again later when we he managed the baseball team in high school and i did the scorebook.

 

But yes, his dad worked for Titan and as we were both into wrestling (he was a huge Hogan fan, I liked the Rockers and Tito). We were able to go to a few house shows comped at the old Boston Garden, and if his uncle was there, we got to go back stage. This is 91 and I'm nine or so. Well, the kid goes with me half way to the back stage area before he gets terrified of the idea of Slaughter being back there and flees back to his seat. I go on and Bret just had his match with the Barbarian so he's just out of the shower and I have sort of a Mean Joe Green moment meeting him.

 

He was eminently kind to me, way more than he needed to be and signed a ticket stub that we found (since I hadn't brought anything to be signed or a camera or anything. It was all spur of the moment, getting to go back stage like that). I know people had bad experiences with him later on but he was really great to me when I was a lucky nine year old in 91.

 

That said, he still had a damn great 93.

[Gregor]

I think Bret has a decent amount of hidden gem-type stuff, especially when you consider that the WWF didn't really have very many of those. He has the Flair iron man, the Yokozuna cage matches, and the Action Zone Backlund tag. There are people who like the iron man with Owen and the Flair series from '92-'93. He has a couple of good RAW matches against Hakushi and Jean-Pierre Lafitte (not really sure why they booked TV rematches against both of those PPV opponents).

 

The biggest fault with Bret is that, if one of his matches doesn't go any longer than 10-15 minutes, you're probably not going to remember it. He doesn't have any heated sprints. I don't know if that's an issue with effort or if his wrestling style just didn't translate to that kind of match. But I think that's a bigger negative than the hidden gem deal. He did do some really good stuff on smaller shows; he just needed the matches to be given time.

[Childs]

He's the best overall WWF worker from the yearbooks that have been released so far, though he wasn't necessarily the best in any given six-month stretch you might spotlight. It's certainly to his credit that he could have a very good match with 1-2-3 Kid as easily as he could with Diesel, with Bob Backlund as easily as he could with Steve Austin. And those matches weren't all the same, despite Bret always feeling fairly similar as a performer.

 

I guess my biggest complaint about Bret, the one that would keep him out of the upper ranks of my GOAT list, is that his performances rarely got past feeling calculated. He just didn't cross over to that place where he seemed like a guy fighting for his life and his honor (which is funny, because he took his character seriously enough that he actually was kind of fighting for his honor). Maybe he reached that place in the Austin match from Mania? I haven't watched it in a long time, so I'm not sure.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

I tend to like my wrestling "serious" (which is probably an entirely different discussion) and I always liked Brett because he seemed to take things so seriously. His character, his in-ring work, his promos, everything seemed focused and serious. There wasn't any pissing around.

 

However, he seemed a little to scripted at times. That's what keeps him from being a GOAT candidate in my opinion.

[jpchicago23]

He's the best overall WWF worker from the yearbooks that have been released so far, though he wasn't necessarily the best in any given six-month stretch you might spotlight. It's certainly to his credit that he could have a very good match with 1-2-3 Kid as easily as he could with Diesel, with Bob Backlund as easily as he could with Steve Austin. And those matches weren't all the same, despite Bret always feeling fairly similar as a performer.

 

I guess my biggest complaint about Bret, the one that would keep him out of the upper ranks of my GOAT list, is that his performances rarely got past feeling calculated. He just didn't cross over to that place where he seemed like a guy fighting for his life and his honor (which is funny, because he took his character seriously enough that he actually was kind of fighting for his honor). Maybe he reached that place in the Austin match from Mania? I haven't watched it in a long time, so I'm not sure.

 

To me he definitely came off that way in the WM 13 match. From the opening bell when austin charges him you get that feeling of oh shit Austin is a straight up ass kicker and how is Bret going to defend himself. I would've loved to have seen 93 Bret vs 93 Vader to see him display it on a high level for a period of matches. Vader couldve given him a really good ass whooping and made Bret extremely sympathetic. The Piper match is another one that comes off as Bret having to fight for survival. Not to an extreme extent or anything and maybe i'm so pro Bret that i'm nit picking but Piper has Bret beat pretty good and it takes a desperation spot to win so that could be an example. Havent seen the 95 IYH Bulldog match in a long time so not sure how that comes off but i remember him being pretty bloody and getting the shit kicked out of him for a while.

[WingedEagle]

For all the talk about the excellence of execution, I generally prefer Bret's brawls.

[NintendoLogic]

Re: the submission match, Kevin Cook once compared Santo/Casas to a passion play. Specifically, he wrote the following:

 

People talk about how wrestling is a form of morality play, and in a vague way it is, but the central element of the passion play is the passion itself. What makes the passion the Passion, dramatically, isn't the redemptive suffering of Jesus, but the lack of gratitude of the barbarous mob. The crucial element isn't pain, but the voyeuristic and scornful attitude of the rabble. The spectator at a passion play doesn't identify with Jesus, but with his own faith—he's above the mob that jeered at Christ. If he was there he would have recognized Jesus as the redeemer. Mel Gibson is an asshole but he understands how this works dramatically, hence the leering Jewish mobs and the fixation on Simon of Cyrene.

 

Anyway Santo vs. Casas is the closest wrestling has really gotten to the pure form of a passion play. It has that element of redemptive suffering, Casas standing for righteousness and being mocked and jeered for it while the evil Santo basks in the unearned love of the people, rewarded for his callous and sinful ways.

If you replace Casas with Bret and Santo with Austin, I think it fits just as well, if not more so. Make of that what you will. Also, the Davey Boy match from IYH reminds me of a Misawa title defense with the champ taking a horrific beating and making a gradual and drawn-out comeback.

 

Anyway, I think Loss nailed it with his last post. He gives Bret his due without coming across as a fanboy.

 

I'm curious as to which wrestlers' work from 1994 to 1997 goodhelmet thinks "smokes" Bret's from the same period.

[shoe]

I like Bret and agree that he usually saved it for the big shows. Put me down as a guy who has liked the handhelds I've seen with Flair. I do think in Hart's 1st reign as WWF champion he did try to have strong main events. Though it seemed him getting the title wasn't thought out much in advance. It didn't seem like they had a set of heels ready to work him. That's why he got the fighting champion rap because he was defending against a variety of oppononents instead of a feud .

[Loss]

My favorite wrestler to compare Bret to these days is Shinya Hashimoto. I can't see myself having rated him above Bret pre-yearbook watching at all, and now, I can't see not doing it. In terms of guys I have seen a lot of that I hadn't before diving in, I would put Bret above Muto, Takada and Chono pretty comfortably. I'd put him behind Genichiro Tenryu and Bull Nakano. He's better than Taue and Dr. Death overall, but they both peaked much higher. I think he's about at the same level overall as Hiroshi Hase, Bobby Eaton, Barry Windham and Devil Masami.

[MikeCampbell]

I think that Bret and Hase is a perfect comparison, actually.

[jdw]

I like Bret, but I would have liked him a lot more if we got the PPV Bret on Coliseum Video matches, TV matches and handhelds. He is very much a big show performer. His career doesn't really have many hidden gems, and his Hart Foundation tag matches are almost all disappointing. His feud with Shawn Michaels had plenty of opportunities and went a long time, and still never produced a really classic match. You could say the same for his matches against Rick Martel. But for delivering exciting PPV main events, he was really good.

I thought this was interesting, as my initial thought was that Loss was onto something here... then my thought turned to stuff like the Bret-Yoko cage match.

 

Looking at the Yearbooks and ranking the "WWF Matches of the Year", here are the matches that made Loss' annual Top 100(+) along with other WWF matches that got ***1/2:

 

1992

#40 - Bret Hart vs Davey Boy Smith (WWF Summerslam 08/29/92) ****1/4

#79 - Randy Savage vs Shawn Michaels (WWF Munich 04/14/92) ***3/4

#87 - Ric Flair vs Bret Hart (WWF Worcester, MA 12/27/92) ***3/4

- Bret Hart vs Roddy Piper (WWF Wrestlemania VIII 04/05/92) ***1/2

- Ric Flair vs Bret Hart (WWF Smack Em Whack Em 10/12/92) ***1/2

 

1993

#43 - Ric Flair vs Bret Hart (WWF Boston, MA 01/09/93) ****1/4

#64 - Rock & Roll Express vs Heavenly Bodies (WWF Survivor Series 11/24/93) ****

#72 - Bret Hart vs Yokozuna (WWF MSG 08/13/93) ****

#88 - Bret Hart vs Mr. Perfect (WWF King of the Ring 06/13/93) ****

#89 - Marty Jannetty vs Doink the Clown (WWF RAW 06/21/93) ****

#91 - Bret Hart vs Bam Bam Bigelow (WWF King of the Ring 06/13/93) ****

#92 - Rick & Scott Steiner vs The Quebecers (WWF RAW 09/13/93) ****

#96 - Mr. Perfect vs Doink the Clown (WWF RAW 05/24/93) ***3/4

- Bret Hart vs Yokozuna (Inside the WWF 12/15/93) ***1/2

- 1-2-3 Kid vs Marty Jannetty (WWF Monday Night RAW 10/25/93) ***1/2

- Rick & Scott Steiner vs Heavenly Bodies (WWF Summerslam 08/30/93) ***1/2

- Shawn Michaels vs Marty Jannetty (WWF RAW 07/19/93) ***3/4

 

1994

#7 - Bret Hart vs Owen Hart (WWF Wrestlemania X 03/20/94) ****3/4

#40 - Shawn Michaels & Diesel vs Razor Ramon & 1-2-3 Kid (WWF Action Zone 10/30/94) ****1/4

#45 - Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon (WWF Wrestlemania X 03/20/94) ****

#50 - Bret Hart vs 1-2-3 Kid (WWF RAW 07/11/94) ****

#69 - Rick & Scott Steiner vs Bret & Owen Hart (WWF Wrestlefest 01/11/94) ****

#76 - Bret Hart vs Bob Backlund (WWF Superstars 07/30/94) ***3/4

#84 - Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon (WWF RAW 08/01/94) ***3/4

#87 - Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon (WWF San Jose 01/14/94) ***3/4

- 1-2-3 Kid & Marty Jannetty vs The Quebecers (WWF MSG 01/17/94) ***1/2

 

1995

#3 - Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon (WWF Summerslam 08/27/95) ****3/4

#33 - Bret Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs Owen Hart & Bob Backlund (WWF Action Zone 02/26/95) ****1/4

#49 - Bret Hart vs Diesel (WWF Survivor Series 11/19/95) ****

#59 - Shawn Michaels vs Jeff Jarrett (WWF In Your House 07/23/95) ****

#65 - Bret Hart vs Diesel (WWF Royal Rumble 01/22/95) ***3/4

#80 - Bret Hart vs Hakushi (WWF In Your House 05/14/95) ***3/4

#84 - Bret Hart vs Davey Boy Smith (WWF In Your House 12/17/95) ***3/4

#92 - Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith & Yokozuna vs Diesel, Shawn Michaels & Undertaker (WWF RAW 10/09/95) ***1/2

#97 - Bret Hart vs Hakushi (WWF RAW 07/24/95) ***1/2

#101 - Bret Hart vs Jean-Pierre Lafitte (WWF In Your House 09/24/95) ***1/2

#103 - Owen Hart vs Davey Boy Smith (WWF RAW 06/05/95) ***1/2

 

1996

#16 - Shawn Michaels vs Mankind (WWF Mind Games 09/22/96) ****1/2

#20 - Bret Hart vs Steve Austin (WWF Survivor Series 11/17/96) ****1/2

#72 - Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels (WWF Wrestlemania XII 03/31/96) ***3/4

#76 - Vader, Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs Shawn Michaels, Ahmed Johnson & Sid (WWF International Incident 07/21/96) ***1/2

#85 - Shawn Michaels vs Owen Hart (WWF In Your House VI 02/18/96) ***1/2

#91 - Shawn Michaels vs Diesel (WWF Good Friends Better Enemies 04/28/96) ***1/2

#99 - Steve Austin vs Marc Mero (WWF King of the Ring 06/23/96) ***1/2

#100 - Shawn Michaels vs Owen Hart (WWF Monday Night RAW 08/12/96) ***1/2

 

As a sidebar, 1996 is kind of interesting as non-PPV just didn't product as many ***1/2+ matches as prior years.

 

1990 isn't complete, but here's what has made the grade so far:

 

1990

- The Rockers vs Powers of Pain (WWF MSG 01/15/90) ****

- Hulk Hogan vs Stan Hansen (WWF/AJPW Tokyo Dome 04/13/90) ***3/4

- Randy Savage vs Genichiro Tenryu (WWF/AJPW Tokyo Dome 04/13/90) ***3/4

- Ron Garvin vs Greg Valentine (WWF Royal Rumble 01/21/90) ***1/2

- Hart Foundation vs Rockers (WWF Saturday Night's Main Event 04/28/90) ***1/2

- Mr. Perfect vs Tito Santana (WWF Saturday Night's Main Event 07/28/90) ***1/2

 

I don't quite know what to make of SNME in 1990. By that point we have the Rumble, Mania, Slam and Survivors so SNME wasn't as big as it had been in say 1986. So it may be more fair to color those. Clearly the Dome matches are "PPV Level".

 

Bret does better than I thought here. He probably has a few other matches that would get similar ratings but were left on the cutting room floor due to being duplicative (there's at least one other very good Yoko-Bret cage match that's on tape via hand held). He has three tv/house show matches that made the cut in 1991 against Flair and Ted (2), with the SNME match with Ted being well rated at the time.

 

Anyway, relative to the standards of the WWF in the early-to-mid 90s, Bret might have done "okay" or "better than okay" in this regard.

 

I'm not a huge fun of WWF tag wrestling in the 80s, and haven't cared for a lot of the Hart Foundation stuff that I've watched. But I'll cop to not watching all of it yet, and it's likely that some decent-to-good stuff is out there. Dittos singles matches. Folks like the Bret-Curt series a heck of a lot more than I do, and there are tons of house show / CHV matches between them out there. I liked the Bret-Ted match from the 80s more, and would probably have it in the ***1/2ish range. Bret-Steamer from 1986 was pretty damn solid. The Savage match in 1987 from SNME shouldn't count since there were just two PPV that year, so SNME was still "major TV".

 

I don't think it makes a GOAT argument for him. But I also think that if someone made a major comp for him, there would be a pretty fair amount of non-PPV stuff from him that was good.

[Loss]

Holding Bret to WWF standards for smaller shows, yes, he stood out from the pack. I think that's a point worth clarification. I too thought of things like the cage match and the Ironman that I thought were great. He's by no means completely devoid of good matches on small shows. But he's not a consistent TV guy like Arn Anderson, Steven Regal, Barry Windham or even Dustin Rhodes.

 

I'm not sure who in New Japan would make a good Valis-to-Coliseum Video comparison for him, but that would be an interesting project.

 

It's really telling to look at a match list of every single match he's had on Coliseum Video. Looking at my top 100 for each year, his run looks pretty impressive, and fairly consistent. And it was, as long as the right standards are applied. But looking at the full picture of matches that he had that were really bland and uneventful paints a different picture. I'm referring to matches like the cage match with Shawn. The ladder match, which didn't look good at all the last time I saw it. The Martel MSG match that I mentioned. The Harts/Rockers match from SWS. Diesel at Wrestlefest '94. Matches against stiffs like Bravo and Adam Bomb that could have been really good if Bret wanted them to be. There would be a fair amount of small show stuff on a Bret comp, but there would be even more left on the cutting room floor.

 

Proportionately, there wouldn't be nearly as many small show matches left on the cutting room floor for Flair, Funk, Lazy Jumbo or Tenryu. Probably not for Savage or Muto either, and both have the same rep for not going all out on small shows. Probably not for Shawn Michaels either, to be honest.

[Graham Crackers]

My take on Bret is this -

 

He was my favorite wrestler as a kid.

 

As a teen, I thought he was a great worker, maybe the best of all time (that I had seen).

 

Going into my twenties, I watched a fuck load of wrestling from the past 30+ years. I discovered a lot of great wrestlers.

 

I no longer think Bret is one of the best of all time. It isn't so much because I watch Bret matches and am disappointed, but more for the sheer fact that there have been a lot of REALLY great wrestlers that are just better.

 

So, his matches age well for me. I still enjoy him. But due to educating myself on a wider variety of great wrestling, he kind of drops down the ladder a few pegs. He doesn't compare to Lawler/Flair/Jumbo level types to me.

 

Great wrestler, no doubt. But nowhere near the best of all time.

On some level this is pretty close to how I feel. The major differences are that Bret wasn't my absolute favorite (that was Mick Foley) and that in addition to "discovering" better workers I have also found styles of wrestling I prefer to the WWE style and so while the best Bret Hart matches are really good they are still a step down from the stuff that I love and want to watch over and over again.

 

I also agree with Loss when he says Bret was a better big show worker than he was a week to week worker. I am working on a top 100 wrestlers of all time ballot for WKO and Bret will probably make the tail end of the list and that's one of the major reasons he won't be higher. That said, I do like a few Bret Hart matches from houseshows (particularly the Yokozuna cage matches). The Ric Flair match from Boston is good too. I'm not sure either match is a top 100 match from 1993 but I like them.

 

My favorite Bret Hart match is the title match against 1-2-3 Kid. He's really great wasting Kid with uppercuts, cutting him off and basically working like an ace. Unfortunately there aren't many Bret Hart matches where he works like an ace taking on a lower ranked opponent. He either works even or works as an underdog.

[Dylan Waco]

The other little bit of context to consider there is that Shawn has had 10 years of the WWE ramming home the message of him as the best ever wrestler, Mr. Wrestlemania and all that crap.

This is very, very true. Shawn's gimmick is "great wrestler" and it's a narrative the WWE has gone out of their way to push. Shawn is a guy who is important to the history of the promotion, but nowhere near as important as you would think based on the way the hype machine presents him.

[Dylan Waco]

My favorite wrestler to compare Bret to these days is Shinya Hashimoto. I can't see myself having rated him above Bret pre-yearbook watching at all, and now, I can't see not doing it. In terms of guys I have seen a lot of that I hadn't before diving in, I would put Bret above Muto, Takada and Chono pretty comfortably. I'd put him behind Genichiro Tenryu and Bull Nakano. He's better than Taue and Dr. Death overall, but they both peaked much higher. I think he's about at the same level overall as Hiroshi Hase, Bobby Eaton, Barry Windham and Devil Masami.

Hashimoto is one of the most underrated wrestlers who ever lived. I've been watching a ton of his stuff for the last two weeks and he is a guy I want a comp of yesterday. I think he's every bit as good as the AJPW guys. What he has that Bret lacks is the natural presence/innate charisma that makes every motion, every comeback, every facial expression feel like an escalation. It's a trait that is very hard to put your finger on and there are only a small number of wrestlers in the history of wrestling who have it, not all of whom would be considered great workers. I should probably start a thread for him, but I've gotten so preoccupied with other stuff I haven't.

 

Two quick things to keep this Bret-centric.

 

I really love the Survivor Series match with Austin. A whole lot. I don't know if the build to the match and finish was supposed to work the way I have always thought it worked in my head but I don't care. It's a match that works for me on a level that very few WWE/F matches in history ever have. I'm not sure it's my number one WWE match in history, but I had it one in the SC poll a few years back and I would consider it for that spot if I were to ever do such a thing again. Everyone talks about the Mania match, but I think SS is a better match and I think the build to the match is really what put over Austin as much as anything. WM 13 was just the last kick over the edge.

 

One criticism I have had of Bret is that I thought he won with roll up variations way too much. I tend to be a big fan of guys with multiple finishes and Bret didn't have that. He had the sharpshooter....and then a bunch of roll ups. I get that it sort of put over the idea that he was capable of beating you with a hold at any time because he was such a sharp wrestler, but as much as I like stuff like the Backlund match with the turn (one of my favorite Bret matches really) or the carry job of DBS at SS 92 it drives me crazy that so many of his big time matches end on roll ups.

[Dylan Waco]

I'm curious as to which wrestlers' work from 1994 to 1997 goodhelmet thinks "smokes" Bret's from the same period.

Not goodhelmet and I wouldn't use the word smokes, but I think you could make reasonable arguments for Hashimoto, Tenryu, Kobashi, Kawada, Misawa, Kong, Eddie, Benoit at bare minimum. That's to say nothing of Lucha, though I'm not sure how solid the footage is from that period week-to-week. That also doesn't touch guys who are more controversial though I don't think totally absurd. I think from 94-97 Bret is a contender for top ten in the world cumulatively. Probably even a guy who would finish in the majority of people's top ten for that period. Top five? Much tougher to make that case. If you break down individually by year? I think that's where Bret actually looks weaker.