Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair

[El-P]

What are some examples of Bret dragging a great match out of an average opponent?

Kevin Nash says hello.

 

What are some examples of Bret working wild brawls?

WM13 says hello

 

What are some examples of Bret working a match where he makes a JTTS look like a million bucks?

It didn't make sense for Bret to make a JTTS look like a million bucks. Bret had more of a sense of hierarchy. Stan Hansen would not give JTTS shit, it doens't take way from his body of work.

 

What are some examples of Bret working a match where he feels like the biggest deal on earth?

Winning the IC title from Hennig.

 

(hey, don't blame me, I picked Flair over Bret anyway.)

[Childs]

Do we have to do this again? Didn't we pretty well cover it in the first 348 posts?

[JerryvonKramer]

I wanted 20 examples for each one El-P, or 5-10 even. This was the key line in that post:

 

Bret will struggle for a handful of examples, which tend to be the same ones time and again.

You named the usual suspects.

[BrickHithouse]

Pretty clear IMO that it's Flair by a healthy margin.

 

However I voted for Bret just to be a dick.

[jdw]

I find it funny that I can go back to the first post and still vote.

 

*clicks through the thread*

 

Wait... quickly scanning the 18 pages of the thread: I haven't offered a single opinion about either of them.

 

Hmm... at some point in the past decade Bret vs Flair must have become as interesting to me as The Montreal Screwjob.

 

John

[Loss]

Do we have to do this again? Didn't we pretty well cover it in the first 348 posts?

This thread may have given me an ulcer.

 

I'm sort of kidding. I think.

[El-P]

I agree.

 

Why don't we all talk about Shawn Michaels for a change ?

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[Dooley]

if this ends in a JVK vs. Andrews death match, I'm cool with it.

[JerryvonKramer]

My only point that I haven't mentioned before in the past 18 pages is that the pimped Bret matches are always the same matches.

 

Flair has got tons of ****+ matches that aren't uber-canonical. AND he's got his uber-canonical stuff. I just don't think Bret has that sort of depth beyond his very best worst. If Andrews or anyone else can point me to a big list of great Bret matches that aren't the same old ones then sure I'll concede that it is worth even having a conversation about this.

[tomk]

I get that generating PPV buys and ticket sales > DVD sales, but you'd think WWE would devote more DVDs to the latter three since they were at the top of the two most recent wrestling booms. If you can sell tix and generate PPV buys, your name should also result in a bunch of DVD sales.

To make a music analogy, Perry Como had the 9th best selling album of the 1970s, with sales of at least seven million copies. He was part of a 'boom'. Nick Drake sold about 5,000 copies of 'Five Leaves Left'. Yet it is Drake who has had far more archive releases and DVDs/books/programs about his life.

 

No music fan is interested in Como anymore: most are still interested in Drake. Como's fans were merely casual. Extreme example but maybe that is how WWE sees Bret - a guy whose fans were long term fans, in comparison to the more flash in the pan stars who appealed to the casual fan as the industry boomed.

 

 

This is an absolutely insane analogy.

Perry Como first recorded and was broadcast on national radio programs in late 30s as lead vocalist for Ted Weems Orchestra. Was the star of his own nationally broadcast radio show in the 40s and of his own Tv show in the 50s (where he's credited with introducing Bossa Nova to North American audiences). He was able to score a huge selling album in the 70s because people who had followed career in 40s and 50s (and some as far back as the thirties) continued to be interested in what he did. People who follow a musical career for 50 years are "merely casual"?

 

The guy with a 50+ year of recorded music is a "flash in the pan star" vis a vis a guy with three albums?

 

Yes there aren't a lot of people interested in his music today but how many people are interested in any music of the 40s.While I don't think many music fans today are interested in his 40s output ( despite recently reading an Esquire Jazz Yearbook from late 40s where Billy Holliday picked him as ideal boy singer, and in several of the Motown books Marvin Gaye cites him as an influence) but his period with Weems orchestra is constantly revisited. I imagine that there is an interest in his work with Raymond Scott Orchestra among fans of early electronic music. Audiophiles talk about the great full room sound of his 50s Webster Hall recordings. And "Glendora" has become a garage rock standard.

[tomk]

So I'm not a particular fan of Como's vocal stylings (probably ruined by SCTV impression) but this is a Webster Hall 50s recording which even on youtube over shitty cell phone speakers is loud and full.

 

http://youtube/VwIeP9eDb-s

 

And this is ridiculously awesome Glendora cover from Columbian garage rockers:

 

http://youtube/fXbjIES2uYY

[tomk]

Perry Como's Glendora on 78

 

http://youtube/QiYfTDQnE9A

 

Olavi Virta (King of the Finnish tango) cover:

 

http://youtube/K34ZDIVJWLs

 

Slikee Boys:

 

http://youtube/f8QUlEzkIUM

[Guest Andrews]

My only point that I haven't mentioned before in the past 18 pages is that the pimped Bret matches are always the same matches.

 

Flair has got tons of ****+ matches that aren't uber-canonical. AND he's got his uber-canonical stuff. I just don't think Bret has that sort of depth beyond his very best worst. If Andrews or anyone else can point me to a big list of great Bret matches that aren't the same old ones then sure I'll concede that it is worth even having a conversation about this.

Yo, just saw this.

 

How about as far as lesser known great Bret Hart matches we have Bret Hart vs Mankind from early 1997 (Shotgun) which was a wild match, not pimped out etc, and showed a different rougher edge to Bret.

 

Or shortly after that his stellar performance in the 97 Rumble that rarely gets mentioned. Or the Final 4 Way where he won the belt for the 4th night in a gripping match... before he lost it to Sid in a corker. Yes, Sid.

 

Or shortly before those, the Survivor Series match with Austin which was BLINDING that gets hidden in the shadow of WM13.

 

The match he had with DDP at WW3 was great - there are tonnes of this ilk in WCW that are forgotten because it's lost in the mid card.

 

And all of this is outside of his 1985 - 1994 prime.

 

All in my opinion of course.

[Slasher]

I don't want to vote because of how severely biased the site is towards Flair, but I will say I would choose Bret Hart any time, every time. The guy may be as formulaic as Flair as anybody, but the guy knew how to wrestle proportionate to his pay grade. He's the guy that had a formula where it made sense, in every match. Not every one would be a classic, and maybe not as many as Flair's, would be, but this is a guy who was primarily a singles wrestler for only 10 years or so. Flair wrestled 20+ years as a singles wrestler. I think the work Hart put forward as a singles wrestler actually rival if not surpass Flair, as a whole. Just my honest humble opinion though.

[Loss]

The only thing I'll say in response to that is that I'm not a fan of generalizations about "the site". PWO doesn't have any set opinions on anything. I don't think there's a specific type of wrestling that people prefer over others here. If a wrestler has any fans at all, they probably have at least one who posts here.

[BrickHithouse]

The only thing I'll say in response to that is that I'm not a fan of generalizations about "the site". PWO doesn't have any set opinions on anything. I don't think there's a specific type of wrestling that's people prefer over others here. If a wrestler has any fans at all, they probably have at least one who posts here.

Damn right!

 

[Troy]

The real rock

[Matt D]

Are there really that many places on the net that Bret would have done as well as he did here?

[goc]

Most likely. In some he'd probably do better. I'd say that the younger the fan the more likely they are to vote Bret. Especially if they haven't seen a lot of Flair pre 90s.

[JerryvonKramer]

My feeling is that he'd beat Flair on most sites because Bret, among mainstream fans, gets a similar sort of megaboost that Shawn gets. His associations with Austin and HBK, his long-term IRL rivalry with Vince, and being an internet darling circa 2000 have all helped maintain a mystique and an over-inflated sense of his importance.

 

For 1,000s of fans Crockett or the NWA might as well have not existed. They simply don't care about Flair outside of the year or so he was in WWF in 91-3 and his 00s run.

 

Part of my vitriol in this whole thread has been that I don't even think Bret belongs in the conversation with Flair. If wrestling was a real sport, no one would be putting Bret in that conversation. But all of the above artificially puts him in such a conversation.

 

That's it really. I don't dispute that Bret had many great matches or even that he was one of the greatest WWF workers of his era, I just don't think he belongs in a GOAT discussion with Flair or any of the other people actually in that GOAT discussion.

[jdw]

I don't want to vote because of how severely biased the site is towards Flair

The place doesn't feel biased towards Flair. I would expect Flair to win a vote among long term hardcore fans. 67.53% vs 32.47% isn't terribly far off from where I'd expect it, with probably a decent number of the "Bret Voters" actually "I'm Fucking Tired Of Flair" voters.

 

One likely would get more Bret Voters on a place that's WWF-centric. That's not really the same as a place where you've got puro fans, British fans, lucha fans, grabage fans, indy fans, territory era fans, modern WWE fans, etc. Like here.

 

I mean... I don't really want to see anymore Flair matches, while I'm perfectly okay if someone puts on a Bret match at one of our wrestling get togethers. But those numbers are what I'd expect.

 

John

[NintendoLogic]

I think that generally speaking, the wrestling you're exposed to first strongly influences what you think wrestling is "supposed" to look like. I think that's especially true in conversations like this. The Flair backers tend to be ones who grew up on 80s NWA, while Bret backers more likely had their first exposure to 90s WWF. I think that explains why so many of the Bret backers are Canadian or European.

[Matt D]

I think at least half of this board have transcended that for the most part just through sheer volume of what we've watched.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think that generally speaking, the wrestling you're exposed to first strongly influences what you think wrestling is "supposed" to look like. I think that's especially true in conversations like this. The Flair backers tend to be ones who grew up on 80s NWA, while Bret backers more likely had their first exposure to 90s WWF. I think that explains why so many of the Bret backers are Canadian or European.

I could buy this sort of argument if you were talking about something like video games. Someone who grew up in the 8-bit or 16-bit era is going to think Mario 3 and Mario World are great games, someone who is a bit younger might have fonder memories of Mario 64, someone younger again who grew up in the era when FPS games dominated might be more like "platformers suck". That's a case where it can be hard to go back and appreciate things before your time. You get genuine generational splits there. Try telling an 18-year old that some 48kb ZX Spectrum game is one of the best of all time and he'll laugh in your face and think you are insane.

 

I don't believe wrestling is a case like this. Wrestling doesn't change so drastically from era to era that old matches so much are harder to get into. And I especially don't think this is something you can level at PWO posters. Not when you've got guys living in Texas spending their time watching Jim Breaks matches from the mid-70s.

 

Even if what you are saying might generally be the case outside of this forum, it's really unfair to level that charge at people who post here.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I think that generally speaking, the wrestling you're exposed to first strongly influences what you think wrestling is "supposed" to look like. I think that's especially true in conversations like this. The Flair backers tend to be ones who grew up on 80s NWA, while Bret backers more likely had their first exposure to 90s WWF. I think that explains why so many of the Bret backers are Canadian or European.

 

 

I don't believe wrestling is a case like this. Wrestling doesn't change so drastically from era to era that old matches so much are harder to get into. And I especially don't think this is something you can level at PWO posters. Not when you've got guys living in Texas spending their time watching Jim Breaks matches from the mid-70s.

 

Even if what you are saying might generally be the case outside of this forum, it's really unfair to level that charge at people who post here.

 

Maybe not here, or to an extent maybe not at DVDVR, but there are lots of other sites where everything NL said there is absolutely 100% dead on.