Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair

[Jimmy Redman]

And I think everyone is missing Dylan's point.

[jdw]

I don't think they are.

 

None of the people Dylan mentioned suffered a stroke, or anything remotely like it. No one thinks about Bret-Vince as having anything to do with Bret's work because he was a handicapped person in there.

 

As far as trying to read-between-the-lines comp to the years of Flair being an old shitty worker*, I don't think he was working in there as a post-stoke person. He was just old and shitty, and kept working despite being old and pathetic. It's not really analogous to Bret. It's closer to watching the Bushwackers work the indy circuit... Nostalgia stuff.

 

* Lots of hardcore fans of Flair don't think he was shitty when old, and you'd often get the "better than half the roster" stuff to gloss over Flair being shitty.

 

John

[WingedEagle]

I don't think they are.

 

None of the people Dylan mentioned suffered a stroke, or anything remotely like it. No one thinks about Bret-Vince as having anything to do with Bret's work because he was a handicapped person in there.

This. Might as well ding Magnum for his work at the Crockett Cup not living up to the I Quit standards.

[JerryvonKramer]

A little piece of me dies every time this thread is rezzed.

[Jimmy Redman]

I don't think they are.

He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean that Dylan's point was to parody and possibly mock the post that NL made in the Rey thread about a single instance of boos affecting his legacy.

[NintendoLogic]

If that was Dylan's best shot, consider me unimpressed.

[Dylan Waco]

I generally just consider you a boring troll, but there was a real point I was trying to illustrate, namely the fact that not all circumstances are created equal, and pointing to an obviously unique situation near the end of someones career as an indicator of someone's historic standing in a certain role strikes me as unfair at best. Or boring trolling at worst.

[NintendoLogic]

There is a morsel of an argument worth responding to there, but I have no real desire to reward such childish vitriol with a substantive response.

[WingedEagle]

There is a morsel of an argument worth responding to there, but I have no real desire to reward such childish vitriol with a substantive response.

YES! YES! YES!

[Dylan Waco]

There is a morsel of an argument worth responding to there, but I have no real desire to reward such childish vitriol with a substantive response.

Yes, I am aware of your gimmick

[jdw]

I don't think they are.

He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean that Dylan's point was to parody and possibly mock the post that NL made in the Rey thread about a single instance of boos affecting his legacy.

 

Check. Didn't see the Rey thread.

[NintendoLogic]

There is a morsel of an argument worth responding to there, but I have no real desire to reward such childish vitriol with a substantive response.

Yes, I am aware of your gimmick

 

OK, dude.

[Matt D]

We can't handle arguments over threads. Especially when they end up here of all notes.

[khawk20]

Flair wrestling and execution of moves and spots looks effortless while being smooth and subtle. Bret's wrestling and execution of moves looks effortless with an "in-your-face" smoothness to it. I say this thinking not just of their signature spots, but their presentation as a whole. It's one of the things that initially attracted me to their matches throughout their career.

 

The smoothness of their wrestling, although presented differently, is the common factor. Especially/mostly from their "prime" years. My brain is inclined to throw out everything after 2000-ish when making this comparison...they were both different guys by then, obviously.

[Sidebottom]

RE the Vince match, yes it was totally abysmal. The psychology of seeing a 64 year old man get beaten the shit out of, outnumbered vastly by a whole family and submitted half way through a card was always going to be a clanger. Add to that Bret legally couldn't take bumps (or smartly do so), and it was always destined to be shit. Nobody in their right mind was shocked it was shit, but not many could rightfully predict how shit. With a lot of smoke and mirrors, it could have been passable at best, but there you have it.

 

The smarter thing to do would have been giving Bret a hot tag to finish up in a Cena / Hart vs Batista / Vince match., especially if Bret were able to do the moves he did in his MSG house show appearance months later. But again, there you have it.

 

But no, I don't think the match takes away from Bret's legacy. If he came to the ring in his Sgt Pepper jacket, pink shades and singlet, perhaps. But this was most certainly a cameo appearance disguised as a match when discussing the Hitman's career, for all purposes.

[slabinski611]

I like Bret a ton but I am going with Flair. Both from an in ring standpoint, as well as on the mic and just the whole flashy persona I would take over Bret.

 

When I watch a Bret match, I don't find myself getting invested in the match the way I do a Flair match. I can appreciate the WM10 match for being a great match but I don't connect with it the way I do with Flair/Funk. The exceptions for me are the two Austin matches and the Piper match. That has more to do with the Austin/Piper characters than Bret.

 

If you take Bret Harts best opponents/matches it would be something like:

 

vs Austin SS/WM

vs Davey Boy SS/IYH

vs OWEN WM

vs PIPER WM

vs PERFECT SS/KOTR

 

That's 8 matches vs 5 opponents. By comparison here is some of Flairs competition

 

vs STEAMBOAT 89series

VS FUNK GAB/COTC

VS WINDHAM BOTB/WORLDWIDE

VS LUGER STARCADE88/WRESTLEWAR90

VS VONERIC 8/82,12/82

 

While you can argue that it's no fault of Bret that he didn't have the deep pool of talent to face like Flair did but it is what it is.

 

Now here is where I think Flair wins in a landslide. If Bret Hart spent his whole career in his 1997 heel character as the bitter veteran wrestler who watched his fans turn on them then this would be a much harder debate. However, pre 97 Bret sucked on the mic imo. Even after Flair was washed up in the ring, he could deliver on promos. I'll take Flair with the suits,the limos, the catchphrases, even the comedy like the elbowdrops on the jacket over any Bret Hart babyface promo.

 

I don't think this thread should be about what kind of match Bret had against Vince or why Flair was still wrestling in 2006. It should be about examining their entire careers, not just the end of their careers.

[Blazer]

Bret Hart was a much better wrestler than Flair. Unfortunately the hype surrounding Flair skews opinions. Flair had better promos than Bret, but compare the movesets of the two guys and what they were capable of in the ring. Bret wins hands down. Find the December 95 IYH with Bret vs. Bulldog. Tell me if Flair could have carried DBS thru a match like that.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think I would point to Bret's carrying ability as an indicator that he was better than Flair. Also I think that match is an example of DBS showing up, as opposed to the SS 92 match. Also not sure what moveset has to do with the big picture, and I'm not entirely sure prime Bret even had a better/more varied moveset than prime Ric

[JerryvonKramer]

Bret Hart was a much better wrestler than Flair. Unfortunately the hype surrounding Flair skews opinions. Flair had better promos than Bret, but compare the movesets of the two guys and what they were capable of in the ring. Bret wins hands down. Find the December 95 IYH with Bret vs. Bulldog. Tell me if Flair could have carried DBS thru a match like that.

Oh FFS, get a clue.

 

Watch the entire 1980s. Now tell me Bret could have had a decade like that. Watch 1985. Now tell me Bret could have had a year like that.

 

I hate this thread.

 

Flair has so many carry jobs it is unreal. The fact that you've made this post reveals simply that you either don't know about them or haven't seen them.

[JerryvonKramer]

It's also fairly clear that your "moveset" argument is based mainly on limited older Flair since I think Flair demonstrably used a wider range of moves than Bret.

 

What is cool about Flair if you watch ENOUGH of him is that his arsenal is incredibly deep, but he only busts certain moves out once in a while.

 

Every match you'll get:

 

Snap mare, knee drop, chop block, shinbreaker, vertical or delayed vertical.

 

But sometimes you'll get ...

 

The double under-arm / butterfly suplex is often reserved for special occassions. He has a gutwrench we don't see every match. He has a piledriver he doesn't always use. He does a gutwrench, a german, a backbreaker -- but we might not see them for 5-10 matches.

 

I think Bret stuck to a narrower range of moves and didn't have this "deep arsenal". Though I'd be interested to see if someone could prove that wrong.

 

 

I've seen dozens upon dozens of Flair matches now and he still occassionally surprises me with something I've not seen before.

 

I bet if you dug into late 70s Flair, there'd be even more MOVEZ in there.

[goc]

I've seen Flair do some nasty looking double stomps in the 80s that weren't really a part of his "regular move set" but I've seen them more than once. But arguing over who does more moves is really not much of an indicator of "who is a better wrestler" to me.

[JerryvonKramer]

How about #no of carry jobs or #ability to lay out a match on a grided map, or any of the other things some of the Bret advocates have tried pulling out of their asses?

 

Sorry, but the sheer laziness of some of these arguments does piss me off. Especially when there's a 20+ page thread in which Loss, myself and others have laid out exactly why Flair is great, pointed to specific matches and done all that work only for someone like Blazer to come in as if none of it happened pointing to an In Your House match from 1995 as evidence of anything. Nevermind, I'll go back to pretending this thread doesn't exist. Would love it to be locked and archived.

[Sidebottom]

Would love it to be locked and archived.

 

Nah, it deserves to hang around forever. Like a bad smell you kind of really like.

 

It's such a subjective argument Jerry, I wouldn't get worked up about it mate. To me this thread often reads that a lot of people are basing their opinions on 90's Bret vs 90's Flair, not 80's Flair. I think its safe to say there are still a number of people out there who haven't seen a lot of Flair in his prime.

 

Regardless, I'm still pro Bret in this argument. Again, it's subjective, and I just prefer his work

[cheapshot]

80's Flair (peak of career) was arguably the best worker in the world in the 80's.

 

90's Bret (peak of career) wasn't even the best worker in the company he was in.

 

That's the massive difference for me.

[Loss]

I will say that if Flair would have peaked in Bret's era and Bret would have peaked in Flair's era, just because of the changing landscape, we'd likely be having a very different conversation. I'm not sure if we'd get the creative and motivated pay-per-view Bret Hart in the territories defending the NWA title, or if he'd perform his normal half-speed match every night that was just enough to get by like he did on most WWF house shows. Bret seems like a guy who liked to have a general layout in advance where Flair wanted to work completely on the fly, which would have been difficult in a 90s setting. It's hard to say how each guy would have adapted.

 

It's hard to imagine Flair shining in matches that are meticulously planned in advance as big show WWF stuff typically was, but it's even harder for me to imagine Bret going in the ring with full freedom to just stay out there until the match was where he wanted it, regardless of how much time they're taking. Hell, Flair and Steamboat went into matches sometimes without a finish even worked out in advance except just a general idea of who would go over. I think I remember stories of Steamboat getting heat for going long on WWF house shows against Haku because he felt like the match hadn't reached a crescendo yet. I think Flair would have struggled with the mindset that your goal in every single match isn't to tear the house down and steal the show.

 

It's hard to see Bret thriving in that environment, but it's possible he could have been motivated by having so much creative freedom. Are there examples of Bret matches that have fallen off the rails completely from what was planned where he had to think on his feet and go in a different direction that I'm forgetting?