Bret Hart

[Grimmas]

I did rate the 100 best Bret Hart matches a few years ago: 

https://prowrestlingsuperblog.wordpress.com/category/lists/top-100-bret-hart-matches/

[Mantaur Rodeo Clown]

I remember quite clearly getting the 2005 Bret Hart DVD and it opening my eyes to the world of wrestling and what it could be. One of the best documentaries they ever did. Then I turned 10 years old.

I joke, but it encapsulates my experience, where Bret Hart's reputation as the best technical worker blah blah blah was very much simply clever marketing by Vince and himself. Was he better than Steve Keirn and Matt Borne and the other guys he was working? Sure. But was he really that much better than Hennig, Flair, Austin and the rest of the guys featured in his most lauded matches? I'm not so sure.

He was a very good wrestler, who was put in a prominent position to have good matches by US standards. But outside of his genuinely fantastic peak in the 90s, he's all around pretty dull. He falls back on his five moves of doom an awful lot. Not to say that many other top ten candidates also do not, but it always felt particularly egregious from Bret because of his lack of emotion and single-minded persona in the ring. 

It is of course, a tragedy he was forced to retire so early, and would have still had a lot to offer on a return to WWE.

 

 

[club]

Bret will land somewhere in my top 30. 91-97, fantastic peak years. Not a great deal to shout about before that. I'm trying to figure out how he compares to wrestlers with similar patterns like Chigusa Nagayo, Jaguar Yokota, Atsushi Onita, Rick Martel or Yoshihiro Takayama.

Looking back I realise Bret was also my gateway into this kind of fandom. Watching as a kid he was the first guy where I got a sense that in the ring he was clearly better than everyone around him.

[Control21]

As I mentioned earlier, Bret ended up grabbing the #1 spot on my ballot after a close race with Volk. Here's the write-up I did when I submitted my ballot:

 

Quote

Bret Hart had a fundamental quality in the ring that was undeniable from the beginning of his career. While it took a few years for him to start coming into his own, once he got there, it was like a train that couldn’t be stopped. He just kept getting better and better, not only as a tag team wrestler, but as a singles wrestler as well. Bret Hart had close competition from Volk Han for the #1 spot, and what put him over the top was his ability to make the WWF feel “real” in the context of the style at the time. He wasn’t Akira Maeda or anything, but when American wrestling was feeling increasingly cartoonish and superfluous, Bret was able to mold an audience around the idea that a match could feel “real” in the sense of struggle, emotion, and personal stake while not going against the grain too much (which was probably needed to keep himself at the top of the card). Bret’s ability to do this week in and week out, especially from 1991 to 1997, is remarkable.

I fell in love with him as a kid, and that love and belief that he is absolutely the best there ever was never went away despite my evolving tastes in wrestling, especially for wrestling that was even more realistic than what Bret had in mind. Bret Hart has remained the standard I have measured everyone else against. His matches continue to resonate with me, not only for their technical craft, but for the emotional weight he brought to the ring. To me, Bret’s legacy as a wrestler and storyteller has only become more impressive in hindsight. I suppose the big ding against Bret would be his post-WWF run, but I don't hold that against him too much, and even in WCW, he still managed to find ways to turn shit into diamonds.

 

[club]

Great write up. Encapsulates what made him special in the context of 90s WWF.

[MoS]

Cross-posting from the GWE reaction thread:

Austin > Bret though and I agree with the rankings in that regard. I had Bret at 44. Bret was tremendous, and his greatest strength was how good he executed both his offence and how he bumped, and how "correctly" he sold. He truly was the Excellence of Execution. It's funny that we now (correctly) praise him for his ability to make everything logical and believable, when Bret's original appeal was that he was an uber-workrate guy with a lot of moves. By itself, "making everything look logical" would never have been enough for Meltzer to put his name for the inaugural hall of fame. If you follow @Loss's invaluable playlists, you would know that Meltzer in the 80s would get letters from readers talking about how 10 years before, the wrestlers did not do as many moves as Bret Hart does, but they made everyone believe and heightened the drama in their matches in a way Bret did not do, and at that time they were absolutely right, because the Hart Foundation are not particularly great in my opinion.

He became so much better and kept improving in fact till 1997, his peak year ever in the ring imo, but he could never heighten the drama in his matches by his own work the way Austin could; he needed an opponent or a stage to truly bring that out of him. Austin was someone you could put in the main event with the idea that you could ultimately book him to have a stadium match with the right opponent; Bret was someone you could choose to safely put in a major spot/main event of a booked stadium match or against a really hot guy needing a hot main event program, knowing that he would rise to the occasion. Bret was mechanically much better than Austin, far better punches and kicks, could sell more "correctly" and was better at long-term selling in the match, but he was not as good at keeping the crowd both sympathetic while also thinking he is a complete badass and losing their shit for his offence. I re-watched some of his major face performances - Perfect Summerslam 1991, Shawn Survivor Series 1992, Razor Rumble 1993, and while the Perfect match was a great, great match and the other two were good-very good, I never felt he truly reached all-time heights in any of them as a babyface In contrast, the Summerslam match with Davey felt much better than I was expecting going in, partly because Bret is great shit-talking the Brits while beating up Davey. I have to say that his work in Canada in 1997 is an exception in that regard. His 1997 work is definitely all-time. 

Bret's platonic ideal is Misawa whom I had at 15, and it is a bit silly that Misawa ranked below Bret, just like how it is silly that Hansen ranked below Austin. I know most people voted for Kobashi above Misawa, but Misawa was my highest ranked pillar (my highest ranked Japanese man was Jumbo at 5, and it is sad he fell, he was better at many different styles), and part of it is because of how good he was at, first, conveying his story/narrative first during his arc to unseat Jumbo, and then being the ace who kept taking on a bunch of challengers a bunch of times and keeping them at bay until finally passing the torch to Kobashi in 2003. Many have said it, but he truly is the best ace ever. Misawa was the best at conveying accumulated damage and long-term selling, he was the best at pacing his matches, he was the best at having his matches with the same opponent escalate and convey an overarching narrative. Kobashi was more flamboyant and perhaps jumped at the screen more, and it was funny to read Meltz's obituary of Misawa where he said "Kobashi was more popular and Kawada was a better wrestler but Misawa was always the top guy simply because Baba said so" as if even All-Japan fans would let someone be at the top for so many years (until all of them got stale tbh) just because Baba told them to. Misawa's connection with the fans was unshakeable and the most special, because he could be tremendous at both making challengers look great and also imposing his own authority on them at the end. Bret was tremendous at the former, not so much at the latter. It would also be wrong to say Misawa did not have charisma; he had a shit-ton of charisma, just a different kind, much like Bruno. Kobashi's work of escalation in his matches and subsequent evolution of his work as he progressed up the card was not as good at Misawa's imo.