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.