Bret Hart

[Danish Dynamite]

Damn. Checked it, and the Hakushi IYH1 match was close to 15 minutes... Maybe you're right... It won't hurt my ranking if him, but maybe you've got a point :-)

[Grimmas]

I never thought about that before, but that is probably pretty true. What a weird thing, not be able to work short matches well when longer matches are so amazing by him.

[Danish Dynamite]

Right? I'm really hoping someone has a bunch of great Bret Hart sprints they can point us to... Still, if I was to see a 5 minute Bret match, I'd probably just want it to be three times as long, because he's so great :-)

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

97 is probably your best bet for that kind of stuff. I wanna say he had a couple of matches with Vader and maybe one with Goldust that had to have been around 10 mins and were certainly fun.

 

Come to think of it, most of his matches with Lawler didn't go very long, but I thought they always worked well together. I think the Summerslam 93 match with Doink is under 10 mins, and that was fun. How long was the Backlund heel turn match, because that was really good. I'd guess that was probably a little longer though.

 

Pretty astute criticism though.

[Matt D]

I think a counterpoint would be someone presenting a bunch of poor short matches. I think he was just in a position to have less of those sorts of matches than other people.

[peachchaos]

Yeah, it wouldn't have made sense for Bret Hart to go out an beat chumps in less than 10 minutes. His whole shtick was that he was a mid sized sedan that anyone could drive.

[Gregor]

Bret had plenty of 10ish-minute matches. It's just that very few of them were particularly good or memorable. Some of these might have slipped over the ten-minute mark but you've got these from 1995-97:

 

vs. Owen Hart (no-DQ, RAW '95)

vs. Buddy Landel

vs. Goldust (early '96 RAW)

vs. Owen Hart (November '96 RAW)

vs. Vader (January '97 RAW)

vs. Vader (early '97 RAW, after that last one but before WrestleMania)

vs. Steve Austin (street fight)

vs. Goldust (July '97 RAW)

vs. Vader (Friday Night's Main Event)

vs. Goldust (MSG RAW)

 

The no-DQ match with Owen was good, and the street fight was definitely better than the Sasso match (albeit not really indicative of how well Bret wrestled short matches, as it was more of an angle), but the others were forgettable. The other Owen match was probably the best of the rest, and even then the run-in at the end was more exciting than anything that Bret and Owen did together there. None of the matches was bad or embarrassing - Bret's a great wrestler - but they weren't much better than competent either.

 

I don't think this proves that Bret was much worse than he looked or anything like that. It's just something he didn't do well.

[Danish Dynamite]

Agreed. But I think he could have done it, and I would have liked to see a "Hitman" character (when he was a heel) sneak some quick wins. But hey, I'm a Bret-fan, so no complaints about what we got.

[Danish Dynamite]

Gregor: cool, thanks. Those were pretty much the years I wasn't watching and had to catch up on later, so haven't seen a lot of those. Will check them out at some point.

[Loss]

I think it says something about him (not sure what) that he didn't really have very many strong one-off matches with guys he wasn't programmed with regularly. I don't think for Bret it's a matter of not delivering in short matches, although that's part of it. I think the bigger issue is that he didn't really do great things with opponents he didn't work in extended feuds. This is where I think of TV matches with Vader, Mankind, Tom Pritchard, Kwang, Crush and others. The 1-2-3 Kid match is an outlier.

[Loss]

Thinking about it more, maybe Bret is the chef that needs a few times to create a gourmet meal, but if he has to work with all new ingredients, the first time or two you might be better off just going to McDonald's.

[peachchaos]

The flip-side to the fact that Bret didn't work a lot of strong one-off matches is that when he was programmed with guys, especially guys who weren't up to snuff like Taker and Nash, he was able to build them up to where the third match in the series was usually a classic. He didn't get there with Sid or Vader, which is a shame really.

[Danish Dynamite]

I think those two sides of the argument are really valid and interesting. If his best work is the planned out or at least rehersed or "done before" matches, what can we say about his ability to adapt to change or audibles?

[Matt D]

I'm not sure about the one-off thing either. I have to look at results.

 

There's the 123-kid match, the Backlund match the night before KOTR 93 was their second match. They wrestled a night or two before in Baltimore. I was going to say Bam Bam, but I think they'd done dark matches at tapings for a bit first.

 

It'd an interesting thing to look at. One-Offs isn't exactly the same as "First time."

 

I know the Goldust match should barely count since it has two commercial breaks in ten minutes or so; and a bunch of split screen bs. You never really get to see it.

[Loss]

Yeah, I'm not thinking first-time opponents as much as I am matches he had that were not part of featured feuds. He and Bigelow had a house show series for a couple of months and even closed out a pay-per-view in 1993. The Backlund match was good and along the lines of what I'm thinking, and I'm sure we could find others. I shiver as I say this since Bret-Flair comparisons rarely go well, but I compare it to someone like Flair having strong one-off matches with guys like Pillman, Zenk, Eaton, Ace, Gilbert, etc.

[Matt D]

The nature of WWF pre-what, 95? 94? was one of long, long programs. That's one of the most frustrating thing about WWF footage. So it's a little tricky.You do get some random PTW matches, though.

 

There's also his month long run in 92 where he ran over a bunch of random guys (Kamala, Berzerker, Papa Shango, etc.) right after winning the title.

[shoe]

I like Bret and have watched easily over 100 matches of his. I see him in my top 50 like Parv. Stand him next to Arn I'd pick Arn. Arn worked harder on a consistent basis. Bret had more highs, but Arn's body of work will shock you. When the 80's Crockett set comes out Arn will be all over it. Back to Bret though his house show run just didn't light me on fire. Look at what's up on WWE network and be ready to be to see him out worked by the Bezerker.

[Sidebottom]

The flip-side to the fact that Bret didn't work a lot of strong one-off matches is that when he was programmed with guys, especially guys who weren't up to snuff like Taker and Nash, he was able to build them up to where the third match in the series was usually a classic. He didn't get there with Sid or Vader, which is a shame really.

 

I love the Mankind match from Shotgun in 97 for what it was, a 10 minute match similar to the matches Bret had with JPL which would incorporate a more wild aspect at times. Being a throw away television match in early 97, both were protected with a lame non finish though.

 

I would have loved to have seen babyface Bret work a proper programe with heel Mankind in 1996 / 1997. You have to believe they would have created a classic or two.

[Slasher]

 

 

The flip-side to the fact that Bret didn't work a lot of strong one-off matches is that when he was programmed with guys, especially guys who weren't up to snuff like Taker and Nash, he was able to build them up to where the third match in the series was usually a classic. He didn't get there with Sid or Vader, which is a shame really.

I love the Mankind match from Shotgun in 97 for what it was, a 10 minute match similar to the matches Bret had with JPL which would incorporate a more wild aspect at times. Being a throw away television match in early 97, both were protected with a lame non finish though.

 

I would have loved to have seen babyface Bret work a proper programe with heel Mankind in 1996 / 1997. You have to believe they would have created a classic or two.

I can't see that. Mankind's strength was his bumping and selling. I don't think Bret had enough of a high end kind of offense to highlight Foley. At least with Shawn he could fly all over the place and attack Mankind that way. What is Bret gonna do? Wear him down? Well maybe we would see more of the "stab fork in the affected area" kinda psychotic selling from limbwork.

[GOTNW]

I like Bret but would much rather discuss stoicism in american wrestling than his work, Ditch had a great piece on why he doesn't think Bret is an elite worker on his old board, he won't rank for me, I found most of his big matches overrated and his work doesn't particularly captivate me.

[JerryvonKramer]

You can name 100 better workers than Bret Hart?

[GOTNW]

I've also watched over 2000 wrestling matches this year(don't call me out Dylan or someone who did like 5X of that), a significant portion of which was focused on exploring new wrestlers. I thought Bret's matches vs. Austin (Wrestlemania edition), Owen (Wrestlemania edition) and DBS were great but I'll be leaving off plenty of people whom I both enjoy more and have a deeper resume of great matches. I think he also benefits a lot from being a WWE main eventer and one whose whole gimmick was basically "great wrestler".

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm just interested to know what happens when you get 70 deep, to see what sort of guys you are putting over Bret and why. Not saying impossible, just interested.

[GOTNW]

I'll publish my unranked proto-list in a few weeks for your amusement once I'm done with college stuff.

[Sidebottom]

 

 

The flip-side to the fact that Bret didn't work a lot of strong one-off matches is that when he was programmed with guys, especially guys who weren't up to snuff like Taker and Nash, he was able to build them up to where the third match in the series was usually a classic. He didn't get there with Sid or Vader, which is a shame really.

I love the Mankind match from Shotgun in 97 for what it was, a 10 minute match similar to the matches Bret had with JPL which would incorporate a more wild aspect at times. Being a throw away television match in early 97, both were protected with a lame non finish though.

 

I would have loved to have seen babyface Bret work a proper programe with heel Mankind in 1996 / 1997. You have to believe they would have created a classic or two.

I can't see that. Mankind's strength was his bumping and selling. I don't think Bret had enough of a high end kind of offense to highlight Foley. At least with Shawn he could fly all over the place and attack Mankind that way. What is Bret gonna do? Wear him down? Well maybe we would see more of the "stab fork in the affected area" kinda psychotic selling from limbwork.

 

 

You don't think Bret delivered high end offence? If Bret worked a style similar to the above quoted matches, coupled with a meanness that we saw against, say Jerry Lawler in 1993 Summerslam against 1996 Mankind, I have to believe they would have created magic given a decent platform. As I said, the 1997 match was good fun for what it was, just imagine the dial turned up.