Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2015 20:47:08 GMT -5
I have to question the judgment of anyone who can't appreciate how good Bret was. I'm not a huge Bret Hart fan. I don't think he's in the top 5 of all time. I don't think all of his matches are masterpieces. Yet, I can't be so blind as to not see how good he was. Bret's offense was absolutely 100% on point. Everything he did looked real and looked like it hurt, but yet he was one of the safest guys to work with. Bret was also one of the best at selling. I'm not talking about dramatic overselling like HBK or Mr. Perfect - while entertaining, it doesn't compare to what Bret could do, because Bret made everything look real. I've often said that if I wanted to try to convince someone that pro wrestling matches were real fights, I would show them a Bret Hart match. People make fun of him because he took wrestling too seriously, but the fact that he took wrestling so seriously translated into his work, which was excellent. I'm ok with people not liking him, thinking he's boring... whatever, because he's not out there posing or doing flips or spamming his finisher. That's fine, but I cannot understand any fan over the age of 15 who can't at least appreciate his body of work. The thing is, as true as all this is, the main issue with Bret I think is that he wasn't really a guy who made great matches happen - he was a guy who had great matches with great talents. He wasn't much of a carrier in most cases. Bret for me is like Rey Mysterio, in that he'll rise to an occasion but won't create one. And any one of us can appreciate the talent required to have a really tight punch or kick or sell, but that's the building blocks of a great match, not the high spots. I don't agree with this, at all. Bulldog never had a match close to as good as the one with Bret at Summerslam. Nowhere close. Owen never had a match with anyone that was as good as his matches with Bret. Diesel has his best matches with Bret. Bret gave Isaac freakin Yankem his first, and only good, match. He dragged 90s Jerry Lawler to exciting matches. The title match with 1-2-3 Kid, Waltman's universally praised as worker, but can you name a better match he had? And that legendary carry-job he did with Tom Magee, which I would love to see surface one day. Bret's a carrier if there ever was one. He's an absolute mastermind at putting a match together and creating drama.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2015 21:35:14 GMT -5
Playing devils advocate here. Let me bring a solid point/fact. When signed and the top guy in WWE. They almost went out of business. As soon as he leaves the WWE goes to new heights. WCW starts going down the tubes and is eventually sold off. So this love for him must come from people who didn't have tv, ppv, or ability to buy a ticket to a show, because he is a black hole when it comes to drawing and keeping companies a float. Of all the many factors to consider, why would you single out Bret as the reason why WWE "almost" went out of business and his leaving as the reason they recovered? You don't have to love Bret to recognize this as pure misinformation. You just need to be slightly educated. There's no way that one single performer could result in either of those companies going out of business. Things were going great for WCW until Bret showed up. FACT. Things were going alright in 90-92 WWE. FACT Bret got to WCW and things went downhill. FACT Bret lead the WWF from 93-97 when things were at its lowest. FACT Blame whoever you want but to not point a finger at Bret Hart is just wrong. Bret's big singles push came when business was already in rapid decline for WWE. The boom was long over. Hulk Hogan himself was not drawing nearly what he had a few years before, so you can't blame any of that on Bret. If anything, Bret was saddled with the dubious honor of trying to keep WWE relevant during a recession in the business that NO ONE could have prevented. Vince even de-pushed Bret to give Diesel and HBK and opportunity to be the faces of the company, but Bret remained the most popular. As for WCW, the first nails had already been hammered in their coffin before Bret signed on. The Turner/Time Warner merger had occurred and Ted Turner was losing control of his empire. After bumbling their way through 2001, the network decided they had no vision for the WCW brand and no interest in investing in something they had no idea what to do with, so they sold the intellectual property. None of this had anything to do with Bret.
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Post by Kash Flagg on Feb 18, 2015 22:45:57 GMT -5
Someone really hates Bret Hart.
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Squirrel Master
Hank Scorpio
"Then the Squirrel Master came out of left field and told me I'm his bitch!"
Posts: 6,656
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Post by Squirrel Master on Feb 18, 2015 22:57:38 GMT -5
Back in 1985, when I was 20 years old I was in the bowels of Madison Square Garden at a bank of pay phones during a WWF house show. At the first phone, perhaps a dozen phones away from me was this tough guy with his black eye who was staring at me hard as he spoke into the phone. I had no idea who he was. I thought to myself "who is this tough guy" when I realized he was actually digging my Road Warriors tee shirt. He motioned at my shirt and shot me a thumbs up. Thirty minutes later, "Hitman" Bret Hart was introduced to the MSG faithful and when he removed his sunglasses I recognized him as the guy with the shiner from before. Bret went to a time limit draw with Dynamite Kid in a superb singles match. The rest as they say is history. I've been a fan of his from that moment forward.
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NOwave
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,735
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Post by NOwave on Feb 18, 2015 23:03:54 GMT -5
Bret Hart is one of those guys who inspires great admiration…or leaves you cold. I’m still not sure how to categorize myself. When Bret was at his peak, I watched NWA/WCW on TBS mostly, because I’d never been a WWF fan. In fact, I thought WWF was killing the business I loved. (I guess we could still argue that today)
Having watched Bret extensively since then,and having read his book, my thoughts are: 1) He’s a great technician. His moves are crisp and smooth. He’s a very good storyteller in the ring. 2) He was never a great talker. He did improve over time. (see his “El Dandy” promo in WCW-very good) But at his WWF peak he was…mediocre. He couldn’t hold a candle to Hogan, Savage, Flair, Dusty, Austin, Rock or most of the other “greats” 3) He was a mark for himself and never seemed to get the big picture in the business. He refused to lose in Canada? How ridiculous was that? That was the equivalent of Ric Flair refusing to lose in an old NWA stronghold, like the entire American Southeast. He just comes across as so self-involved. He honestly seemed to be more affected by Montreal than by Owen’s death.
Overall, I still put him in my Top 20 all-time wrestlers. (somewhere between 10-20) I don’t go out of my way to watch a Bret Hart match, in the way that i do to see a Ric Flair promo.
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tms
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,901
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Post by tms on Feb 18, 2015 23:12:53 GMT -5
Things were going great for WCW until Bret showed up. FACT. Things were going alright in 90-92 WWE. FACT Bret got to WCW and things went downhill. FACT Bret lead the WWF from 93-97 when things were at its lowest. FACT Blame whoever you want but to not point a finger at Bret Hart is just wrong. That's right! It's 100% Bret's fault that the shine was taken off wrestling by the drug and steroid scandals erupting before he got near the top and their crooked doctor of choice naming names, destroying Hulk Hogan's clean and wholesome superman image, heck, Bret likely injected Hulk Hogan himself to frame the Hulkster. It's Bret's fault that Vince pissed away a tonne of money on the WBF and could no longer afford to keep on veteran talents and totally Bret's fault that Warrior underperformed, Ric Flair underperformed and the company was on the downward slide. It's 100% Bret's fault that the WWF's Memphis style booking drove the audience away and that people got tired of WWF programming being largely jobber squash matches featuring 'name' talents like the Smoking Gunns and Damien Demento. Buyrates were declining before Bret got near the top of the card so yeah, that's all on Bret, not sure how, but it must be true because it looks that way if you ignore EVERYTHING going on while he was at the company. It's totally 100% Bret's fault that WCW completely ****ed up Sting's big moment at Starrcade 1997 and had no plans other than more NWO. Bret's fault that Hogan was impossible to book because of creative control leading to disasters like the fingerpoke of doom and Bret's fault that Bischoff was giving Hogan the power of veto over other people's booking. Bret was entirely to blame for the fact that they didn't use him for anything major and kept flipping him from face to heel until he lost all of the momentum he came into the company with. It's Bret's fault that Bischoff spent money like there's no tomorrow, making WCW incredibly topheavy and then tried to right the ship by destroying the undercard and giving away WWF results. Bret was clearly a huge fan of Kevin Nash as he got on so famously with the Kliq and must have worked to get him the head booker's role, and he was a massive fan of the edgy for the sake of edgy and often nonsensical WWF booking spearheaded by Vince Russo so I'm sure he personally brought him into WCW where he went on to obliterate the leftover goodwill from the 1996-97 period and turn the cruiserweight division into a joke. I also heard Bret was the guy who put Jamie Kellner in charge of TNT, they were going to go with a wrestling fan but Bret talked them out of it just because he could. Damn that Bret, damn him to heck. Got dayum. This should go in the dictionary as an example for the word "rebuttal."
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Feb 18, 2015 23:13:01 GMT -5
I was never a huge fan. He's great, don't get me wrong, but he'd never crack say my top ten favorites or anything. But if you wanted to make a comparison, sports wise, he'd be like a five tool guy in baseball. The guy really could do just about everything at least well.
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Post by Tiger Millionaire on Feb 18, 2015 23:15:29 GMT -5
I don't think anything is ever 100% anyone's fault, whether it be Bret or Hulk.
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WWHHHD
Unicron
Break it down for a 5 second pose!
Posts: 3,467
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Post by WWHHHD on Feb 18, 2015 23:19:14 GMT -5
Someone really hates Bret Hart. I do not. I just don't get in the love fest. My comments were taken the wrong way. Sure the guy isn't 100% to blame, but you guys dissolve him of all blame. A finger needs to be pointed at him. Especially in the WWE! If he was so great (like he will tell us he is) why couldn't he take the company to higher levels? Why wasn't he as big as Hogan, Warrior, Flair? Why were they always looking for the next guy over Bret? It's like Bret has 6 or 7 accounts on this board, blaming everyone else for him coming up short, but he will make us believe he was god himself.
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Post by Kash Flagg on Feb 18, 2015 23:20:06 GMT -5
Back in 1985, when I was 20 years old I was in the bowels of Madison Square Garden at a bank of pay phones during a WWF house show. At the first phone, perhaps a dozen phones away from me was this tough guy with his black eye who was staring at me hard as he spoke into the phone. I had no idea who he was. I thought to myself "who is this tough guy" when I realized he was actually digging my Road Warriors tee shirt. He motioned at my shirt and shot me a thumbs up. Thirty minutes later, "Hitman" Bret Hart was introduced to the MSG faithful and when he removed his sunglasses I recognized him as the guy with the shiner from before. Bret went to a time limit draw with Dynamite Kid in a superb singles match. The rest as they say is history. I've been a fan of his from that moment forward. then when the Road Warriors came to the WWF, Bret was there. They were never as popular. Coincidence? I think not.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Feb 18, 2015 23:21:38 GMT -5
FACT: WWF didn't end the losing streak in the ratings until Xpac debuted. So, X-pac was the reason WCW was on top and why WWF eventually won. Correlation does not equal causation To be fair, he did rip ass on the World Wrestling Federation. It wasn't until his ass rippin ways that the tide turned. Plus, after he arrived, so did the DX tank. I'm sure we all know how important that was in the annals of history.
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Post by Tiger Millionaire on Feb 18, 2015 23:22:29 GMT -5
I always feel like the Bret backlash is because of some many people want to put the blame on people like Hogan for politicking or Nash for being the lowest drawing WWF champ in history, but Bret has always been a victim of circumstances. Bret can say Hogan had veto power over his angles or whatever, but he was not as good in WCW. Alot of circumstances go into it, but to absolve Bret completely is why I think we have this tit for tat.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Feb 18, 2015 23:23:03 GMT -5
Back in 1985, when I was 20 years old I was in the bowels of Madison Square Garden at a bank of pay phones during a WWF house show. At the first phone, perhaps a dozen phones away from me was this tough guy with his black eye who was staring at me hard as he spoke into the phone. I had no idea who he was. I thought to myself "who is this tough guy" when I realized he was actually digging my Road Warriors tee shirt. He motioned at my shirt and shot me a thumbs up. Thirty minutes later, "Hitman" Bret Hart was introduced to the MSG faithful and when he removed his sunglasses I recognized him as the guy with the shiner from before. Bret went to a time limit draw with Dynamite Kid in a superb singles match. The rest as they say is history. I've been a fan of his from that moment forward. then when the Road Warriors came to the WWF, Bret was there. They were never as popular. Coincidence? I think not. You can't prove Bret Hart wasn't behind the grassy knoll. Lookit his nickname: The Hitman. I rest my case. Bret Hart killed JFK.
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WWHHHD
Unicron
Break it down for a 5 second pose!
Posts: 3,467
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Post by WWHHHD on Feb 18, 2015 23:26:37 GMT -5
I always feel like the Bret backlash is because of some many people want to put the blame on people like Hogan for politicking or Nash for being the lowest drawing WWF champ in history, but Bret has always been a victim of circumstances. Bret can say Hogan had veto power over his angles or whatever, but he was not as good in WCW. Alot of circumstances go into it, but to absolve Bret completely is why I think we have this tit for tat. Bret was the victim of circumstances. Yeah, his circumstances was not getting over as the top guy ever like an Austin, Rock, Cena, or Hogan did.
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Post by Kash Flagg on Feb 18, 2015 23:26:38 GMT -5
Someone really hates Bret Hart. I do not. I just don't get in the love fest. My comments were taken the wrong way. Sure the guy isn't 100% to blame, but you guys dissolve him of all blame. A finger needs to be pointed at him. Especially in the WWE! If he was so great (like he will tell us he is) why couldn't he take the company to higher levels? Why wasn't he as big as Hogan, Warrior, Flair? Why were they always looking for the next guy over Bret? It's like Bret has 6 or 7 accounts on this board, blaming everyone else for him coming up short, but he will make us believe he was god himself. Sure he's to blame for some things like his part in the screwjob, but presenting what may have been one of the worst arguments ever didn't help you. Saying Bret was the reason WCW went under is beyond ridiculous. Ignoring Bischoff's spending, Russo's booking, and Time Warner not wanting wrestling period MIGHT have something to do with it. If you wanna blame wrestlers, Hogan and Nash had far more blame for WCW's troubles than Bret.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Feb 18, 2015 23:28:16 GMT -5
Bret Hart contains 8 letters.
The Devil contains 8 letters.
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Post by Tiger Millionaire on Feb 18, 2015 23:28:41 GMT -5
I always feel like the Bret backlash is because of some many people want to put the blame on people like Hogan for politicking or Nash for being the lowest drawing WWF champ in history, but Bret has always been a victim of circumstances. Bret can say Hogan had veto power over his angles or whatever, but he was not as good in WCW. Alot of circumstances go into it, but to absolve Bret completely is why I think we have this tit for tat. Bret was the victim of circumstances. Yeah, his circumstances was not getting over as the top guy ever like an Austin, Rock, Cena, or Hogan did. He was booked like shit in WCW.
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WWHHHD
Unicron
Break it down for a 5 second pose!
Posts: 3,467
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Post by WWHHHD on Feb 18, 2015 23:31:19 GMT -5
I do not. I just don't get in the love fest. My comments were taken the wrong way. Sure the guy isn't 100% to blame, but you guys dissolve him of all blame. A finger needs to be pointed at him. Especially in the WWE! If he was so great (like he will tell us he is) why couldn't he take the company to higher levels? Why wasn't he as big as Hogan, Warrior, Flair? Why were they always looking for the next guy over Bret? It's like Bret has 6 or 7 accounts on this board, blaming everyone else for him coming up short, but he will make us believe he was god himself. Sure he's to blame for some things like his part in the screwjob, but presenting what may have been one of the worst arguments ever didn't help you. Saying Bret was the reason WCW went under is beyond ridiculous. Ignoring Bischoff's spending, Russo's booking, and Time Warner not wanting wrestling period MIGHT have something to do with it. If you wanna blame wrestlers, Hogan and Nash had far more blame for WCW's troubles than Bret. Well maybe Bret is to blame more then Hogan and Nash. With him coming in they all restructured their contracts to be at that Bret Hart pay level. While doing that the more money they were getting the more power they can wield. So in a sense Bret forced the executives hands to pay Hogan, Nash, and Hall more $$$ thus giving them a larger voice then before due to the $$$ they were demanding. Just some food for thought.
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Post by Kash Flagg on Feb 18, 2015 23:32:01 GMT -5
I just think you give Bret way too much credit for stuff. I don't really care about him one way or another.
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Johnny B. Decent
Patti Mayonnaise
Had one once
Everybody's Favorite Arizonian.
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Post by Johnny B. Decent on Feb 18, 2015 23:34:23 GMT -5
I always feel like the Bret backlash is because of some many people want to put the blame on people like Hogan for politicking or Nash for being the lowest drawing WWF champ in history, but Bret has always been a victim of circumstances. Bret can say Hogan had veto power over his angles or whatever, but he was not as good in WCW. Alot of circumstances go into it, but to absolve Bret completely is why I think we have this tit for tat. Bret was the victim of circumstances. Yeah, his circumstances was not getting over as the top guy ever like an Austin, Rock, Cena, or Hogan did. And neither was "Made in the USA" Lex Luger, Diesel, Boyhood Dream Shawn Michaels or anyone else Vince tried to make as DA TOP GUY from 1993-1997.
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