The 50 Greatest Wrestlers Of The Last 50 Years: Bret Hart Enters The List

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#17 Bret Hart

A wrestler whose longevity and durability seems to fly under the radar in the scope of the rest of his career achievements, Bret Hart is almost universally recognized as being one of the finest technical wrestlers and one of the steadiest main event talents in wrestling history. A second generation wrestler who seemed destined for greatness from the moment he stepped into the ring, Hart became the most consistent wrestler in North America during the 1990s. Hart’s beginnings have been well-documented, he grew up as the eighth of twelve children and under the stern discipline of his father, Stu, and his mother, Helen, who together ran the sprawling Stampede Wrestling territory which worked all of Western Canada and some spots in the United States. From a young age Hart was involved in the territory, beginning as a small child selling programs outside of the arena. In high school he competed in amateur wrestling and became one of the better wrestlers in Canada before eventually beginning his professional career in 1978. Similar to Dory Funk Jr. Hart immediately became a popular wrestler in Calgary because of his family history. Since Hart’s older brothers were wrestlers he began teaming with them, mostly with his brothers Keith in Bruce. Early in his career he and his oldest brother Smith ventured to Puerto Rico to work in Capital Sports Promotions where Hart learned the hard way wrestling in some of the most uncomfortable conditions in the business. He would capture his first title as a tag team with Keith, winning the Stampede Wrestling International Tag Team Championships in November of 1978. He would hold the title five times in total, four times with Keith and once with Leo Burke. In June of 1978, a new era began in Stampede Wrestling and a theme would develop, one that would trickle into every other promotion in the world and eventually redefine professional wrestling as we know it. The Dynamite Kid, an undersized wrestler from England came to Stampede Wrestling and won the British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Championship. Despite his small stature, Dynamite impressed the crowd with his technical brilliance and athleticism, wrestling at a faster pace than ever before seen on a consistent basis in the mostly plodding world of wrestling in the United States and Canada. A lot of astute observers, including Bret Hart, claim that Dynamite is the best wrestler they have ever seen and the average quality of his matches attest to that. The intense Dynamite became a staple for Stampede Wrestling and as Bret Hart quickly emerged as a can’t-miss talent the two would wrestle each other countless times in Calgary, trading the Mid-Heavyweight Championship and establishing Stampede Wrestling as one of the premier territories in the world when it came to in-ring action. The matches, along with the ones taking place in Japan with Tiger Mask and Dynamite, helped push wrestling into a faster, more athletic and ultimately more entertaining product. It would take major promotions such as the World Wrestling Federation about 15 years to catch up to what was being done in Calgary.

In the early-1980s Hart got some key international experience, working for New Japan Pro Wrestling, mostly as a mid-card heel but also teaming up with his brother Keith and Tiger Jeet Singh in six man tag matches against top names such as Antonio Inoki and Riki Choshu. In 1981 he also made some appearances for All Star Wrestling in England and the Catch Wrestling Association in Central Europe. Later in his career when Hart was the WWF World Heavyweight Champion he would become arguably the most popular WWF star in history when it came to touring overseas, and part of the reason for that was because from a young age Hart was exposed at the international level. In addition to his work overseas, Stampede Wrestling had a lot of international television deals and the Hart family were well-known names in random enclaves all over the world. 1984 Vince McMahon was in the middle of his war against the professional wrestling establishment and eventually the battlefield came to Calgary. Instead of fighting McMahon head-on, Stu Hart elected to sell the promotion to the WWF, sending a lot of Stampede talent to the WWF. Hart, along with Dynamite and his cousin, Davey Boy Smith, were the crown jewels of Stampede and McMahon happily acquired them with the plan to use them to flesh out his increasingly deep roster. McMahon’s original plan for Hart was for him to be a singles wrestler, using a cowboy character but Hart disagreed with that idea and instead suggested joining a stable with his brother-in-law Jim Neidhart and his manager, Jimmy Hart. The Hart foundation became a heel tag team and began working on the undercard. In what has become a lost strategy in today’s WWE, the tag team division used to have different levels, similar to the singles division. There were main event-level tag teams such as The British Bulldogs and Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik, and there were mid-card tag teams like The Hart Foundation. In the mid-1980s the WWF’s tag team division was perhaps the deepest it has ever been, and it became an underrated asset in turning a regional promotion into an international sensation. At the time it was common for the WWF to run weekend dates with multiple shows each day, and the deep and talented tag team division played a role in having high-quality matches and carrying long portions of the show. The short performances by Hulk Hogan may have been the top drawing card, but the tag division kept the fans engaged for the duration of the whole show. The heelish Hart Foundation became one of the pillars of that division, with the smooth Bret Hart working a nice contrast with the physical powerhouse Neidhart. Add in one of the most charismatic managers of all-time in Jimmy Hart and The Hart Foundation became one of the best heel tag teams of the 1980s. During his first couple years in the WWF Hart was given two of the most iconic monikers in wrestling history. The first was “The Hitman” and the second was the “Excellence of Execution” given to him by WWF announcer Gorilla Monsoon for his superb technical wrestling ability. Hart engaged in his first singles feud in the WWF in the winter of 1986, challenging perennial babyface, Ricky Steamboat. In March of 1986 Hart and Steamboat blew-off their feud at the Boston Garden in a sensational match. One year later Steamboat would have a similar match against Randy Savage at WrestleMania III that would receive legendary acclaim, but Steamboat vs Hart at the Boston Garden was one of the first truly great matches of the WWF’s national era. In February of 1987 The Hart Foundation finally won their first tag team championship, defeating their long term rivals The British Bulldogs with the help of crooked referee Danny Davis. They would win their first match at WrestleMania, defeating The Bulldogs and Tito Santana in a six man tag match that saw them team with Davis at WrestleMania III. They would defend the championships against The Bulldogs, The Killer Bees and The Rougeau Brothers before dropping the championships in October to Strike Force (Rick Martel and Tito Santana). In November of 1987, Hart would have his most high-profile singles match to date against Savage, losing to the Macho Man on an episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event, which was broadcasted on network television and began to show that Hart could be a significant singles star for the WWF. Hart bounced between tag team matches and singles matches for the next year, wrestling in a Battle Royal at WrestleMania IV and defeating Greg Valentine and The Honky Tonk Man at WrestleMania V. During that same time span, Hart began getting copious amounts of fan mail and eventually McMahon realized that The Hart Foundation and particularly Bret could become big stars and turned them babyface. After losing to The Brainbusters (Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard) at SummerSlam 1989, Hart began one of his most famous singles rivalries against Mr. Perfect, Curt Hennig, losing to Hennig on an …

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