The Best There Is. The Best There Was. The Best There Ever Will Be.
Bret Hart’s wrestling career is one of the most storied of all time. The grizzled Canadian is regarded by many to be one of the greatest technicians to ever step in the ring, and save for injuries and an…. unfortunate incident in 1997, and he might have been the greatest to ever wrestle.
But where we talk about Bret Hart, one must also talk about Shawn Michaels.
Like Ali and Frazier, Prost and Senna, when Brett and Shawn clashed, they fought for more than titles. They fought for dominance over each other, and the way in which the very sport should be defined.
For Shawn thought Bret was too square and dull to cut it in the edgier era of 90s wrestling, and Bret thought Shawn was too crass to be a role model.
They were the best in the world. And they downright hated each other.
The pair brought the house down with a legendary 60-minute Iron Man match at Wrestlemania 12, where Shawn defeated Bret in overtime to become the WWE Champion.
They were due a rematch at Wrestlemania 13, where it was said Bret was supposed to win the title, but a few months away from the bout, Shawn cited injury and vacated the title.
Shawn said he had “lost his smile”, and WWE was robbed of one of the greatest rematches of all time.
Or so it would seem….
This week, Bret Hart made a surprise appearance during the recent “Inside The Ropes: An Evening with Jim Ross and Jim Cornette” show in London and revealed the original plans for the Wrestlemania 13 rematch.
“Shawn was a great wrestler, one of the best I ever worked with — maybe the best I ever worked with in a lot of ways. I had an idea where I was gonna — if you could visualize like it’s like a thirty, thirty five-minute match me and Shawn would’ve tore the house down with a really great match and the place is going crazy. Basically a duplicate of the Iron Man match all over again, but we wouldn’t go the full hour again.
I wanted to do a thing where Shawn was stomping his foot, getting ready to give me the big kick, and I’m in trouble like I’m pulling myself up from the ropes on the other side of the ring and Shawn goes to give me that big kick as I stagger over to him, just like at the Iron Man match. Except this time I would take Shawn’s foot, catch it in the air and get him to the ground and put some kind of a shoot hold on his foot and break his foot right in the middle of the ring.
I wanted Shawn to tap out like they do in UFC, where it’s like when they break somebody’s arm they tap out pretty fast and everyone jumps in and it’s a very serious kind of thing. I wanted to break Shawn’s foot and then they hand me the belt and I would’ve gone over and stand over the top of him and go ‘fuck you.’
Supposedly the sequel to one of the greatest matches of all time would have ended with a broken leg and the supposed hero dropping f-bombs over the villain? We’re somewhat happy the match didn’t come to pass….
Especially when you consider the match we got at Wrestlemania 13 instead was Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold.
AKA One of the Greatest Matches of All Time.
