Mount Rushmore of Pro Wrestling

The Game Room
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I regret I missed this thread when it came up originally.

I think I broadly agree with Oakminster’s overall Mt. Rushmore, but would probably disagree on some of his others.

I haven’t watched any wrestling since the early 2000s, but one of my favorites who I think has gotten a degree of overlooked in this thread is Bret Hart. Bret worked a really good match and to me was a nice breath of fresh air in that era of the WWF/WWE where many of the wrestlers were such roid monsters they could barely move around the ring, and when they could it was for 5-10 minutes.

While it’s one of WWE’s most famous matches, the Andre vs Hogan match at WM3 is everything bad about the McMahon style of wrestling. Andre had no business being in that ring due to his debilitating back problems, and Hogan’s matches basically ever since he started his first big face push in the WWF in the mid-80s were short unathletic and fairly un-interesting affairs. Hogan may or may not have been a good in ring performer without McMahon’s influence, I know that he had a lot more technical ability he displayed prior to that point and overseas, but in WWF Hogan’s matches were basically him displaying “unimaginable power” by pushing his opponent down from a grapple, doing a couple suplexes then landing a big boot and a leg drop while McMahon and whoever was paired with him in the announcers chair fawned on his strength. If it was a major heel he might get hit by a low blow or outside interference and take a few punches at some point.

I will say there’s probably a reason that guys like Bret Hart were out of wrestling much younger than Hogan–Hogan just walks around the ring hitting people and rarely takes bumps. Hart, Shawn Michaels, or even Flair who did wrestle periodically into old age and was five years Hogan’s senior all showed a lot more physical deterioration than Hogan did. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like the Michaels-Hart Iron Man match would have put Hogan into the grave.

With the unathletic but buff style of wrestler McMahon favored, something I do remember is back when Sammartino came back (largely because he was trying to get his son a push in WWF) even being older he was clearly in actual better physical shape athletically than most of the guys he was wrestling who were younger and roided up but very unathletic.

That being said I can’t put Hart of Michaels on really the WWF or the overall Mt. Rushmore, neither had the impact of an Andre or Hogan overall or a McMahon/Sammartino/Austin within the WWE. It was the end of when I watched wrestling but it’s undeniable Austin (despite almost no in ring ability due to debilitating injuries) set the tone for the attitude era in a way Michaels or Bret were never able to really define the WWF in that period after Hogan left for WCW but before the Attitude Era began. I think McMahon has also said Austin is without a doubt the most profitable wrestler that has worked for WWF.

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I certainly agree with that and your sentiments about Bret overall. He was athletically great and a very tough competitor, but he could not stir up a crowd. He did help a lot in introducing the attitude era, and he tried to bring athletics back into the cartoonish Hulkamania era, but he was just limited as an actor/performer. I’d rank Michaels above him just for his better relationship with the crowd.

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I would rank Michaels above Bret as well, I just wanted to mention Bret since I didn’t see him get any love to this point in the thread. Michaels and Hart were probably about equal in athleticism, Hart had more traditionally trained wrestling skills, Michaels did more high impact/exciting moves though, and Michaels was far more entertaining outside the ring and carried that into the ring with his fans.

I think what hurt Bret is being trained by his dad he was an old school wrestler in the wrong era, I don’t think Bret was ever comfortable by the idea that his craft should be anything other than the show he puts on strictly within the confines of the ring. Michaels understood it’s entertainment and goes beyond that.

I think Hart’s move to WCW was also very ill-time, he languished there unused for a long time then WCW folded. I think there was a place for Bret Hart as a corporate style heel in the Attitude Era, and he probably could have done that much more entertainingly than he ever did being a face (Hart as a face mostly only got pops up in Canadian cities.) But the closest Hart ever got to being entertaining for anything other than in-the-ring was his heel turn with his elitist type attitude.

He could’ve fit in well being part of the McMahon Corporation Stable during its long feud with Austin. Even Owen Hart was having a decent run as a heel I thought until he did the Blue Meanie gimmick which was a bizarre turn to me (and of course resulted in his death.)

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I did forget to mention that I thought Bret was born too late. He would have been much more appreciated in an earlier time.