The Greater Power
08-13-2005, 08:25 PM
Long read, but interesting.
Credit: WrestlingInsidepulse
Bret Fuckin' Hart.
Jesus Christ, I thought I'd never have to talk about him again. However, that's the only thing people are now talking about (other than minor garbage stories; who really cares about Spanky and Jamie Noble coming back?). So I'm forced into mentioning him.
Believe me, I don't want to. I got sick and tired of Bret Hart years ago. He's one of the biggest primo uomos (or is that primo uomi? My Italian sucks...) in the business. Everything that has been accused of in regard to Hogan, Nash, Michaels, Trip, UT, etc., can be laid on Bret's table as well. He didn't have the "creative control" card to play since Vince has never allowed that kind of shit in contracts, but he used his backstage stroke to its full effect during his time there. His apologists say that he was doing that to counter the Clique, but what about before the Clique was at strength? He played backstage games about as well as anyone ever has. And then there's Montreal, which was CAUSED by Bret not wanting to do the proper thing and job on his last night in the company, then being a silly ass and shutting his ears to people trying to talk sense into him. So, fanboys, don't play the Bret As Victim card (even though WWE itself was about to with the now-discarded title of the DVD set, and they were doing that precisely because of the fanboys). It's just bullshit.
Bret Hart is also the most overrated wrestler in history. Period. The amount of fan LUV that's thrown his way is inexplicable. He doesn't deserve that much affection, admiration, or worship. He fails in every category in which he's pumped up. And yet the rabid fanboy base refuses to see those particular failures.
You want me to break it down to brass tacks? Well, here it is. The measure of a champion is how much he's able to draw. Bret couldn't draw shit. Kevin Nash gets a big black mark on his career for the same fact pertaining to his reign as WWE champion, but Bret gets a free pass. You hypocrites.
Bret is also a second-rank technical wrestler. You want me to throw out, oh, five names of technical wrestlers better than he is? No problem. Benoit. Guerrero. Angle. Misawa. And the last one, the one that throws the dagger into the heart: Owen. All of them far better technically than Bret. Yes, even his own baby brother.
Here's a bigger yet still easy challenge: without using those five names above, name ten wrestlers who had a better combination of technical skills and sports entertainment skills than Bret. Simple: Flair. Michaels. Trip before the quad injury. Wife-Beater circa 1996/7. Sting. Magnum. David Von Erich. El Hijo del Santo. Kawada. Savage circa 1988. That's ten. All of them outshine Bret easily as wrestler/entertainers.
Bret couldn't cut a promo worth shit. His most memorable promo was a simple string of obscenities on live television. His most memorable matches, with the exception of the match against Davey Boy at SummerSlam 92, were against superior opponents, who ended up carrying him or, in Wife-Beater's case, bleeding nearly to death for him to make him look good, even and especially in defeat. He wrestled the same damn match from 1991 until the end of his career. Not even his biggest defender, Scooter, can disguise this. In fact, he invented the term Five Moves Of Doom to describe this phenomenon. Benoit has no mic skills, yet he doesn't have to be carried and doesn't wrestle formulaic matches (and he carried Bret completely in the Owen Tribute Match). Wife-Beater didn't have to be carried until he became a complete parody of himself, and even then his mic skills were undeniable. You know who Bret Hart is? He's Rob Van Dam with a slightly larger technical repertoire and less martial arts. And yet no one but the most retarded of fanboys puts Van Dam on the same pedestal as Bret.
As I said, the thing that Bret's most successful at is being perceived as the victim. Montreal, Owen, Goldberg, the stroke...who the fuck cares? Shit happens to everyone. It's called "life". Montreal simply ended a business relationship that wasn't healthy for either side at that point (that's why Bret was leaving in the first place); it just ended in a very depressing manner. And Goldberg's kick simply put a career that was already on the skids out of its misery. His time was up anyway; only he, his fanboys, and the lack-of-brain trust at WCW couldn't recognize it.
So, fine, release the DVD and celebrate his overrated career. No problem by me. It's a good business decision. The guy still has his fans today, and they're going to buy it. I almost made a bet with Fleabag and stated that his DVD won't outsell Flair's. Then Fleabag reminded me of the imbeciles in Canada who will eat this up like hotcakes, and I backed off of my position. Bret's God there, after all. That alone is prima facie evidence that we here in the States need to do a little invasion and mass reprogramming, but that's another issue. Of course, I won't be buying the DVD. There's only one match that will be on there that I'd want, namely the Owen Tribute Match, and I've already got that on the Benoit DVD. In fact, I'm more likely to buy the Warrior DVD than the Bret one. It at least has two matches that I want on it (Hogan at WM6 and Savage at WM7).
And the worst thing about Bret? Back during Montreal, the entire proto-IWC came out and said that Bret got the best end of the whole situation. Except for one person. Sean Shannon. Yes, it was Sean's hatred of Bret that led him to the conclusion that Vince got the best of the whole thing (albeit his hatred of Bret wasn't as ridiculous as it was to become), but he reached the right conclusion. And that pisses me off more than anything else. Bret caused Sean Shannon to be right about something, and the amount of insufferable ego blow-back we in the IWC got from that after the truth became apparent was incredible.
I think that by now, you know me. You know that the above wasn't a troll, but my honest feelings about Bret. I don't like the guy, haven't liked the guy for a long time, and am pissed about the fact that he's still worshipped. All of you need a nice, cold dose of the truth splashed in your faces about him. Of course, most of you fanboys are so far gone that this icy bath won't help, but you can't say that I didn't try. To those that I might have garnered a breakthrough upon, let me give you this message: join me and don't buy the DVD. He's just not worth it.
It's times like these that I think I'm just going to start snarking fan fiction in this column. It'll be less painful than to have to think about stuff like Bret and Matt Hardy.
And speaking of Matt Hardy, you think the little repulsive maggot will show up this week on a certain show? Let's go through and find out...
http://wrestling.insidepulse.com/articles/40110
What do you think?
Credit: WrestlingInsidepulse
Bret Fuckin' Hart.
Jesus Christ, I thought I'd never have to talk about him again. However, that's the only thing people are now talking about (other than minor garbage stories; who really cares about Spanky and Jamie Noble coming back?). So I'm forced into mentioning him.
Believe me, I don't want to. I got sick and tired of Bret Hart years ago. He's one of the biggest primo uomos (or is that primo uomi? My Italian sucks...) in the business. Everything that has been accused of in regard to Hogan, Nash, Michaels, Trip, UT, etc., can be laid on Bret's table as well. He didn't have the "creative control" card to play since Vince has never allowed that kind of shit in contracts, but he used his backstage stroke to its full effect during his time there. His apologists say that he was doing that to counter the Clique, but what about before the Clique was at strength? He played backstage games about as well as anyone ever has. And then there's Montreal, which was CAUSED by Bret not wanting to do the proper thing and job on his last night in the company, then being a silly ass and shutting his ears to people trying to talk sense into him. So, fanboys, don't play the Bret As Victim card (even though WWE itself was about to with the now-discarded title of the DVD set, and they were doing that precisely because of the fanboys). It's just bullshit.
Bret Hart is also the most overrated wrestler in history. Period. The amount of fan LUV that's thrown his way is inexplicable. He doesn't deserve that much affection, admiration, or worship. He fails in every category in which he's pumped up. And yet the rabid fanboy base refuses to see those particular failures.
You want me to break it down to brass tacks? Well, here it is. The measure of a champion is how much he's able to draw. Bret couldn't draw shit. Kevin Nash gets a big black mark on his career for the same fact pertaining to his reign as WWE champion, but Bret gets a free pass. You hypocrites.
Bret is also a second-rank technical wrestler. You want me to throw out, oh, five names of technical wrestlers better than he is? No problem. Benoit. Guerrero. Angle. Misawa. And the last one, the one that throws the dagger into the heart: Owen. All of them far better technically than Bret. Yes, even his own baby brother.
Here's a bigger yet still easy challenge: without using those five names above, name ten wrestlers who had a better combination of technical skills and sports entertainment skills than Bret. Simple: Flair. Michaels. Trip before the quad injury. Wife-Beater circa 1996/7. Sting. Magnum. David Von Erich. El Hijo del Santo. Kawada. Savage circa 1988. That's ten. All of them outshine Bret easily as wrestler/entertainers.
Bret couldn't cut a promo worth shit. His most memorable promo was a simple string of obscenities on live television. His most memorable matches, with the exception of the match against Davey Boy at SummerSlam 92, were against superior opponents, who ended up carrying him or, in Wife-Beater's case, bleeding nearly to death for him to make him look good, even and especially in defeat. He wrestled the same damn match from 1991 until the end of his career. Not even his biggest defender, Scooter, can disguise this. In fact, he invented the term Five Moves Of Doom to describe this phenomenon. Benoit has no mic skills, yet he doesn't have to be carried and doesn't wrestle formulaic matches (and he carried Bret completely in the Owen Tribute Match). Wife-Beater didn't have to be carried until he became a complete parody of himself, and even then his mic skills were undeniable. You know who Bret Hart is? He's Rob Van Dam with a slightly larger technical repertoire and less martial arts. And yet no one but the most retarded of fanboys puts Van Dam on the same pedestal as Bret.
As I said, the thing that Bret's most successful at is being perceived as the victim. Montreal, Owen, Goldberg, the stroke...who the fuck cares? Shit happens to everyone. It's called "life". Montreal simply ended a business relationship that wasn't healthy for either side at that point (that's why Bret was leaving in the first place); it just ended in a very depressing manner. And Goldberg's kick simply put a career that was already on the skids out of its misery. His time was up anyway; only he, his fanboys, and the lack-of-brain trust at WCW couldn't recognize it.
So, fine, release the DVD and celebrate his overrated career. No problem by me. It's a good business decision. The guy still has his fans today, and they're going to buy it. I almost made a bet with Fleabag and stated that his DVD won't outsell Flair's. Then Fleabag reminded me of the imbeciles in Canada who will eat this up like hotcakes, and I backed off of my position. Bret's God there, after all. That alone is prima facie evidence that we here in the States need to do a little invasion and mass reprogramming, but that's another issue. Of course, I won't be buying the DVD. There's only one match that will be on there that I'd want, namely the Owen Tribute Match, and I've already got that on the Benoit DVD. In fact, I'm more likely to buy the Warrior DVD than the Bret one. It at least has two matches that I want on it (Hogan at WM6 and Savage at WM7).
And the worst thing about Bret? Back during Montreal, the entire proto-IWC came out and said that Bret got the best end of the whole situation. Except for one person. Sean Shannon. Yes, it was Sean's hatred of Bret that led him to the conclusion that Vince got the best of the whole thing (albeit his hatred of Bret wasn't as ridiculous as it was to become), but he reached the right conclusion. And that pisses me off more than anything else. Bret caused Sean Shannon to be right about something, and the amount of insufferable ego blow-back we in the IWC got from that after the truth became apparent was incredible.
I think that by now, you know me. You know that the above wasn't a troll, but my honest feelings about Bret. I don't like the guy, haven't liked the guy for a long time, and am pissed about the fact that he's still worshipped. All of you need a nice, cold dose of the truth splashed in your faces about him. Of course, most of you fanboys are so far gone that this icy bath won't help, but you can't say that I didn't try. To those that I might have garnered a breakthrough upon, let me give you this message: join me and don't buy the DVD. He's just not worth it.
It's times like these that I think I'm just going to start snarking fan fiction in this column. It'll be less painful than to have to think about stuff like Bret and Matt Hardy.
And speaking of Matt Hardy, you think the little repulsive maggot will show up this week on a certain show? Let's go through and find out...
http://wrestling.insidepulse.com/articles/40110
What do you think?