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Old 03-31-2019, 03:12 AM   #48639
Emperor Smeat
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Apparently the tape of arguably Bret Hart's finest ever in-ring achievement was confirmed to be real.




Quote:
Originally Posted by Deadspin
One such grail was known to have existed, but had long been believed lost by WWE. This was a 1986 bout in which Bret Hart drew an apparent miracle of a match out of Tom Magee, a strongman/bodybuilder/gymnast/karate black belt with leading man looks who was getting a tryout with the promotion. The legend behind this match was that Vince McMahon immediately proclaimed Magee his next champion after watching on the locker room monitor. Said legendary part of it is tied to just how little of a legend Magee turned out to be. The “Man of Iron” was otherwise a dud as a wrestler, which understandably made people want to see how the hell Bret got anything great out of him. Until Tuesday night, it was presumed that we’d never know for sure.

But towards the end of that evening’s SmackDown Live broadcast, during which I was also recording my podcast, a well-known wrestling fan and sometimes ringside photographer named Mary-Kate Anthony tagged me and a few others when she tweeted a photo ...

Fans who didn’t know Anthony were skeptical, but WWE producer T.J. “Tyson Kidd” Wilson—a Hart family member by marriage—quickly vouched for Mary-Kate in the replies. As it turns out, she’s had this tape for the last decade or so. It came her way when Bret, via mutual friend/Bret’s assistant Marcy Engelstein, sent his tape collection to Mary-Kate for conversion to DVD. Despite the fact that it came directly from Bret, there’s still some residual doubt that it’s actually the match. The veteran tape collector Roy Lucier discovered last year that Bret and Magee met again on May 16, 1989. Like the more famous October 7, 1986 match, it was an unaired “dark” match at a television taping. Unlike the first match, Magee was asked to take the lead and it went terribly. The VHS tape in question is labelled September 19, 1989, which is likely not a match date at all—there was no TV taping that day, and Magee looks to have left the company entirely a few weeks earlier. The label might be a mistake, or it might be the date that the VHS copy was made for Bret. Both are about equally likely given that WWE was not yet in the habit of recording every event for insurance purposes, so it’s probably not from a random show that took place on the date written on the label.
Also turns out Bret had another long lost gem in WWF that was only discovered in recent years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deadspin
Hell, it’s not even the only famous Bret match to have fallen through the cracks: His only singles match with Andre the Giant, which took place on a card in Italy and was shot by a local crew, is also not in the archives. As a result, the version WWE released on DVD is an obvious YouTube rip.
Rest of the article goes into detail of how huge of a bust Magee was as both a wrestler and potential mega star which makes what Bret did that night even more spectacular.

https://deadspin.com/lost-tape-of-br...-in-1833629409
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