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[1990-03-19-WWF-MSG, NY] Bret Hart vs Rick Martel


Loss

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm conflicted on this. It's not a bad match, but it's also the kind of bland, inoffensive stuff you often see on house shows in Bret Hart matches that isn't going to be very remembered. This is why there are so many wrestlers I put above him -- he's a great wrestler, but he doesn't have very many great matches that aren't on pay-per-view. I thought this started off hot, and when Martel grabbed the abdominal stretch, the momentum stalled. They had lots of crowd-pleasing spots, and a lot of what they did was good, but they never did anything to take this to another level. That said, they kept the crowd involved, and the crowd was really into every nearfall attempt, so I will admit that this was really effective.

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Well, it wasn't a great match, but from my view that can be placed about 90% on Martel. Bret had some good counterwrestling stuff in the opening but when the match stalls when the heel goes on offense, I tend to put that on the heel. And Martel was more interested in clowning and showboating than in doing a whole lot when in control. He does sell for Bret's offense quite well, though. Crowd is hot for a stretch run of near-falls until both guys do the standard brawling outside the ring AND we get a time limit draw for a sort of double-screwjob. I don't quite get the protection of Bret here.

 

Good match by WWF mid-card standards. I can't fault a whole lot of anything in what Bret did.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I agree that Martel was the one to be blamed for holding this match back. I am probably lower on Martel than most but I can see someone like Dylan ranking Martel above Tully and I just dont see that and would present these last two matches as evidence of Tully working above what he was given in a match and Martel working at best within the level. Solid match is about how far I will go in regards to this match and Lord Alfred and Gorilla were annoying on commentary to boot.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Bret wasn't bad. To me, though, it didn't seem like Bret was trying to steal the show. He was doing enough to get by.

That might just be his mindset, though. He's wrestling fourth from the top, and judging by the lineup for this show, this match probably happened right after intermission (I assume they sent the fans into intermission with Earthquake/Duggan). For a lot of wrestlers, they would not be looking to steal the show in that slot; they just want to have a good match while the fans get back in their seats from getting hot dogs or whatever. I'm not totally defending Bret, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if the WWF mindset in 1990 is that you don't try to steal the show in a midcard post-intermission match with two guys who aren't being programmed together, and if that's the case, I'm not going to fault Bret for that.

 

Anyway, I'm talking like the match sucked, which it did not, but I also get the feeling these two could have had a better match together. Martel doesn't do a lot of interesting stuff, which I blame on being a heel in 1990 WWF, and he's in control most of the way. It's good, but in another time or another era, or even another position on the card, I feel like these two would have had a better match.

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There's nothing wrong with Bret not aiming to steal the show. But I think a wrestler rated at the level of a Bret Hart should be someone we don't find taking nights off very often, if ever. It's fine for your average wrestler, but Bret is supposed to be better than that.

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At the risk of starting yet another discussion of 80's WWF tag teams and 80's WWF style in particular (I know, your favorite topic)...

 

Is this a case of Bret taking a match off, or is this a case of WWF House Style being different from NWA/Crockett House Style?

 

We've read enough about 80's Crockett to know that the goal of the wrestlers was to steal the show. I think you can credit that from having Ric Flair as the top wrestler in the NWA, and the perception that Ric Flair was the best wrestler in the business. In order to steal a show with Ric Flair headlining, you have to work pretty damned hard. So you have the Midnight Express and the Rock 'n' Roll Express busting their asses and having a great tag team match, which causes Magnum and Tully to bust their asses to avoid being shown up by an undercard match, which causes Ric Flair and Barry Windham to bust their asses to top the rest of the show and have the best match of the night. That's why the Crockett style is so well-remembered, most of the guys up and down the card worked really hard. Rising tides raise all boats, and all that.

 

WWF was different. Hulk Hogan was the top wrestler, and he couldn't work at the same level as Ric Flair. And from what we all know about Hulk Hogan, he's a very insecure man. Trying to steal the show when Hulk Hogan is on top is a very good way to end up pissing the big guy off. You piss off Hulk Hogan, now you're not working the Hogan tours, which were one of the two ways to make the best money in WWF in the 80's (assuming headlining B-shows was also quite lucrative). So my theory is that the goal of WWF undercard guys was to tell a story in the ring without outshining Hulk Hogan in the main event, knowing that working on the same show as Hogan was important to the bottom line. I think this vibes with Matt D's preference for watching guys who make every move count, versus having great matches, and why guys like Anderson and Blanchard would try to steal the undercards in the NWA, and why so much of their WWF work is pedestrian, and why ultimately they could not really last in the WWF. They were Crockett guys and WWF style just didn't fit them.

 

Bringing this back to Bret and Martel (and Bret in particular), I didn't see this as particularly lazy. I do think both men are capable of way better, and another time and another environment, they probably would have had way better, but WWF style being what it is, there were limitations on their performance in place. Put both guys in the NWA, and I think they try to steal the show, but here, they don't want to take the shine off of Warrior and Hennig, so we get a decent, if utterly unmemorable match. That's what WWF undercard style was supposed to be, and that's why so many people prefer NWA style, and why with rare exceptions (Garvin vs Valentine, Rockers vs Powers of Pain), WWF undercard matches are a chore to get through.

 

That's why I think Bret used to take exception to what Meltzer said about him in the Observer for years, and why he had the reputation for taking house shows off. It's not that he took house shows off, he just operated under a different system that valued things that Observer sheet readers didn't value, and that internet wrestling fans don't value now I can't blame anybody for preferring NWA/Crockett style to WWF style since it was specifically designed to provide wrestling fans with a better product, but I'm not going to fault Bret for not having the output of great matches that the Crockett guys had in the 80's when he worked within a system that discouraged great matches, and the Crockett guys worked within a system that encouraged them. I'd rather watch Crockett than WWF too, but I don't think it's fair to compare Bret to Crockett guys since it's not a direct apples to apples comparison. They had completely different goals in mind.

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All of that is well and good, but if the goal was not to have a good match, was the goal to have a bad match? Was the goal to bore the crowd? Was it just to fill time? Was there not some type of point to their matches? What was the goal of an undercard WWF match during this time period? I just can't buy that they weren't allowed to have good matches. There were good undercard matches in 80s WWF. Were they bucking the system?

 

I understand not upstaging the main event, but I think it's possible to do that without going through the motions, and we've seen it happen before. And I guess my ultimate point would be that Bret was a guy who delivered when he needed to deliver, and didn't deliver when he didn't need to deliver. It's hard to see a case for great in that. To me, the greats should surpass expectations and surprise you from time to time.

 

And if this is the reality of Bret Hart's career -- that he worked in a promotion where he wasn't allowed to go all out -- then it is laughable to suggest that his career is comparable to that of Ric Flair, even if one can point to details in his act that are better. And it's also a waste of time to even bother watching old WWF matches now because they have no value. If the wrestlers involved took no pride in what they were doing and would have been ostracized if they did, so why do we care about going through old house show matches? What value does it serve?

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  • 1 year later...

Their goal was to do enough to keep the fans entertained, Charles. Even you admitted that the crowd was into this (which they were), so they accomplished their objective.

 

To survive in the WWF, you had to be in shape to meet the travel schedule first and foremost. You could get away with working bad matches, but you had to show up to get paid. I've seen quite a few interviews that talk about guys being asleep in the dressing room before bouts due to exhaustion, and I've seen other ones that admit that the match was the last thing on their minds on certain nights. Get in the ring, do a few moves, get to the finish, and get ready to travel.

 

Besides, if all the fans really wanted to see was Hogan, and in a lot of cases he'd already been on before intermission so he could travel or go back to the hotel to get ready to party, they were probably working in front of dead crowds anyway. So what did a one-star or five-star match matter if nobody gave a damn? And how do we know that the Crockett guys cared any more on every single show they performed? We may like to think so, but I'll bet that even Ric Flair took an occasional night off just because he could, not to mention the times when he was sick or injured. They didn't know that so many of their performances would be dissected by nerds like us, and if they had known, I doubt that their approach would have changed one whit.

 

At any rate, this was a typical WWF midcard match. It featured some nice moves, some weirdness on commentary (Lord Alfred and Hillbilly Jim talking about Hillbilly's possible trip to Europe could only happen during one of these bouts), and didn't have much of a finish. The draw was a bit weird considering that Bret would be back with the Anvil for a fuil-time tag run beginning at Mania VI, but Bret was a last-minute sub for Piper (according to Graham Cawthon), so maybe that was the original finish and they just didn't bother to change it.

 

Also, Graham has this match timed at 21:36, but on this disc it lasted just over fourteen minutes. Was the version we saw clipped, or could Graham have gotten this match confused with another one?

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It matters in the sense that it diminishes Bret's status as an all-time great if he was phoning in a lot of his matches.

 

Also, can you please call me Loss instead of Charles? When people refer to me by my real name on here when that's not the username I chose, it always catches me off guard. Sorry, just a quirk.

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  • 1 year later...

I've said before that I've seen very little of this period of WWF, so I really have no context for mid card WWF matches. So with that in mind, I was thoroughly entertained by this match. Bret not working to steal the show is interesting and kind of brings up a talking point about how much it matters when great wrestlers are lazy in "unimportant" matches. People bring up guys like Tanahashi and Nakamura dogging it in multiman tags and whether or not that hurts their reputations. Anyway, any WWF match that isn't a squash by a beefcake babyface is a highlight for me, so what do I know?

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  • GSR changed the title to [1990-03-19-WWF-MSG, NY] Bret Hart vs Rick Martel
  • 4 years later...

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