OO Column: The Scott Keith Rants (Pro Wrestling News, Analysis, and Commentary... WWF, WCW, ECW, The Rock, Steve Austin, RVD, Undertaker, Triple H)

SK RANT
Bret Hart Shoot Interview, Pt. 2:
The Matches
December 5, 2001

by Scott Keith
TheSmarks.com/411Wrestling.com/OnlineOnslaught.com

- Ever sneezed while you had a sore throat? Man, that hurts. Anyway, due to my inability to sit for more than 3 hours without falling asleep a few days ago, I delayed doing the extra matches on the Bret Hart shoot interview until I had gotten the NyQuil out of my system (Big N, little y, BIG FUCKING Q) and thus could think straight again. This is NOT the second part of the Bret Hart shoot, which is another tape in itself with more classic matches, it's the second part of my review of the first part. Gabe at RFVideo was supposed to send me the 2nd Bret shoot and some other ones, but that never quite happened. I do intend to do the next part of the shoot if it ever arrives. All I've got left in terms of RFVideo stuff in my own collection is the Bill Watts shoot (coming soon), Best of Benoit, Best of Jericho, Best of Cactus Jack, Best of Steve Austin, Best of Dynamite Kid and Best of Jushin Liger. All fine tapes and all worthy of
reviews someday.

- On with the matches.

- Bret Hart v. Tiger Mask II. This is from the WWF's swing through Japan in 1990, and although you'd THINK Bret v. Misawa would be amazingly great, you'd be wrong. JIP as Bret gets a backbreaker and suplex for two. Bret hits the chinlock, and that goes on for a while. Bret moves to an abdominal stretch, Tiger Mask reverses, and Bret escapes. Mask charges and hits foot, but Bret misses the elbow off the second rope. Tiger goes up and gets a flying bodypress for two. Bret takes the corner bump for two. They slug it out, and time expires at 4:39 shown. Merely okay, and very slow. *

- The Rockers v. The Hart Foundation. Another match from WWF Japan. Marty starts with Bret and they do some babyface equality stuff. Bret grabs an arm, but gets double-teamed until Neidhart chases the Rockers away. Shawn & Jim go next and the Anvil overpowers him, getting two off a powerslam. Shawn tries a slam, then rolls him up for two. Shawn & Marty work the arm, but Neidhart casually dumps Marty. Marty slips back in and takes Neidhart down, and stays on the arm. Double-superkick gets two, as the Rockers switch off on the pinfall attempts like a midget match. Bret comes in with an atomic drop on Michaels and he pounds him, then tags out
and cheapshots him from the apron on the way by. Bret comes back in with a backbreaker, and he pounds away. Shawn backslides for two, but can't get out of the corner. Shawn takes a nasty backdrop bump for two, and Anvil makes with the bearhuggery. Shawn gets tossed, tries to take a breather, and gets ambushed by a charging Bret on the outside. Bret sends him back in for more punishment from Neidhart. They double-team him, but Shawn flips out of a slam attempt and goes for the tag.which Bret stops with an elbow to the head. Harts work him over in the corner and Bret slingshots Anvil into him for two. Back to the chinlock, as Bret drops an elbow and keeps pounding away, but misses a blind charge. Anvil misses the slingshot
splash, but AGAIN they cut off the hot tag. If this was America, the crowd would be going apeshit for Shawn right about now. Shawn sunset flips Bret for two, but gets tossed. Anvil sends him back in for Bret, who keeps pounding away until Shawn finally charges and misses. Bret goes for the 2nd rope elbow, but misses, and FINALLY it's the hot tag to Marty Jannetty. He's a house of fire! Kneelift for Bret and the superkick gets two. Sunset flip gets two. Backslide gets two. Blind charge misses and he goes flying over the top, but he manages to tag Shawn back in. He and Neidhart collide and both are out. Shawn gets a running elbow for two. Anvil catches a bodypress attempt, but Shawn gets two by sheer force of willpower. Bret comes in, Shawn gets cute again with another bodypress, and this time Bret uses the opposite tactic, rolling through for the pin at
14:40. Neat bit of psychology to end a damned fine tag match. ***1/2

- Bret Hart v. Tiger Mask. Okay, this is Satoru Sayama, so you can feel free to get a little more excited, although Bret is still very green at this point in his career. Funny to think that guys like Kurt Angle and the Rock are hitting their peak at a point in their career when Bret Hart was still a few years away from being a WWF jobber. Maybe there's hope for Chuck Palumbo yet. Hart pounds away, looking a little tentative, but Sayama pops up out of nowhere and spinkicks him. He makes with the vicious forearms, and hits the chinlock. Bret reverses to his own, but TM escapes, pushes him into the corner, runs up his chest, backflips off him like something in the Matrix, then armdrags him and drops an elbow for two. This was when Jushin Liger was still in grade school, mind you. Bret slugs him down again and gives him a knee to the gut, for two. Sayama comes back with a kneelift and kneedrop, but Bret starts working the knee. Sayama blocks a suplex, so Bret ropeburns him and they slug it out. Sayama does his spinning reversal into a bow-and-arrow (the best way to put it is "Rey Mysterio's back special in Revenge", or I think it might also be Bischoff's in "WCW v. NWO World Tour"), but Bret escapes. Sayama covers for one, and works a hammerlock, intoa headscissors. Bret gets frustrated and reverses into his own headlock, but Sayama breaks and dropkicks him. Piledriver gets two. Bret no-sells (something you'd NEVER see from him after about 1987) and gets a cheap knee and a dropkick, then flattens him with a straight kick to the gut off an irish whip, which looks like something Dynamite would do. He makes the rookie mistake of going to the well with the same move, and Sayama casually rolls under him and sweeps
the exposed leg, then drops an elbow and goes back to the arm with a vicious hammerlock and short-arm scissor. Bret escapes and pounds him down again, but gets gut-wrenched for two. Crossbody gets two. Sunset flip gets two. Bret dumps him and they brawl, and Bret REALLY gets the worst of it, going hard into the railing. Back in, Sayama legsweeps him into a figure-four. Bret reverses, reversed back again, and Bret makes the ropes this time. Sayama keeps on the leg, but Bret cradles, and they're in the ropes. Bret piledrives him for two. Legdrop and elbow get two. Sayama comes back with a flying forearm and goes up, but misses a senton. Bret gets the backbreaker for two. Suplex gets two. Sayama spinkicks him right
out of the ring, but misses a pescado. Back in, Bret knocks him off the apron, but gets cocky and walks into a springboard dropkick that sets up a double-arm suplex to finish for Sayama at 17:12. Bret took awhile to adjust to the style, but once he did they had one HELL of a match, just as good as almost anything I've seen in the majors in the past few years. There's lots of stuff from the early 80s that needs to be viewed with a certain view of the time, but all the Tiger Mask stuff was so state-of-the-art that it still holds up 20 years later. ****1/4

- Ladder match: Bret Hart v. Bad News Allen. From Stampede, 84ish. This is the match that Bret used to pitch the idea to Vince McMahon in 1992. We're JIP about 5 minutes in, as usual for Stampede TV matches. Bret yanks Allen off the ladder and tosses him into it, then climbs. Allen dumps him to the corner and stomps away. Bret just impales him in the corner with the thing, then suplexes him. Slam, but an elbow misses (I don't think he hit that elbow once before 1991) and Allen slams him on the ladder and then jams it into his gut. Allen works him in the corner, but charges and misses. Bret uses the bootlaces, but Bad News goes low. He climbs, but Bret trips him up and stomps his head a little. Bret climbs but the ref gets bumped as a result, allowing Evil Manager Du Jour Wakamatsu to knock the ladder over. A quick word on managers in Stampede: There was a LOT, and they tended to manage all the heels for a
few weeks and then switch off to someone else. The most famous was Dynamite Kid's manager J.R. Foley (no relation on either count), and the most irritating was one of the last: Wannabe wrestler Dr. Jonathan Holliday. My personal favorite was Drago Zhivago, just because it was such a cool name. Anyway, Bad News takes the opportunity to slam Bret on the floor and climb, but Dynamite runs in, knocks the ladder over, and Bret climbs up and takes the prize money to win at 6:28 shown. This match reads like a template for Shawn-Razor. **1/2

- The Stomper v. Bret Hart. You know, I should really do the Stampede Classics tapes one of these days, if only because the Stomper has one of the greatest babyface promos I've ever heard on one of them, after he talks his son into becoming a wrestler to face some heels, and then is forced to watch as the poor kid gets in over his head and is forced into retirement in his first match. The promo that Stomper cuts after the match is absolutely spine-tingling, as he calmly delivers the most intense and angst-ridden interview you'll ever hear, basically promising to avenge his son by doing unspeakably violent acts to the heels. Archie was still a heel at this point, however, facing Bret Hart in a sort of defacto #1 contender match for the vacant North American title. I don't specifically remember this time period, but I was pretty young during the whole Bret Hart/Bad News Allen era so it all kinda runs together for me after a while anyway. They tussle in the corner and slug it out, and Bret pounds
away. Stomper lives up to his name for two, but Bret grabs a
hammerlock. Stomper kicks him down and hits the chinlock, getting
two. Bret kicks him down and a slam gets two. Bret goes to his
chinlock. Into a headlock, which Stomper reverses for two. They play that game for a bit. Stomper tries to work out of it, but Bret counters and takes him over again. Good matwork there. Stomper slam is reversed for two, and we're clipped to about the 20:00 mark. The ref is bumped and Bret grabs a sleeper. Stomper grabs the ropes, but Bret keeps hammering him, thus earning a yellow card (warning). The ref yells at him, so Bret tosses him for the red card (DQ) at 6:56 shown. Not enough to fairly judge, seemed around **.

- Bret Hart v. Dynamite Kid. Proving that Stu Hart was a cruel tease,
we're joined 34:00 into a 45-minute, 2/3 falls match. Ed Whalen at one point opines that they should use the entire hour for one match in cases like these, and I cannot disagree at all. You would not believe how thin Dynamite is unless you saw it. We're talking Spike Dudley after a talk from JR about dropping some weight here. I have no idea how he could take bumps with this physique and not end up in a.oh, yeah. Bret works a hammerlock and grabs an armbar. Abdominal stretch (which was his finish at that point), but they tumble out and the Kid slugs him down. Back in, they collide, but Kid dropkicks Bret out. He pops back up and rams Kid into the turnbuckle, then dumps him via an atomic drop. Back in, Kid blocks a
neckbreaker and drops an elbow. Suplex, but Bret goes for a rollup, which is blocked for two. Bret slugs him down and gets a weak half-crab, but Kid somehow counter-wrestles for two. Bret works the leg and suplexes him for a close two. Kid stomps the proverbial mudhole and uses a weird standing armbar, and a sunset flip gets two. Bret reverses for two. Bret goes into the corner and Kid goes to a nervehold. Bret powers out with time winding down, then gives Kid a hiptoss that results in one of his crazy bumps halfway across the ring and onto his head. See, that's the power of selling: You can make ANYTHING look deadly. Kid comes back with a slam, but Bret rolls him up for a count that the ref says is two and everyone with a brain says is three. Kid blocks a piledriver, but Bret hits a release german suplex and gets the abdominal stretch. In a surreal moment,
JR Foley assaults the timekeeper and forces him to ring the bell for the bogus submission, which confuses everyone long enough for time to expire at 10:52 (45:00 in "real" time). Bret screwed.oh, never mind. Match was awesome, likely ****+ if the full tape actually exists.

- Bret Hart v. Davey Boy Smith. Still in Stampede, this time from 1987 while both guys were on loan from the WWF. Bret is playing heel because it was a different climate in wrestling then fans cheered and booed who they were conditioned to, and Canadian fans cheering heels because they were Canadian was a relatively rare thing. Besides which, the British Bulldogs were crazy over as babyfaces up here back then and Stu would have been insane to waste that kind of money-drawing opportunity. Bret hits a chinlock, but Davey powers out, and runs into a knee. D'oh. Bret hammers
him in the corner, but gets dropkicked. Bret comes back with an elbow, but Smith sunset flips him for two. Bret nails him and goes up, but misses an elbow. Smith clotheslines him and drops him on his head, then pounds away in the corner. Delayed suplex gets two. Bret bails and gets retrieved by Smith, who uses a fisherman's suplex for two. Bret bails again like a good heel, really making sure to get ALL of the audience good and pissed off at him, but Smith tosses him back in again. Davey goes up with a kneedrop off the top and a splash for two. Bret bails again, and this time a pissed-off Davey Boy pays off the subplot by gorilla-pressing him and walking through the audience, back to the ring. Slingshot splash back in hits knee, however, and Bret pulls out a chain to KO Smith and buy some time. Davey does a gory bladejob and Bret dropkicks him. Backbreaker gets two. The crowd is just DYING to see Davey make the comeback. Piledriver gets two. Smith presses him crotch-first onto the top rope in desperation and finally makes the superman comeback as the crowd is just going insane for the guy. Bret's corner bump gets two. Sleeper, but Bret nails the ref and goes for the chain again. Dynamite comes in to save, but the Bulldogs get caught holding the chain and it's a DQ at 10:04. This would, naturally, lead to a chain match between Bret & Davey Boy soon after. God I loved Stampede. ***

- Bret & Keith Hart v. The Kiwis. The Kiwis are this crazy tag team from New Zealand, and I imagine you've heard of them before. Here they're known as Crazy Nick and Sweet William, but I give you to the end of this match to figure out their more popular identity. JIP with William pounding on Bret, who dropkicks him away. Nick stomps Bret back down, and gets a running knee. Sweet William cuts off a tag, bringing Bret back to their corner, much as one might herd a sheep. The Kiwis double-team Bret, and Crazy Nick chokes him down. They keep cutting off the tag and Nick gets two. Finally, heel miscommunication allows the hot tag to Keith. It's a MALFUNCTION AT THE JUNCTION! Harts hit stereo backdrops, and stereo dropkicks, but William cheapshots Keith. You might say he bushwhacked him. William & Nick pound Keith down for two. William goes up and gets
slammed off, and Keith uses his devastating SHITTY HALF-CRAB OF DOOM (not the same as Konnan's though), leaving him wide open for a shot in the head from an international object, and Sweet William gets the pin at 6:18. Bleh. ¾*

The Bottom Line:

Get the tape for the shoot, stay for the classic matches. Good stuff all around on this tape, boys and girls.

E-MAIL SCOTT
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