Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Was Bret Hart’s Tenure as a WWE GM So Short?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals . . . through Hel Stryer and brimstone, it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Before we get into the questions this week, I wanted to apologize up front if this edition of the column seems a bit truncated or the analysis a bit more shallow than usual. This week, I had some issues with the primary P.C. that I write on, and it is currently in the shop, which means that I don’t have access to the text of several answers that I had pre-written for this column. As a result, I had to slap something together within a couple of hours as opposed to relying on information that had been compiled over a couple of weeks.

Hopefully, things will be resolved in such a way that we’re back to normal in our next installment.

Jon thinks I should be replaced by Michael Cole reading things off a laptop:

Why did Bret Hart’s run as WWE Raw General Manager in 2010 end so quickly? Was it by design, or did something happen behind the scenes?

It seems to just be a symptom of WWE’s chaotic creative at the time. This was during a period during which it was widely reported that the company’s shows were being written and re-written on the day that they were occurring, with major plot points being significantly altered on the whims of Vince McMahon. Keep in mind that Bret becoming GM in the first place didn’t exactly make sense, because he had just beaten the holy hell out of McMahon in a “match” at WrestleMania. Why would Vince reward the Hitman for that by giving him a new job?

There were three things that people speculated could have been the cause of Hart’s termination as GM namely: 1) concerns about Bret’s involvement in physical angles in light of the permanent disability payments he was receiving from Lloyd’s of London; 2) a lawsuit filed by Martha Hart against WWE for unpaid royalties owed to Owen Hart’s estate; and 3) his third wedding, which took place that summer.

However, none of those things really justify the Hitman’s abrupt termination. Hart continued to get physical for months after his leaving the GM role, including wrestling multiple matches, albeit in a limited form. Regarding the Martha lawsuit, the Hitman actually penned a long piece online indicating that he came down on WWE’s side of the dispute on multiple points. Finally, nothing about his wedding necessitated him being off TV for a protracted period of time, just a week or two at most.

Though we don’t have official confirmation, everything surrounding this points to wonky creative.

Bryan’s face is on more billboards than a personal injury lawyer:

In your opinion, what kind of poster best sells a PPV? The two main event guys facing each other or a collage of everyone in big matches just lined up like in recent Wrestlemanias? Or do you prefer the more abstract ones like one Summerslam they had a diva on a jet ski? Personally, for me, I’ve always found it important to emphasize the city if it’s in a major one. Like if you have a PPV in St. Louis show the arches (Arch Rivals would be an awesome PPV name) or the Sears Tower in Chicago, etc. PPV promos are their own art medium. In fact if anyone seeing this has the camera presence and time I’d love an artist critique of classic PPV posters on YouTube.

I don’t think it’s particularly relevant anymore. Nobody in 2026 is tuning into a premium live event because of any graphics or print materials. It’s all about the television that builds up the show.

In the era where posters actually mattered, the most effective ones were likely those that focused in on a particular match, because back during that period it was hot rivalries between major stars that best sold shows as opposed to today, where it seems like WWE mainly relies on fans tuning in out of habit.

Marc has a splitting headache:

As I write this, the WWE Raw main event tonight features two wrestlers from Smackdown fighting over a Smackdown title. Is it time to merge all relevant championships and end the brand separation? They make absolutely no effort to adhere to it any longer.

People have been saying this exact same thing ever since the first WWE brand split over twenty years ago. It’s time to just let this criticism go and let it be what it is.

A Different Ryan is still serving up those Quakeburgers:

WWE just put the up the Hogan-Earthquake match from SS90 on their YouTube page and it got me to thinking: I don’t recall ever seeing Earthquake get pinned in a WWE ring (not counting house shows). This can’t be true, can it? Am I crazy or did Quake never get pinned once on TV in his entire WWE run? I know he lost a tag match, but he didn’t get pinned, and he lost by DQ and count out, too.

Kind of.

On July 1, 1991, Jake Roberts and Earthquake faced each other at Madison Square Garden, and Roberts pinned Quake with the DDT after Andre the Giant, who was seconding the Snake, distracted Earthquake. The entire card was televised regionally on the MSG Network. In prior answers in this column, I’ve got back and forth on whether a show like this counts as something that occurred “on WWF television.” Yes, it was broadcast on TV and, yes, it was a WWF show. However, it wasn’t seen nationally and cards of this nature typically weren’t referenced on other Fed shows like Prime Time or Superstars.

You can also see the Ultimate Warrior pinning Earthquake in singles action on the Coliseum Home Video release Wrestlefest ’91. (Not to be confused with an untelevised house show in St. Louis called Wrestlefest 1991.) Home video is not a television show, obviously, but it is still a recorded match that the WWF made available for its fans on a national basis, so you can make your own call as to whether this counts.

This was the only record that I could find of Earthquake being pinned on WWF television.

. . . or at least it was the only record that I could find of Earthquake being pinned on WWF television when he was called Earthquake. John Tenta, the man who portrayed Earthquake, returned to the WWF during the Attitude Era as the masked Golga, part of the Parade of Human Oddities. Despite some initial popularity, the Oddities were quickly pushed down the card and wound up losing several matches.

On the November 23, 1998 episode of Monday Night Raw, the Headbangers defeated Golga and Kurrgan of the Oddities when the Insane Clown Posse turned heel on the Oddities, allowing them to pin Golga. In a rematch at 1998’s In Your House: Rock Bottom pay per view, Golga got pinned by the Bangers (specifically Mosh) again.

Jeff Jarrett also pinned Golga in a singles match on a 1998 episode of Sunday Night Heat in a strange one-off match.

In 1999, the Oddities were relegated to the WWF’s c-shows before ultimately getting released. On the way out the door, they lost a triple threat tag team match on the January 23, 1999 Shotgun Saturday Night involving DOA and Too Much when one of the DOA members pinned Golga, which struck me as odd because Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor seemed like more likely candidates to drop the fall. A month later on the February 20 Shotgun, an eight-man tag pitting DOA and Too Much against the Oddities of Golga, Kurrgan, Giant Silva, and George “The Animal” Steele ended when Brian Christopher pinned Golga.

Ignacio walks old women across the street and uses his left and right turn indicators:

We know about babyfaces who never turned heel, like Ricky Steamboat. There are any heels who never turned face?

There is a very small handful of heels that never turned face.

That’s in part because many wrestlers start off when they are very young, and when you’re young and just getting thrown into the ring for the first time, it’s easier to make you a face since you’re more likely to look clean cut and you can follow the lead of an experienced heel wrestler who is calling the match. For those reasons, a lot of guys who are cited as permanent heels in other discussions on this topic actually WERE faces in their very early days. This includes names like Rick Rude, Tully Blanchard, Muhammad Hassan, King Kong Bundy, the original Sheik, and the Iron Sheik, all of whom were good guys when they very first debuted but never turned back after they became heels.

That being said, who qualifies as a career heel?

I’m not aware of Tony “Ludvig Borga” Halme ever having been a good guy. He avoided an early career face run because his first run of significance was in Japan where in the 1990s a big foreign guy was always going to be a heel.

There are extenuating circumstances here, but Zeus was never a babyface. The WWF and WCW both brought him in to be a heel foil to Hulk Hogan, and even in the couple of matches that he had outside of those big leagues, he was brought in as a dominant monster based on his appearance in No Holds Barred.

Nick has made it out of the minors:

What NXT wrestler do you think was the most disappointing once they were called up to the main roster WWE?

It had nothing to do with his performance and had everything to do with the creative that he was given, but I was always disappointed that Donovan Dijak did not do more on the main roster. He was a big guy who moved well and seemed like exactly the kind of wrestler that WWE would want to push. He had some absolute bangers during his time on the independent circuit. Then, he gets called up to the main roster, and . . . he’s put into perhaps one of the worst stables of all time, and he’s put into that stable during the Thunderdome era when it seems that nothing could get over.

The company did call him up to the main roster for a second time a couple of years later, but that was seemingly done before any plan for him was developed, and he disappeared as soon as he reappeared.

Donny from Allentown is going meta but leaving Mark Zuckerberg at home:

Do you have an archive where you have all of your answered wrestling questions that is viewable to the public?

There is an Ask 411 Wrestling tag on the website, which should take you to ever installment of the column ever posted. You can bookmark that link, or you can find it at the bottom of every installment of Ask 411.

Blake has tried so hard and gotten so far:

Who, in your opinion, are the five best WWE superstars since 1990 to never win any title? In other words, superstars that made their WWE main roster debut after January 1 1990 but never held any main roster championship?

I found this question interesting because, though there has been plenty of discussion of who has never won a WORLD championship, the question of who has never won any championship at all has not been touched on nearly as much. This is complicated further by the post-1990 timeframe that Blake put on the question, because the 90s (particularly the late 90s) is when the number of championships exploded and reigns became so rapid fire that most wrestlers of note can say that they were at least a Tag Team Champion or Hardcore/24-7 Champion.

That said, I was able to come up with some names who definitely qualify:

5. Aja Kong: Her time in the WWF was brief, but if you look at this question in terms of pure in-ring talent, there may be no better wrestler who appeared in WWE but never held a WWE title. She was an absolute machine who cranked out four-five star matches in Japan, but she was a victim of circumstance in the Fed, as she was brought in right when the company made the decision to scrap its women’s division altogether.

4. Brian Pillman: There are extenuating circumstances that prevent Pillman from holding WWF gold, as he was injured for much of his time there and then unfortunately passed away not long after he was able to wrestle, but for a time he was one of the most talked about characters in all of pro wrestling and, in WCW, he was a top flight performer between the ropes.

3. Lex Luger: I feel like some people treat Luger’s run in the WWF and his failure to win a championship there as a bit of a punchline, but if you look at everything he did in WCW both before and after his time in the Fed, he had the ability to at least be credible with a secondary championship, if not the promotion’s main belt.

2. Vader: Vader was major player and world champion just about everywhere he went, and he also seemed to have just about every quality that Vince McMahon would want to see in his top heel. However, when one of the top babyfaces of the time decides that he doesn’t care for working with you, that’s going to cut you off at the knees, no matter how good you are or how well you did in other promotions.

1. Jerry Lawler: I totally understand why Jerry Lawler never held a championship in the WWF, because he really didn’t need one. That being said, if WWF history played out slightly differently, I could see a world in which he was a transitional champion for a secondary title (think about the Mountie’s IC Title win) or briefly held the Hardcore Title during the Attitude Era for a comedy spot. None of those things happened, though, and as a result Lawler may be the most talented wrestler with the longest tenure in the post-90s WWF/WWE who never held a championship there.

That does it for this week. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.