The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Bret Hart Singles Matches

It won’t come as a surprise to long-time readers that I’m a mark for Bret Hart—my favorite wrestler growing up, the author of my favorite wrestling memoir, and the man I consider to be the best pure in-ring worker I’ve ever seen.

This week, I’m paying tribute to some of his finest work, setting aside his excellent matches with the Hart Foundation tag team and later with the Hart Foundation stable built around him, as well as battle royal entries, I’m focusing instead on matches that saw Hart working one-on-one with another performer.

The countdown is based almost entirely on stand-alone match quality within the context of its time. While over-arching storylines inevitably have an impact on matches, and were a secondary concern, the focus is on what happened from bell to bell.

#7. Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart at SummerSlam 1994

In the summer of 1994, Bret Hart was reigning as the WWF World Champion and was probably as established as the face of the company as he ever had been or would be after pinning Yokozuna at WrestleMania and becoming firmly entrenched in a headliner feud with Owen Hart that had a tendency to result in excellent matches.

The brother-brother rivalry came to a head at SummerSlam 1994 in a steel cage match. In an era when the WWF was not explicitly PG, but nonetheless aiming for family friendly, the Harts worked one of the all-time great blood-less steel cage matches, and arguably the best match that ever occurred in the big blue cage, in a bout that was more or less equally divided between working their usual seamless style of technically based wrestling, playing off the drama of the heights of the cage (that superplex!), and using the drama of the escape rules to their full advantage—knowing that Owen did not need to pin his brother or make him submit, but merely make it to the outside first.

This was a fitting blow off to an excellent program that reinforced Bret’s top positioning and cemented Owen’s spot as an upper card talent who wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle of bad tag teams or lower card job matches again. My biggest knock on the whole scenario is that the match didn’t main event, instead going on before the blah Undertaker vs. Undertaker showdown.

#6. Bret Hart vs. Chris Benoit on Monday Nitro, October 1999

I almost elected to write up my rationale without addressing the Benoit tragedy and perceptions of him afterward, given that anyone reading this column is surely aware of the context. But then, in a match that was so personal and so rooted in loss, tradition, and tribute, it feels false not to acknowledge how things would turn out for Benoit eight years later. He was a grizzled veteran who suffered concussions, and who had some questionable old school mentalities drilled into his head. But he’s also a man who felt very real emotion without outwardly expressing it. In the wake of the Benoit family tragedy, people reference the loss of Eddie Guerrero as a key moment in Chris’s psychological damage and deterioration. I have to imagine that the loss of Owen Hart affected his psyche, too.

And it’s because of Benoit’s shared lineage as a graduate of Stu Hart’s Dungeon, Benoit’s skill as a worker, and Benoit’s friendship with Owen that Bret handpicked him for this tribute match in the same building where Owen had fallen to his death months earlier—the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri.

The match to follow was a technical masterpiece, oriented toward submission holds. The fact that it was a tribute match for Bret’s brother added an interesting dimension—that despite a half hour of excellent back-and-forth wrestling, there was never really any doubt about who was going over and that didn’t take a thing a way from this match—less a staged competition, more a clear-cut exhibition.

Hart won via Sharpshooter in what was easily his best WCW performance.

#5. Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 12

There will be those readers who suggest this match is way underrated. Heck, when I first watched it, I may well have argued that it was the greatest wrestling match I’d ever seen.

Other fans will argue that they didn’t like this one at all. That a one-fall, sudden-death finish to an Iron Man Match negates the gimmick, and that the action is otherwise slow.

From a psychology perspective, I’m actually quite all right with the finish here, and thought that neither man succumbing to a fall sold just how good and determined they each were, besides protecting both men—that Hart would have retained were it not for the sudden-death add-on (and may have won via Sharpshooter if the match had continued uninterrupted. The situation was ripe for a high profile rematch—in theory the WrestleMania 13 main event, before HBK lost his smile.

I’m impressed with each man’s work, too—having the conditioning and arsenal of holds to produce an entertaining sequence over the course of an hour, and doing so with few overt instances of holds being used for rest. For all of these reasons, it’s a clear top five pick in the Bret hart catalog for me, and quite arguably a top five pick for Michaels matches as well.

The reason I can’t justify going higher is that I find the rewatchability factor on this match pretty low. Knowing how it will turn out, knowing not to bite on any submission hold or two-count, knowing you’re going to be there watching for over a full hour, this one has aged into a bit of a chore to re-consume.

#4. Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart at WrestleMania 10

In addition to being an outstanding pure wrestling match, and an easy pick for one of the top five opening matches of any WWE PPV ever, there’s a very real argument that this match features Bret’s career-best character work during a match. Yes, he’s the face, and yes, he executes every move excellently, but there’s an additional layer of nuance in how he carries himself here, in his very first match opposite his brother, selling his deeply conflicted emotions and dedication to wining the match while trying not to hurt Owen.

As a counterpoint, this is the point at which Owen really broke out as a heel—obnoxious, vicious, eager to win at any cost.

The match to follow is a brilliant fast-paced, mostly technical bout that culminates in a beautiful finish—not in Owen cheating, nor KOing or submitting his brother. Neither in Bret picking up the victory, as I assumed he would when watched the match live. On the contrary, Owen reversed his brother’s victory roll—not exactly a signature move for the Hitman, but one he had used on a number of occasion (probably most memorably to win the King of the Ring tournament the previous summer). Owen had it scouted, held fast and trapped Bret in an inescapable pinning predicament for just long enough to secure the pin fall.

This match made Owen Hart as an upper carder and told an excellent, complicated for Bret as he moved on to win the WWF Championship for a second time at the end of the night.

#3. Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect at Summerslam 1991

I can see an argument for placing Bret-Owen at WrestleMania 10 above this match—for me, they wind up in a dead heat, but I give the edge to this match on this countdown on account of Hart having to work overtime to make this match excel while Curt Hennig’s back was already hurt, not to mention Hennig gritting his teeth and putting on a terrific, selfless performance before he went on the DL.

I’d also contend that this match, in many ways, did for Bret, what the WrestleMania 10 match did for Owen three years later. Going into this one, Perfect was a set-in-stone upper card guy, who had flirted with the main event and despite never capturing the WWF Championship, was nonetheless an iconic character and one of the best legitimatized heels on the roster. And then there was Hart. A plucky young face who had only recently emerged from the tag ranks. An excellent mechanic, but a champion? This was his proving ground as a singles star.

These two tore the house down and stole the show in an epic back-and-forth match that nicely spanned brawling and technical wrestling. Moreover, it culminated in an awesome finish, designed to push Hart as far as I imagine this match possibly could. First, Hart got an incredibly rare kick out from the Perfect Plex. Then, with both men’s legs tangled on the mat, Hart proved his technical proficiency in locking in the Sharpshooter from an unconventional angle, and forcing Perfect to submit cleanly and quickly to further cement the Sharpshooter hold as one of the top submission finishers in the business.

This was the kind of match that reinforced the legacy of Savage-Steamboatand other such classics that had, for a time, made the IC strap “the worker’s title.” Moreover, it would foretell excellent matches to follow between Hart and Shawn Michaels, not to mention the pairing that shows up at number two on the countdown.

(Side note: The Hart-Perfect rematch at King of the Ring 1993 was a narrow miss for this countdown, too.)

#2. Bret Hart vs. Davey Boy Smith at SummerSlam 1992

I referenced Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect as the match that shored up Hart as a singles wrestler, but this is quite arguably the match that readied him to become a main event fixture.

Indeed, this was Hart’s first one-on-one PPV main event, in large part because the event happened in The British Bulldog’s home country, in part because the bout promised to outshine the encounter between incumbent main eventers Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior.

Whatever the rationale, the match provided a canvas for The Hitman’s artistry in the ring. By Hart’s account in his memoir, Smith not in a great headspace and forgot so many of his cues, meaning Hart had to play ring general and call the extensively planned match piece by piece. As a casual observer, I’d never know the difference because the match flows so, so well, one of the very best face vs. face matches the WWF ever put on, and a classic big man-little man encounter, put on between two athletically gifted performers.

And then there’s the finish, so similar to the pin in Bret-Owen from two years later, but almost inverted—Hart going for sunset flip, Smith dropping to his knees and hooking Hart’s legs for a beautifully inescapable pinning predicament.

Smith got the win, Hart proved himself as a main event caliber performer. Sure enough, this match, too, would provide a rationale for Smith to challenge Hart for the world title down the road.

#1. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13

I’m tempted to pull a Justin Watry here and tell you that there’s no explanation needed. After all, what can I add about a match that so many pundits agree is the best in WrestleMania history, and some would go so far as to declare the greatest pro wrestling match of all-time? (Note: I’m not ready to make either of those arguments, but I can understand and respect why anyone would, and it certainly falls in a high spot on either of those lists.)

In short, this match had it all. A heated story and hot opening with these two tearing into each other. The brawling was fantastic. The technical wrestling was polished. The pace was fast, the selling was on point. Add onto all of this the historic stage of WrestleMania and the dawn of the Attitude Era. Add onto all of that the ramifications of this match and it’s brilliant execution—not just an outstanding face turn for Austin, not just an outstanding heel turn for Hart, but the single greatest double turn of all time between the two.

From the perspective of a Bret Hart match, and the purposes of this countdown, this one transcends Hart’s superior in-ring talents and even in his ability to earn sympathy and admiration as a face, and demonstrates his capacity to do all of the little things correctly to thrive as a heel as well—most notably at the end of the match attacking Austin after he’s already unconscious and then powdering out of a confrontation with guest referee Ken Shamrock. You don’t get much better than that.

Which matches would you add to the list? Bret’s matches with Steve Austin at Survivor Series 1996, Roddy Piper at WrestleMania 8, Mr. Perfect at King of the Ring 1993, Diesel at Royal Rumble 1995, and The Undertaker at SummerSlam 1997 were some of my top runners up. Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.