Bret Hart vs Mr. Perfect (WWF, 4-24-1989)

WWF at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY

I don’t know that I’ve ever watched this. I’ve had the DVD for over 12 years, and given my Bret Hart, uh, feelings, you’d assume I would have; also the fact that I love their famous matches (SummerSlam ’91, which I’ve never watched to BLOG ABOUT here, and even more, King of the Ring ’93). But I don’t remember watching this. Sometimes things slip the net.

Hell yeah, this has WWF Tony Schiavone on commentary with Lord Alfred Hayes. They’re still saying “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig on commentary, but Howard Finkel announces him as just “Mr. Perfect.” Alfred admires Perfect’s “amateur-style” outfit.

“These two men are very similar,” Tony says. Alfred notes they both have the excellence of execution, as Gorilla Monsoon says. Lord Alfred just called Bret Hart’s sunglasses “expensive” which even for me is a reach on wrestling commentary.

They do a cool spot early where Hennig goes for a drop toe hold, but Bret hops over the attempt and taunts him. Early stuff has Hart outfoxing Hennig. Lots of side headlock takeovers from Bret, something they did a lot together that always looked uniquely good when it was them.

I was having a conversation during this match on Twitter, where someone said it was wild there are people who say Bret have no charisma. I said there, and I’ll expand here because why not, it’s because a lot of people are dumb, and people are dumb as shit about what “charisma” means in general. By “people” I’m talking about wrestling fans here, who are, y’know…I mean, y’know. But, and I’m sure I’ve said this before somewhere on here, “charisma” does not mean “good at promos.” Bret was not a great promo guy, he was decent at best generally, and even with him forever being my all-time favorite wrestler, I admit that fully. I’m not a lunatic. But Jeff Hardy is also a shit promo. No one argues he doesn’t have charisma. The fact that Bret so naturally got people to like him is how he got to the top of the WWF in the first place. And how he stayed there. It was not Vince McMahon’s great love affair with him. Vince tried to replace him repeatedly and failed to do so until Steve Austin came along, basically, and I’m not just saying that because I’m not “a Shawn Michaels guy.” Michaels didn’t handle the pressure of being on top so well back then and back to Bret they went yet again, just like they did after going back to Hogan in ’93 failed, after Diesel for an entire year late ’94 to late ’95 failed, after Undertaker didn’t exactly light it up as champ in ’97.

And this match shows you how that all sort of came together. He got over because he was simply better than almost everyone else in the company and it showed. The only guys around this late 80s period who could hang with Bret were Hennig, Randy Savage, Ted DiBiase, a couple others maybe. Ricky Steamboat had been in the company into ’88, obviously, and the British Bulldogs were around for a portion of time. I love Greg Valentine but he was mostly coasting by then because he’d done as much as he was gonna do. He had personality while wrestling, and loads of it. I love Tito Santana and Rick Martel but same, basically. Martel wasn’t getting to flex in the WWF.

Anyway, this match. It’s really, really good, which is probably not a surprise. Hart is smarter and sharper than Hennig early, but once Curt takes over, he really takes over. There’s a viciousness to Perfect’s work, and still so fundamentally sound and smooth, too. When Hennig does things like throwing Bret across the ring with a handful of hair, he delivers it with meanness, and Hart takes it like a lunatic, as he does the chest into the barricade spot from the apron, and the chest-first corner bump in the ring.

Hart comes back with a slingshot plancha to the floor, hits a nice suplex for two. Near fall that MSG — still by far WWF’s most important building — seems to actually buy. The match goes to a time limit draw in the middle of a count after an elbow from the second rope by Bret, and it’s all even at 15 minutes (actually 19:05 apparently, I bet the folks in ’89 had a field day with THAT one). Crowd pissed off. Bret pissed off. Hennig happy, because he knows he was beaten, and he remains undefeated. Hennig turns down the offer to do five more minutes, then waits for Bret to turn around and jumps him from behind. Bret winds up getting the better of that and people are going nuts.

This is really good in that way MSG matches could be at this point. Not a mega classic, but really strong work throughout, the 20 minutes pass like nothing, and it was probably significantly better than anything else on the card. (Actually on double check this show also had a really good DiBiase-Roberts match, Vlad and the gang had a great time at MSG for this one.)

Rating: 4/5