Bret and Diesel RUMBLE in Tampa

Diesel v Bret Hart (Royal Rumble, 1/22/95)

I remember there was a point where I thought this was maybe one of the ten best WWF matches ever. 2008 feels so very long ago. I don't recall exactly WHY I liked it so much and there's no way I'm going back to read whatever nonsense I was writing twelve years ago. Since then I have watched many many hours of Battlarts and Tenryu and skeezy lucha indies that run shows in abandoned post office buildings, so it would stand to reason that this type of match isn't something I'll lose my marbles over in the year 2020. And I'm not sure if it's a great match or anything but I did still like it a lot; probably the most of any Bret/Diesel match as the Survivor Series one kind of bored me to tears last time. I'm a sucker for matches built around dueling body part work. This was mostly pretty standard limbwork and around midway in I thought they'd given up on it. Diesel either forgets or chooses not to sell his leg for a little while, but to his credit he at least picks it back up again as the match goes on, and then they add the back/ribwork on Bret, and both remain factors basically right until the end. Technically there's no true payoff to it, but that's because the match itself doesn't have a true payoff (what with the melee at the end resulting in a no contest). Overall it was good stuff though, and actually felt like bits of strategy. I think I like Bret Hart again, guys. I mean it's not that I ever actively disliked him, it's just that I guess for a while I didn't really care about watching or talking about him, especially when he was never a personal favourite to begin with. But I've watched a decent chunk of Bret Hart lately and he's been fairly impressive in most of it. This is the best performance of the lot as he absolutely carries the load. A friend of mine said not long ago that we always think of Bret as this guy who is Very Good at Wrestling and does everything super solidly, but beyond that isn't one of those Little Things Wrestlers. Or something to that effect. And I'm someone who would fall into that category, but lately I'm wondering if maybe he isn't better at The Little Things than he gets credit for (like, I watched the Summerslam match with Lawler the other night and at one point he pulled the strap down, and he absolutely knew what that meant and it ruled like fuck). He was always good at little subtleties in his selling, for example, and some of what he did in this was really cool. He works more heelish as Diesel is BIG DADDY COOL AW YEAH and the face of the New Generation, but he's obviously less established than Bret so it makes sense. Bret goes to the leg early and uses the figure-four at a few points. He wraps the leg around the post a bunch and refuses to break clean several times. I love him pointing to his ear like "what's that? I can't hear you there" as Hebnar tries to force the break. I completely blanked on him using his wrist tape to tie Diesel to the post and stomp his head in but man that was fucking inspired. And of course I loved him just smashing Diesel's leg with a chair as it was wrapped around the post, which led directly into him finally trying the Sharpshooter (and that elicited some proper boos, whereas before the crowd were pretty firmly on his side). Diesel's work on the back/ribs is decent enough and leads to a couple cool spots, including an Argentine backbreaker which is a move that doesn't get rolled out enough, and there was a great bit where he broke out of yet another figure-four by just punching Bret in the chest. There was also a really cool sense of escalation and it played into some great payback spots. Bret hit a tope early in the match, then later tried a plancha, but this time Diesel caught him and drove him back-first into the post. Diesel mostly wrestled clean, but after Bret pulled that with the chair there was a chance later on for Diesel to get revenge. Bret was caught in the ropes by his leg, so Diesel grabbed the chair (selling his leg as he dropped down off the apron, which was neat) and went to batter him with it, but Bret managed to free himself in time. Then in one of my favourite bits of the match he noticed Diesel putting the chair away again and started rolling around on the mat holding the leg that had been tangled in the ropes. When Diesel went to pick him up Bret hooked him in a small package, and for a crowd that was dead as a doorknob early on they bit entirely on that nearfall. I even liked the booking of the interference. Shawn's run in allowed Diesel to score the visual pinfall, then Owen's saved Diesel from potentially submitting to the Sharpshooter. Owen removing the turnbuckle pad and Bret taking his sternum bump in the corner ruled too. Bret totally sold the hell out of it and made it look like he'd been shot in the chest. AND it led to Diesel trying to ram Bret's head into it shortly after - in a clear departure from him wrestling squeaky clean - only for Bret to kick him in the leg and ram HIS head into it instead. Really cool layout, easy story to follow, a perfectly good performance from Nash and a pretty dang great one from Hart. And that, friends, was a whole lot of words.