Bret's one of those guys you can rely on to show up on TV in '94 and have something at least watchable. It might not be spectacular, might be fairly garden variety, but it'll bottom out at decent if he's given around ten minutes to work (almost irrespective of the opponent). That's actually been one of the kinda sorta knocks on Bret over the years. He's a Big Show wrestler, not a Small Show wrestler (neither of which having anything to do with Paul Wight); his style lends itself way more to working twenty minutes on PPV than eight minutes on Superstars or Mania or even RAW as it was in its formative years (for the flagship program it still really only had one non-squash match per show at this point). Comparing him to the other top end guys in the WWF that year there's probably more chance of the 123 Kid v Kwang for nine minutes coming out of nowhere and being awesome, but at the same time there's more chance of the 123 Kid v Kwang for nine minutes bombing than Bret v Kwang for nine minutes doing the same. Michaels started to get really fun in '94 so him v someone like Doink could end up being a hoot just for Michaels bumping around like a maniac. On the other hand it could end up being a pile of muck because Doink wasn't very good and Michaels wasn't as consistent as Bret. So the knock on Bret not being all that exciting working a smaller card might be true, but at the same time it's maybe not all that fair either. And sure enough this was super solid and Bret was very good in it. He hit everything nice and crisp, took Kwang's strikes right under the jaw and made him look like a viable enough threat, then hit the Russian leg sweep, the elbow off the middle rope, the backbreaker and all the other signature moves before taking it home. It was nine minutes, he looked good, Kwang looked good, and at the end he felt like the most worthy person to be holding that title belt. Say what you like but there weren't many more reliable than the Hitman.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment