A few years back, during the first lockdown in 2020, I went through a ton of WWF Golden Age tags. You know, that rough period of 1985-1989 with the fun tag division. Most of what I watched was Rockers and Islanders and a bit of Demolition, but all of them against a decent variety of other teams. One match up I did not re-visit was the Hart Foundation v British Bulldogs. I watched all of THOSE some time back in the 2000s and it was never my favourite pairing anyway, and the Bulldogs are kind of whatever and I'd rather watch a dozen Hart Foundation v Islanders matches if I'm going to watch a dozen Hart Foundation matches. But I got the itch to watch at least one Harts v Bulldogs match for the first time in forever, and perhaps that one will turn into two or three or maybe even more but probably not more than three. We'll see how it goes.
Gorilla notes at the outset that "this match literally REEKS of connotations." Certainly one of his better lines. He's talking about title shot connotations and really what he means is ramifications rather than connotations, as the winners here might get themselves a shot at Valentine and Beefcake in the near future. At least I assume that's what he's meaning. You can never really tell with Gorilla and that is why we love him dearly. I guess absence in wrestling makes the heart grow fonder because I thought this was pretty great and really didn't have any of the issues I usually think of with the Bulldogs. It had a nice early shine segment, a short Davey in peril segment followed by a longer spell with Dynamite in peril, and then in the last couple minutes I thought they were building towards a time limit draw before they came through with a clean finish. Not everything came off perfectly, but the majority of it did, structurally it landed great, and they nailed the big notes as well as the more minute things that really make a match pop. It was pretty fun seeing Dynamite and Bret have a top this contest at a few points, maybe something they started in Stampede and kept it running all the way down the road. First it was the spot where Dynamite grabs a seated Bret by the hair and yanks him into the air, which Bret paid him back for later. Then Dynamite took the sternum bump in the corner like a maniac, flipping backwards damn near into the middle of the ring, and later Bret took one of his own that was every bit as nasty. Bret is maybe still a bit vanilla at this stage, maybe isn't comfortable projecting his character yet, but he's definitely a great mechanic and solid in all of the ways you'd expect. He was also fun complaining about nothing hair pulls early on, really screaming at the referee to have a word with Dynamite. Dynamite is absolutely yoked to the moon and back, all intensity all the time. He even backs Bret into the ropes with enough force that he nearly flips Bret over them. His heat segment was excellent and I guess it's easy to forget how good Dynamite could be when he wasn't doing stupid shit or dominating 90% of matches against folks he probably shouldn't be dominating. He took a slam on the concrete that looked disgusting and eventually Davey couldn't take any more, ran in and chased Bret all the way around the ring twice, Jimmy Hart scrambling for safety with the megaphone waving like a white flag. Neidhart was mostly about the front facelocks and choking, but his timing was decent enough and he at least has fun bully charisma. With a less useless ref' some of the distraction spots might've been better, although to be fair it doesn't look like the Hart Foundation REALLY know how to maximise those moments with interesting stuff yet. A couple times they basically just did a blind tag, which is fine and all but there was a little more scope to be creative if they had it in the holster. The last couple minutes sort of meander and there was one ropey bit of selling where Bret just went back on offence after getting hit with a huge gorilla press slam (and this was post-hot tag, so Davey was the fresh man), but the finish itself was great. Very good start for what is a somewhat maligned pairing in 2023.
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