Bret Hart Defined The Idea Of A Fighting WWE World Champion

WWE has seen a wide spectrum of men reign as world champion across its existence. Some were portrayed as superheroes like Hulk Hogan and John Cena, who looked amazing and were capable of remarkable feats of strength. Some captured the imagination with remarkable feats of athleticism or physicality like Shawn Michaels and Brock Lesnar. Some were supersized like Yokozuna and The Undertaker. Bret Hart was the worker’s champion through and through, though, uniquely equipped to define the idea of a fighting champion in the WWE sphere.

Bret Hart One Of The Greatest In Ring Talents Of All Time

From the very first feuds of Bret Hart's WWE career, he was a top-notch worker. From there, he started to define his legacy as a singles wrestler via his Intercontinental Championship run. The story began when he defeated Mr. Perfect in an instant classic at SummerSlam 1991 and carried on with him putting on good-to-great matches opposite a range of opponents, highlighted by a WrestleMania encounter with Roddy Piper, and when The Hitman dropped the title to The British Bulldog at SummerSlam 1992.

Hart carried this ethos of the fighting champion and his unparalleled talents in the ring into his time as WWE Champion. His first two reigns included defending the title against unlikely challengers like Papa Shango and The 1-2-3 Kid, in addition to welcoming new main eventers like Shawn Michaels, Yokozuna, Razor Ramon, and Owen Hart to the top of the card by giving them the greatest matches of their career to date. The Hitman’s character was a fearless hero, willing to fight anyone who challenged him. Hart, the worker, was better suited than anyone before or since to play the fighting champ.

Bret Hart Wasn’t Larger Than Life

In his book, Bret Hart tells the story that when he first signed with WCW, he found a private dressing room waiting for him backstage. The Excellence of Execution immediately rejected this notion, tearing down the sign with his name from the door and telling Eric Bischoff he’d “change with the boys.” The principle at stake was that he didn’t want special or elitist treatment. He wanted to be a part of the roster community and not put on a pedestal relative to anyone else.

Related: 1995: The Year WWE Put Bret Hart In The Midcard & He Was Still Their Top Star

This example embodies Hart’s backstage demeanor, and by extension his persona as a wrestler. In contrast to Hulk Hogan or The Ultimate Warrior, with their Herculean physiques and tendency to get by on big personalities more so than technical precision, Hart was softer spoken and one of the greatest technical wrestlers of all time. The factors set him up as the ideal choice to play a defending champion—working a more rigorous schedule than WWE Champions to precede him. Indeed, part of his appeal stemmed from him his smaller size and talent for selling, which made him come across as a genuinely vulnerable champ who might drop the belt on any given evening.

Bret Hart Was Willing And Able To Make Other Wrestlers Look Good

There’s a longstanding narrative in professional wrestling that everyone is looking out for himself, and many top stars reach the top, in part, by protecting their own image at the expense of other workers. Bret Hart had a fundamentally different philosophy. As he described in his book, he went to pains to make other talents look good, under the premise that he’d look even better for beating stiff competition.

Hart wrote about selling the offense of the relatively small Hakushi when no one else on the roster wanted to. The Hitman also famously gave green talent Tom Magee the match of his life to sell WWE management on his potential. Hart famously put over Jean-Pierre Lafitte as a credible threat, too, when he certainly didn’t have to. The feud came at a point when Lafitte played a silly pirate gimmick and barely held onto a mid-card spot, while The Hitman was a former world champion.

As WWE Champion, Hart was especially well situated to sell for other talents and make them look like they belonged as contenders for the top title in the business. While Steve Austin has openly cited a lack of in ring chemistry with The Undertaker, and Shawn Michaels and Curt Hennig simply didn’t click in the ring despite their individual talents, it’s telling that The Excellence of Execution put on a stellar matches with all four of these top talents and quite a few more. Even Kevin Nash had his best matches of his Diesel run versus Hart, the ideal defending world champion and challenger of his era to make a big man look borderline unstoppable.

While there have been champions like Shawn Michaels and Daniel Bryan to represent a similar style to Bret Hart—uber-talented in the ring and capable of making opponents look great—The Hitman defined this style of main eventer in his era, and has arguably never been matched. He worked with all comers, went out of his way to sell for them, and developed his legend because of, rather than in spite of, showing up as a fighting champion week in and week out.

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