10 Awesome Wrestling Insults That Nobody Ever Talks About
6. Shawn Michaels Uses More Than Words
Shawn Michaels had an altogether different approach to burying Bret Hart.
If any pro wrestler ever warranted such a high opinion of himself, it's the Hitman. To frame the achievement of his Holy Grail Tom Magee carry-job through a modern lens, it was as if Bret made Shane McMahon's worked punches look like Jerry Lawler's. The Excellence of Execution wasn't just a gimmick; it was a truth in a fake world, and Michaels knew, sadistically, how dear Hart's reputation was to him.
As part of their strange, fascinating, and ultimately toxic adapted shoot of 1997, Vince McMahon, sensing a shift in the wider narrative, encouraged both men to lay into one another on TV. Bret was the first victim of this cutthroat era because his earnest, sententious heroism and inability to spar on the mic undid him.
Michaels sensed this. Hart's lack of cool was blood in the water. On October 6, 1997, Hart failed to match Shawn in his element. Shawn, in his grating, mock-friendly way, said to McMahon "You were an ass long before I made one out of ya!"
Bret tried to interrupt, before Shawn comprehensively framed him as a tiresome, self-important man out of time.
"Yes, Bret Hart," he said.
Written down, those words may not carry much weight. But Shawn's delivery was so exhausted in its lack of patience, so withering in its "Not this f*cker again" tone, that it ruined Bret. The addition of his surname, too, depicted Bret as a child.
He might as well have called him "Young man," because he was his daddy.