One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY WWE WrestleMania

16. WrestleMania 26 | The Bret Hart Vs. Mr. McMahon Back-Up Plan

The match that people had lost interest in seeing, and was incapable of being good, eventually happened at WrestleMania 26: Bret Hart Vs. Mr. McMahon. 

A one-sided hammering that felt longer than decades of Montreal discourse, Bret Vs. Vince was so bleak, such an anti-attraction, that it’s bizarre to think that Vince spent so many years trying to make it happen. 

Bringing Bret Hart back to WWE was a complex negotiation. Vince had idly dreamed of it for years and years. Bret, affected by a brutal full nelson of grief and betrayal, had resisted; for a long while, the beautiful three-disc DVD set released in 2005 and 2006 Hall of Fame induction was enough to satisfy a longing to restore his legacy. Did Bret want closure, money, or one last impossible bid for adulation? 

Nobody knows his motivation, but it happened. It felt like it was never going to happen for so long that Vince implemented a ‘Mania 26 back-up plan which, according to the January 18, 2010 Observer, was Mr. McMahon Vs. The Undertaker. 

Before talks for Bret’s return intensified in September 2009, Vince, completely obsessed with the events of Montreal, booked an angle in which the Undertaker lost to CM Punk’s Anaconda Vice hold at Breaking Point despite not tapping out. Nothing more than a cop-out with which to drag out the feud, as was tradition, ‘Taker blamed it on Teddy Long, who blamed it on Vickie Guerrero, before nothing happened. That’s probably because Bret accepted the offer - but perhaps the idea was for McMahon to reveal himself as the man who screwed ‘Taker. 

It would have been better than Bret Vs. Vince, but not by much. Mr. McMahon Vs. The Undertaker had happened already, at Survivor Series 2003, and it was only vaguely compelling as a result of Vince’s salsa-thick crimson mask. That wasn’t happening in 2010 PG times.