WWE In 1997 | Wrestling Timelines

29. February 16 | Final Four

The solution to the shredded WrestleMania 13 card is excellent and unique: for the first time ever, the WWF promotes a four-way match, billed as Final Four, held under Elimination rules. Bret Hart outlasts Steve Austin, the Undertaker and Vader. 

The match is a fantastic novelty. It’s difficult to know which pairing to focus on, and in a great early moment, the four wrestlers decide for you: when Bret tries to launch a running attack onto Austin, Vader swats him away with a crunching block. Vader is the first to use a weapon in a match that can’t end in disqualification, and it’s a great touch that he smashes Bret with the steel chair: this all exists to slowly build Bret’s heel turn, and while Vader isn’t doing anything technically illegal, it compounds Bret’s sense of injustice. The wrestlers, thankfully, don’t contain themselves to the ring in a match that can end in pinfall, submission, or over-the-top Royal Rumble-style elimination. 

It falls apart thrillingly. The brawling is intense. Vader gets split open the hard way in a visual illustration of the brutality. It’s his best night in the Fed, but this is all about Bret and Austin; at the finish, Bret takes advantage of ‘Taker’s elimination of Austin by immediately dumping him out. This, again, is clever; Bret isn’t an overt heel, just opportunistic. 

It’s not exactly a sportsmanlike way of winning, but is anything fair in the World Wrestling Federation these days?