10 Great Wrestling Matches Hidden On Terrible Pay Per Views
9. Bret Hart Vs. British Bulldog - WWF In Your House: Seasons Beatings
Ah, 1995. Stuffed to the gills with naff occupational gimmicks, and with King B*stard Mable at the forefront of so much of it, it was an inauspicious year in WWF history - even if, quietly, two men in particular (Hart and Shawn Michaels) were revolutionising its in-ring oeuvre.
In Your House: Seasons Beatings was an appropriately dismal capper. Lumbering big men like Diesel, Mabel and Henry O. Godwinn sleepwalked their way through a tediously inactive midcard. By the time Hart and the Bulldog emerged for their WWF title match, the Hershey, Pennsylvania crowd, many of whom were vocal advocates of ECW, had been rendered comatose by the dreadful non-action. The setting could not have been any different to Wembley Stadium.
The match, however, was a triumph of character development - a brutal, bloody blueprint of the WWF's rampant Attitude Era. Superior in content to their more heralded SummerSlam 1992 original, Hart and Bulldog roused the crowd with a visceral display of technicality-cum-physicality. In better shape mentally and physically than in London, the vicious Davey Boy was a vastly underrated heel, bloodying and ragdolling his beleaguered opponent, whose selling was typically masterful.
Sumptuously paced - the dramatic escalation is almost unbearable, in the wake of Hart's crimson mask - elements of the original are recalled in a winning exhibition of continuity. The ending sees Hart roll up his brother-in-law for the narrow win in a fittingly literary denouement to an epic familial rivalry.