Bret Hart is remembered as one of the WWF's most distinctive stars of the nineties. But his status as a great WWF Champion is marred by several issues. For one, he never really made the top spot his own. He had runs in 1992, 1994, 1995 and 1997, yet he was never capable of lighting business up and truly owning his spot. It was always as if he was just the reliable place holder, while Vince waited for the next true star to emerge. His failure as champion is also compounded by the way he ended his last run as WWF title holder. His refusal to do business was an insult to the time honoured tradition of doing the job on your way out of a territory. He failed in the way he handled himself in the Montreal fiasco, albeit Vince and others shared that failure. The truth is that many expected more of Bret as champion, he was the first real test of using smaller and more athletic workers in the championship spot. He failed to prove that something away from the Hogan model could really work, hence why Vince went back to the drawing board so many times in the 1992 - 1997 period.
