10 Wrestling Matches That Were NOTHING Like You Expected
7. Bret Hart Vs. Shawn Michaels Iron Man Match - WWF WrestleMania XII
This was the perfect match for the generation that stuck with the WWF throughout the New Generation Era.
This promised pure, unabashed wrestling for longer than we'd ever seen it before. It felt like the very culmination of our new way of engaging with the art: two technical wizards going for hell-for-leather, on the most prestigious stage, in this impossibly epic-sounding match - the match of their lives and ours.
Without rewatching the whole thing - there are six more entries to pen here, and it was a colossal bore - an experimental, random skip-scroll of the Network 'Mania XII stream follows.
- 1:38:46 - Hart has Michaels trapped in a headlock.
- 1:44:46 - Michaels has Hart trapped in an arm hold of some sort.
- 1:51:01 - Michaels just Superkicked the timekeeper! Can't you do something similarly exciting to your opponent?
- 1:56:21 - Michaels is working the arm again. This going-an-hour lark is fairly easy. Just lie down!
- 2:02:22 - Hart is selling the sh*t out of that arm. At least what has happened means something, dull though it was.
- 2:11:38 - Chinlock.
- 2:15:40 - Clothesline reversal into a backbreaker (botched).
- 2:20:03 - The crowd isn't trapped. Many are leaving, with red seats visible on the hard cam.
- 2:24:27 - Beautiful German from Bret. Just as it was 14 years later, it is too little, too late.
- 2:40:01 - And mercifully, it's over.