10 WWE Plans Doomed From The Start
6. Bret Hart's Final WWE Championship Run
'The Excellence Of Execution' knew the game he was in and knew it really, really well.
Inch-perfect matches were just part of the acute understanding Bret Hart had of a business he was born into. The exploits of real and kayfabe rival Shawn Michaels were predictable to him, even if he only foretold them to try and rationalise the pained reality of his untenable situation.
The seminal Wrestling With Shadows documentary captured Bret's concern during a pow-wow with trusted confidant Pat Patterson. He said, "I'm not gonna lose all my heat to him, am I?...It's almost like he's gonna scoop my heat". He was, as usual, bang on.
Hart's SummerSlam 1997 WWE Championship victory was a pyrrhic one. It made all the sense in the world for the summer's most over heel to carry the company yet again, but it would it prove to be his last actual night in the headline role he craved. Guest referee Michaels' inadvertent swing of a steel chair cost The Undertaker the prize, and 'HBK' was so incredibly detestable in the aftermath as that Bret's pro-Canadian bile seemed cartoonish by comparison.
He didn't close a pay-per-view again until the night of the Montreal Screwjob. In that time, Shawn referred to the title as a "piece of tin" and himself as 'The Main Event'. 'The Hitman' took the bullet, and he was sharp enough to see the shooter all along.