4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 13

2. Best There Is, Best There Was, Best There Ever Will Be

The Greatest Match In WWE History™ so say your writer, Bret Hart's Submission Match victory over Stone Cold Steve Austin begins a new chapter not just for the two most over wrestlers in the organisation but for the entire industry at large.

Only gaining heft as the years pass by, it's as though the ground can actually be felt shifting below the feet of 'The Hitman' and 'The Rattlesnake' as they beat and bludgeon each other all over Chicago's euphoric Rosemont Horizon.

Austin and Hart's bloody and brilliant war saw both men willing to die for their respective causes but neither able to strike the killshot. From a production standpoint, it's a tonal triumph - a babyface driven to destracton by a heel's sh*thousery gradually loses sight of why he's so desperate to destroy his foe in the first place. The diminished support of the braying masses was - to Hart, and believably so - the fault of a faltering fanbase, not his faltering actions. On commentary, Vince McMahon and Jim Ross spend the entire clash tacitly cheerleading for Stone Cold despite the ripple effect of his his every ugly action. To them, and by proxy a divided audience, he is a man unmoved by excuses in a situation here where none can be offered in the aftermath.

There are a number of factors required to craft the perfect wrestling match, but two perfect performers remain at the centre of the formula. Every punch thrown in livid fury, every hold synched in deeper than normal and every bilious broadside lobbed at one another between blows feels painfully, palpably real.

Austin's blood flooded and stained the mat at its exhausting climax - a call made between the wrestlers without knowledge of Vince McMahon - but it was just one more way two of the greatest artists chose to decorate their canvas. Truly wondrous art doesn't just stand the test of time, but transcends it. Bret Hart Vs Stone Cold Steve Austin from WrestleMania 13 is a masterpiece.