7 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Raw (9 Sept - Results & Review)

2. Perfect Booking, Or Trope Booking For Legends?

The announcement that Bret Hart would appear on this week’s Raw, emanating from Calgary, sent fans into speculation mode about how the Hitman would be utilized on the WWE show he helped make famous.

In the end, Hart ended up partaking in a time-honored WWE tradition of bringing out a legend to a massive pop, then immediately having current superstars overshadow them and talk as if they weren’t even in the ring for much of the segment.

Monday night, this involved Gunther coming out and feigning praise for the Hitman before delivering a killer line that Bret was “a close second” to his favorite wrestler of all time: Bill Goldberg. This drew out fellow Canadian Sami Zayn to defend Hart and to try to goad Gunther into a World Heavyweight Championship match.

To his credit, Bret got to get involved a bit more when Gunther declined and left, calling the champion a coward, which clearly got under the Ring General’s skin, triggering a brawl with Sami. But overall, this was pretty average for a Bret Hart appearance, his first since Clash at the Castle in 2022, which is disappointing. Perhaps this would have felt a bit more meaningful if they had leaned on Bret and Sami’s previous interactions - Hart introduced Zayn for his first Raw match several years ago - or had them build rapport before Gunther came out.

As it turned out, Gunther and Sami could have delivered the same promos without Bret there, talking about the Hitman in the abstract, and it would have mostly worked. Bret fans should be ecstatic to see the Hitman in Calgary – and the home of Canadian Stampede – one more time, but beyond that, he felt like more of a plot device than one of the biggest stars in wrestling history.