7 Wrestling Matches You Won't Believe Actually Happened

A very fresh-faced and ridiculously cowboy-hatted Bret Hart actually competed against the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, as a stand-in for Dynamite Kid in 1982, but it's his tussle with his feline follow-up Mitsuharu Misawa that we're interested in here.

For many, The Hitman and Misawa were mirror images of one another on opposite continents, each exponents of technical proficiency, and each masters of the methodical, intentional storytelling which defined their career (and in the latter's case, the promotion he was working for).

Though they'd agonisingly never come face to face during their primes, the two did meet during the WWE/AJPW Wrestling Summit at the Tokyo Dome in April 1990.

And all told... it's a bit of a letdown. Hart, coming off a knee injury, had absolutely no chemistry with his Japanese counterpart, and rather than being a slow-build, the match is simply slow, ending in a time limit draw. A year on, Misawa shook off the mask as Giant Baba shot him into the stratosphere at the expense of Jumbo Tsuruta, whilst Bret would finally begin to embark on his own glittering singles run. A real case of 'what could have been'.