THIS Is The Most Overrated Wrestling Match Of All Time

The match devolves from boring to ugly at the precipice of the final third. Not struggle ugly; ugly ugly. Shawn goes for the flying forearm splash; Hart, in a rare miscue, is not in position, and struggles to gracefully reverse it into body slam. With 16 minutes left on the clock, Michaels performs his trademark, agonising psycho bumps and sells Hart’s vicious striking game. Hart is relentless. Just as Michaels desperately crawls out of the ring, his back crumpled, Hart flattens him with a suicide dive. Stiff shots are exchanged. Hart is brutal; Michaels is battling.

This is the match we paid for. This is the match the WWF promoted—but it follows something so exhaustive and aimless and pointless that the audience cannot receive it with the same energy. This isn’t even a make-good crescendo; the action slows with yet another rest hold. It makes sense, at last; Hart can’t lose the title in the event of a draw.

And then it makes no sense, because the match restarts. All of Hart’s tiresome defensive stalling is for absolutely nought. No entertainment. No drama. No point. The title is removed from him, via an impromptu and thus unfair decision, and this is meant to put Michaels over as the pure-of-heart babyface realising his childhood dream.

And then, in the end. Shawn simply flattens Bret with the Sweet Chin Music in sudden death overtime. This isn’t just underwhelming; it betrays everything in a match that in itself betrays its selling point.

But why? Why was it so punishingly tedious, given what we know of its genius performers? Hart and Michaels, astonishingly, rave about the match now. It is the one shared onscreen moment in which they are in tension-free harmony. Aside from elements of the finish—and Tony Chimel, God bless you—the only remote point of fascination is the fierce way in which they potato one another throughout.

Perhaps they are simply proud that they maintained their professionalism.