7 Exact Times Wrestlers Got Their Spot TAKEN
5. Bret Hart > Lex Luger (WWF Superstars Taping, February 22, 1994)
Vince McMahon always reverted to type.
The man actively tried to re-sign the Ultimate Warrior in December 1997. If you look at the leaked contract, it’s sobering. The date on the letterhead is December 17. This was after Vince’s big dawn of the Attitude Era address, in which Vince acknowledged that the fans were tired of “good guys versus bad guys”. Can you imagine Warrior playing with shades of grey, trying to add range to his character, as was the style at the time? That would be like Terrence Malick trying to direct Steven Seagal.
It makes an awful lot of sense, then, that Vince would opt to push Lex Luger over true fan favourite Bret Hart as 1994 began. While this is a gross oversimplification, Vince was mostly gross and simple man: Luger had a more muscular body and better resembled a star superficially.
Vince spent much of the declining 1990s trying to relive the glory days of the 1980s, and Lex Luger, with his action movie physique and newfound patriotism, was a mulletted coping mechanism. While neither man was doing truly impressive numbers, Bret remained very popular with live crowds. McMahon thought Luger had the higher ceiling. Undecided, Vince booked a novel finish to the 1994 Royal Rumble match, in which both Luger and Bret toppled to the floor at the same time and were named as co-winners. This while creative was convoluted, and only served to buy Vince some time to make the choice.
Like the vast majority of his peers, Bret is an unreliable narrator; while his memory is shockingly photographic by the standards of a wrestler, his ego is hilariously large. So when Bret says that this whole deal was a weekly popularity contest, the winner of which would go on to defeat Yokozuna at WrestleMania 10, it makes him look good because he of course won it. Bret’s version of events does not account for the various whispers surrounding Luger at the time. Did Lex have an ego problem? Did he get drunk in a bar and brag that he was about to win the belt, infuriating Vince?
However, Bret has back-up in the form of Sean ‘The 123 Kid’ Waltman, who claimed in an old Kayfabe Commentaries shoot interview that Bret’s story is pretty much accurate. In an unaired segment on the February 22 Superstars taping, footage of which has since been unearthed, Lex Luger said to Yoko’s manager Jim Cornette that he wanted to try the winged eagle belt on, just to see how good he’d look with it wrapped around his waist. Luger even performed his entrance, as if he’d just actually won it. Per Waltman, this strange angle was designed so that Vince could literally visualise what company Ace Lex Luger would look and sound like. While Lex drew mild cheers for wearing the belt, the entrance was embarrassing.
The entitled weirdness of the angle probably explains the flat reaction, but the fans evidently were not clamouring for this vision of the future.