Listened to Prichard's take on this last night.


Bret is a bitch and was completely unreasonable. Thank God Vince did what he did, one of the coolest things ever.


Bret did manage to make a wrestler destroying TVs in defiance of his promoter boring, so he has that going for him.

That was a great Prichard episode.

People look back at it and call Vince the bad guy, but you have to understand the war between WCW & WWF at the time. Vince had seen Luger, Hall, & Nash leave and providing an instant ratings boost to WCW. The traditional way for a champion ending their run in a territory is to drop the belt, ensuring a smooth transition to the next guy. Vince was afraid Bret would leave with the belt or just quit altogether, causing PR damage to the company. Bret was being unreasonable with the circumstances of dropping the belt; drop it in December at the PPV or drop it when they got back to the states. Vince made a sound business decision and it led to the "Mr. McMahon" character while Bret regretted his decision to move to WCW (money was better but the booking of him was horrible).

Bert was lucky to even be champ. That choice almost killed the company.

Bert was lucky to even be champ. That choice almost killed the company.

Vince went with the safe choice. Shawn was "injured" and had an attitude; Taker didn't get over as champ; Austin wasn't ready. After those top 4, you had Mankind, Owen, Goldust, and Faarooq.

How long was Taker's run?

I was kind of out of the loop in those years (because of Bret mostly)

Well...Shawn lost his smile.

Imagine if Michaels hadn't hurt his back against Taker in 98, which led to dropping the belt to Austin.

Michaels pulls his "creative control", beats Austin at Mania, does the company survive?

WM 13 to Summerslam '97 (where Bret won after Shawn hit Taker with the chair, leading to HBK heel turn and feud with Taker, then Bret).

Well...Shawn lost his smile.

Imagine if Michaels hadn't hurt his back against Taker in 98, which led to dropping the belt to Austin.

Michaels pulls his "creative control", beats Austin at Mania, does the company survive?

I think Austin and HBK had a decent enough relationship that Shawn wouldn't be able to pull that BS on Vince. Austin was on fire at the time; faces always went over heels for the title at WM until Triple H in 2000. I think Shawn and Triple H might have spun off into something after WM with Hunter as the face.

Is that how it went down?

I thought the Stone Cold thing was happening no matter what. Maybe Prichard is full of shit but he said Bret vs Austin at 14 got serious consideration.

So was Bret more OVER than Taker?

I hate Bret, if you haven't noticed haha

Bert was lucky to even be champ. That choice almost killed the company.

So this thing got me back into wrestling and Triple H vs the Rock at 37 straight PPVs pushed me back out.

Bert "The Himtan" Hart!

But no, you're wrong, Bret Hart was a franchise player for the WWF, it was never stupid to make him the champion. He always drew, he always got heat. Maybe Vince shouldn't have been so bad at running his business that he couldn't afford to honor a contract anymore.

Jericho was the drizzling shits when he got to the WWF. Even I remember being disappointed that he finally got to the WWF and had Mr. Hughes as a tag-team partner or something. I don't know if guys were just dogging it with him to prove a point or what, but one of the shoot interviews said Vince put him in an angle with X-Pac because if Waltman couldn't get a good match out of Jericho, no one was going to, and that would be the end of him. That would have been an interesting twist if he had busted out of the WWF like three months in.

Bullshit, they got 20,000+ in the United Center (the one time they didn't run the Rosemont Horizon) for Bret-Owen. Bret drew fine, it was Diesel whose run at the top was a dark night of the soul for business.

You give me the drizzling shits any time you try to talk wrestling. This isnt the hockey section. You dont know nearly as much as you think

Jericho was bad when he arrived because thats what Vince did with guys who came over from WCW. Jericho was always capable of being a top guy he just had to prove himself to Vince

Seems like you're a little biased in favor of Bret.

Also, originally, I was thinking of the first title run. WM 9 era.


Bret was a terrible face. He was pretty decent as an American hating heel.


Vince doing the worked shoot where he said to Bret you had ZERO PERSONALITY was great.

I'm repeating what I heard from either a Cornette or a Prichard shoot where Vince was pissed with the quality of Jericho's matches early on. What's your issue with me here?

Frank gets it. Vince could pretend to be pissed all he wanted at Jericho after his arrival, but vince did it. It wasn't like Jericho somehow forgot to wrestle. I am a huge Xpac fan, jericho was way better than him.