WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart recently spoke with portsmouth.co.uk to promote his one man only show at The Pyramids in Southsea on Sunday. Here are the highlights.
On today’s wrestling style and who he would’ve liked to wrestle:
I think that the wrestlers today are very skilled, and a lot of them are really great, gifted wrestlers, like Daniel Bryan, CM Punk and even Kevin Owens. I tip my hat to them. I enjoy watching them, they’re special talents and they carry that torch to the next generation.
There’s a lot of those wrestlers who’ve had a big impact since I left. I’d like to have worked with CM Punk or Brock Lesnar, but I find that there’s something missing in wrestling that was more prevalent in my era. I think the actual storytelling was better.
I could allow a story to unfold or not be rushed. ‘There’s no drama any more, it’s just like bing, bing, bing, bing. They’re too busy setting up the next moves and it seems very rehearsed like the whole match is rehearsed. I miss the natural flow in my matches.
On people calling wrestling fake:
I think people who say that are kind out of touch with reality. The least-best word to describe wrestling is fake.There’s a lot of injuries and it’s high impact. I never thought of, and I still don’t think, of any of my matches as fake. The terminology is degrading.
I think fans understand that there’s a storyline process. As an example, you look at my match with Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13, there was a lot of blood and (Bret’s trademark move) the sharpshooter, he didn’t tap-out and all that.
It was a very violent struggle and it tells the story of a good guy and a bad guy, but it tells this beautiful struggle of a battle of two people fighting for everything they believe in, and it’s a very magical thing that you can have that kind of match and that kind of performance.
