100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 78 - Bob Backlund vs. Bret Hart
I Quit Match - Wrestlemania XI
When people ask me why Bret Hart is my favourite wrestler ever I often like to cite his fall down the card from Survivor Series 1994 until Survivor Series 1995. After losing the WWE Championship to Mr Bob Backlund himself, Bret took a step away from the main event while WWE moved to Diesel and Shawn Michaels. In that year, Bret Hart would wrestle the likes of Jerry Lawler, Hakushi, a young Kane, Jean Pierre-Lafitte - and would often still end up having one of the best matches of the night despite a less than stellar set of opponents.
Back at the aforementioned 1994 Survivor Series, these two men had a wonderful match built around the stipulation that someone at ringside had to throw in the towel for their respective wrestler to lose. That played on Backlund’s own history when he lost the WWE Title to the Iron Sheik in the same way. The Wrestlemania match is a logical progression from that. Both have suffered the harsh fate of losing their prized possession thanks to somebody else, but when push comes to shove, who truly will say I Quit?
So with all this said, how does Bret Hart, in the peak of his career produce one of his worst ever matches? Bret Hart, one of WWE’s most reliable big match wrestlers in history, gives an awful match at Wrestlemania?
And the answer to that is one man:
Roddy Piper.
This is a match so bad that Bret Hart in his wonderful autobiography described it as the worst pay-per-view match of his career. While I don’t necessarily agree anymore, Bret’s autobiography was written in 2007 and I would not argue that it wasn’t a true statement then.
Right off the bat you’re off to a bad start with this little interaction between Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler:
Jerry Lawler: “Who did Bret Hart defeat at Wrestlemania 8?”
Vince McMahon: “The British Bulldog!”
Jerry Lawler: “What!? Wrong, he beat Rowdy Roddy Piper!”
Well done, Vince. The whole point of Roddy Piper as referee is that he lost to Bret at Wrestlemania 8 - you’re supposed to build that intrigue. And Jerry Lawler gave you the layup to put that part of the story over - the story you fucking booked. And you fucked it. Vince is truly the worst commentator.
Anyway, Roddy Piper. If you’ve seen this match before, you know exactly what the issue is. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst referee performance in wrestling history that I’ve seen, special or otherwise. If you’ve ever watched Earl Hebner and Aubrey Edwards and felt they were hogging the spotlight for themselves, then this match makes them look like completely inconspicuous by comparison.
Piper spends the entire match constantly asking both Backlund and Hart if they quit. Not even twenty seconds into the match, he’s asking both men after every miniscule move. This is a common trait in many I Quit matches, but usually they’re by far less annoying and intrusive referees. In fact, asking is the wrong word to describe what Piper is doing. He’s aggressively shouting into the microphone making this as audibly repulsive as it is visually.
Piper is all over the place, getting in front of the camera, running around like he’s just lost his keys, screaming into the microphone. He’s constantly getting in between Hart and Backlund, disrupting any potential flow the match could have had. Piper’s presence distracts from everything anyone is doing to the point that talking about the rest of the match almost feels redundant. Even the microphone is conspiring against this match, as the wire (did they not have cordless mics in 1995?) keeps getting in everyone’s way.
At around the half way point of the match, Bret has Backlund in a leg lock, and Piper asks Bob if he quits, to which he says no. Then he goes and asks Bret - who I must stress is the man applying the hold - if he wants to quit. That gets a chuckle out of the crowd - which visibly annoys Bret. You can hear how frustrated Bret is as the match goes on, he’s clearly fuming at what Piper is doing.
That’s not to say that the work from Bret and Backlund is anything special. In Bret’s book, he sounded pretty defeatist going into the match as he didn’t feel like the match could work with the stipulation, which is pretty ironic considering he’d have arguably WWE’s greatest ever match just two years later with a similar stipulation. They’re trying to have a technical match, but due to Piper’s constantly distracting and disrupting the action, there’s little flow to what they are doing. Their Survivor Series match went well over 30 minutes, giving these two technicians the time to flesh out their style of wrestling. I don’t think that style would work for a 10 minute match. Mercifully, this match is not 30 minutes long because I don’t think I could handle being subjected to 30 minutes of Roddy Piper as a special referee.
To finish off this nonsense, Bob Backlund never even says I Quit - the whole point of the stipulation. Instead he makes a sound more akin to Bilbo Baggins trying to steal the One Ring from Frodo. That’s enough for Piper to call for the bell and mercifully end this match.
Do yourself a favour, watch Survivor Series 1994. Watch their fantastic tag match from Action Zone in February 1995. Bob Backlund’s heel run deserves better than to have this match be its legacy. To me, this is the worst, and certainly most disappointing match, on one of the worst Wrestlemanias ever.
Up Next - Sid shits the bed.
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