Federation Fridays: Bret Hart vs. The 1-2-3 Kid (RAW, July 11, 1994)

There is a match that lives in my head from the summer of 1994, and if you were watching WWF at the time, it might lives in yours too. Bret Hart defending the WWF Championship against The 1-2-3 Kid on Monday Night RAW. No big buildup. Just two babyfaces, a wrestling crowd, and twenty minutes of television that I would put up against anything the company produced that decade or even since.

I was eight years old when this aired. Eight. And I remember sitting there thinking Bret might actually lose. Hoping he would, in fact.

Let that sink in. The WWF Champion defending the belt on a free TV match against a kid who had been a glorified jobber fourteen months earlier, and on the verge of losing. And the match worked on me completely.

You have to understand what Kid meant to WWF fans in 1993 and 1994. He had started as a nameless jobber losing to Doink the Clown and Mr. Hughes before scoring that impossible upset over Razor Ramon on the May 17, 1993 episode of RAW. That pin changed everything. The crowd exploded. Nobody saw it coming, and the name 1-2-3 Kid was born out of that single moment. He followed it up with an upset over Ted DiBiase as well, cementing that this wasn’t a fluke. The guy could actually do it.

So by July 1994, the history was there. Kid had proven he could knock off big stars on any given night. The question was whether he could do it again, and this time with the title on the line.

The match opens with a handshake. Both guys smiling. Crowd already going back and forth. And then Kid goes right to work, arm-dragging Hart to the mat and wrenching away at his arm, and Bret sits up and raises his eyebrows just barely, begrudgingly impressed, realizing he might have underestimated what he was in for. That little moment of subtle character work from Bret tells you everything. He’s the champion. He came in expecting to be generous. Now he’s doing the math in his head and figuring out this kid can go.

What makes this match so good is that Kid doesn’t just get a few shine spots and then eat a Sharpshooter. He controls meaningful stretches. He embarrasses Hart on the mat. He hits the aerial stuff that was his trademark, and he knocks the champion to the floor. There is a sustained stretch where you, or at least I, genuinely believe Kid has found something Bret didn’t have an answer for. The crowd starts to shift. They came in to cheer for Bret, but they are starting to want Kid to pull it off. It’s hard to root against the underdog, especially when they’re seemingly on the verge of doing it.

Then comes the false finish, and this is where the match separates itself from good and becomes something special. Hart pins Kid, the referee counts three, and it looks like it’s over. Earl Hebner didn’t see that the Kid had his foot on the ropes, but Bret Hart did.

Bret told Earl and demanded the restart himself. He’s the champion, and he could have walked away with the belt, but he made the right call. That is character work without saying a word. The man is a competitor first and a champion second. The crowd loved it, and it gave the match a second life at exactly the right moment.

Kid comes out of that restart with everything he has. He knows he was a fingertip away. He throws everything at Hart, and for a few seconds, sitting in my living room at eight years old, I was fully convinced it was going to happen. The upset. The shock. The moment that would define a career. Restarting the match was out of good sportsmanship was going to bite Bret in the ass.

But, of course, it didn’t happen. Bret wins. The experience and the ring smarts were always going to be the difference in the end. Kid’s inexperience showed in the final moments, a little too hasty, and Bret took advantage of it. But the story they told was exactly what it needed to be. The underdog came closer than anyone had a right to expect, and the champion proved why he was the champion without ever making Kid look like anything less than a legitimate threat.

The whole match runs under fifteen minutes. I know people who think that’s not enough time for a championship match. I think this match is the argument against that position entirely. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time when every minute means something. There’s not a dead moment in this match. There is no filler. There is no rest hold killing time while someone catches their breath. It moves, it builds, and it lands. It told a story, and more importantly even when all logic told you Bret would retain, built in a way that it allowed you to suspend disbelief for a moment and think Bret would lose.

And part of that belief in Kid, was communicated to the viewer by some great commentary from Jim Ross and Macho Man Randy Savage. Their commentary added to the match, built up the Kid and got you thinking… maybe.

I was a fan of both guys at the time, and that made it harder, not easier. I wanted Bret to retain, and I wanted Kid to win, and the match let me feel both things at the same time. That is not easy to do. That is great professional wrestling. Has there been great matches since then, on Monday Night RAW? Of course, some great ones, but whether eight or 40, I still can’t think of a RAW match that I like better than Kid almost upsetting the Hitman.

They don’t make Monday nights like that anymore.

Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Say so in the comments or over at the Vortex Effect forums.