Federation Fridays #6: Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect, SummerSlam 1991
Last time I sat you down for one of these, I was talking about the night after WrestleMania XI when Psycho Sid turned on Shawn Michaels. This week I’m going back further into the Golden Age of WWF. Back to a match that’s been sitting near the top of my personal list for over three decades—a match that actually held the number one spot until a random Monday night in July of 1994 finally knocked it down a peg (if you caught installment one, you already know which match did that). But we’re not talking about Bret and the Kid again today. Today we’re talking about the match that held the top spot before it. SummerSlam 1991, and Bret Hart challenging Mr. Perfect for the Intercontinental Championship.
Mr. Perfect was, and still is, my all-time favorite wrestler. It’s really not even close. The guy had everything. He could go in the ring with anybody and make it look like art, he could cut a promo that made you want to reach through the screen and shut his mouth for him, and the character itself (a guy who’s perfect at literally everything, tennis, golf, basketball, you name it) was one of those ideas that sounds dumb on paper and somehow works perfectly in execution because Curt Hennig had the chops to sell it.
He should have been a World Champion in WWF. He had the total package: the in-ring ability, the mic skills, the character work, and for whatever backstage politics or timing reasons kept that from happening, it’s one of the bigger what-ifs in WWF history as far as I’m concerned. Maybe if he hadn’t gotten hurt, he could’ve climbed the ladder a few years later.
So you can imagine where my loyalties were sitting going into this match. I was a kid who usually gravitated toward heels anyway (usually still do), and here was my guy defending the Intercontinental strap against a fan favorite in Bret Hart. I watched this one live. I still have the VHS tape sitting in a box somewhere, recorded straight off the PPV feed. I could’ve told you the moves that were coming up and recited chunks of the commentary along with it.
The match itself runs a little past eighteen minutes, and Bret wins it by submission, and even as a kid rooting against him, I couldn’t be mad at how it happened. This is peak Bret Hart in terms of ring generalship, working the body, grinding Perfect down piece by piece, and Perfect selling every bit of it as if his life depended on it. That’s the thing a lot of people forget about Curt Hennig. Everybody remembers the cockiness of the gimmick and vignettes, but the man could sell a body part better than almost anybody on the roster. By the time Bret locks in the Sharpshooter for the finish, it feels earned instead of rushed, which is more than you can say for a lot of title changes from this era. I was disappointed watching it happen live because I wanted my guy to walk out still champion. Looking back on it now with three-plus decades of perspective, I recognize it for what it is, which is one of the greatest matches in WWF history, full stop, no asterisk needed.
What makes it even crazier in hindsight, and I didn’t know this as a kid watching it live, is that Perfect was nowhere near healthy. His back was already wrecked, and he needed surgery, and he still went out there and worked like a guy determined to make Bret’s first Intercontinental title win feel like the biggest moment of his career. That might be the most Mr. Perfect thing imaginable. He was in incredible pain, but watching the match, you’d never know it.
The rest of the card is a mixed bag, and I mean that in the most 1991 way possible. Ted DiBiase defended the Million Dollar Championship against Virgil, and on pure wrestling merit it’s nothing special, but that’s not really the point of that match. It’s about the story, the Million Dollar Man’s former ring boy finally getting his shot at the guy who treated him like property for years. You watch it for the narrative payoff, not the work rate.
Big Boss Man against The Mountie was a perfectly decent match that mattered more for what came after it than what happened during it (that feud produced some genuinely funny segments in the weeks that followed). The Legion of Doom taking on The Nasty Boys in a street fight was short, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I was a big fan of both teams as a kid, though neither of them topped the Steiner Brothers for me. Nobody did. IRS against Greg Valentine did nothing for me then and does nothing for me now, and I don’t feel the need to pretend otherwise just because it happened on a card with a classic on it.
Then you’ve got the two “Match Made in” segments, which is a bit of a cute bit of booking symmetry when you think about it. A Match Made in Heaven was the on-screen wedding of Macho Man Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth, which is charming in its own way even if it’s not exactly wrestling. And then the main event, billed as A Match Made in Hell, Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior teaming up against The Triangle of Terror. This one was decent at best. I never cared much for the heels in that match, and truth be told, I wasn’t a huge Hogan or Warrior guy to begin with, so a main event built around both of them wasn’t exactly built for me.
That’s really the story of SummerSlam 1991 as a whole. One match on that card is an all-time classic, a genuine top-shelf performance from two guys who understood exactly what they were doing, and everything else ranges from fine to forgettable. It’s not one of the great SummerSlam events in company history when you look at the whole card top to bottom.
But Bret Hart versus Mr. Perfect alone makes it worth tracking down, and it’s the match that held my personal number one spot for years before a RAW in July of 1994 came along and took it away. I hated seeing Perfect lose that belt in 1991. Thirty-five years later, I wouldn’t change a damn thing about the match.
Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Let me know in the comments below.
