Fantasy Book-a-Mania the Third: Post-Montreal Bret

[Jazzy G]

Sorry if I'm stepping on Rick's toes with this. 

I know it's an absolute no-brainer, and there was probably a Hogan sized reason Bret's time in the WCW didn't work, but all that aside how would you do it? 

Does he go against the nWo instead of just being loosely associated with them? Does Owen follow him over if things start going we? 

Conversely, how does it go if Vince doesn't get rid of Bret and he stays in the WWF? How does he fit in with the rise of Stone Cold, The Rock etc? 

What if instead of WCW he goes to ECW? 

Edited July 29 by Jazzy G

[Merzbow]

Bret doesn't need to be anywhere near the nWo for a while, a Starrcade semi-main event vs Flair would have been my first angle for him. I know there's not a long time to build that but he's on the biggest card ever to that point in a match you know will deliver. In a perfect world Sting wins clean and it's the demise of the nWo in the coming months anyway, the group falling apart and the WCW getting major wins until all titles are back under their control.

A big Bret vs Sting program being the next focus, maybe even starting as babyface vs babyface with a Bret turn during it to get major heat (everyone turns on Sting at some point, why ruin that now). If they could get Owen there's room for a Hart Foundation there too, I wouldn't do it with just Bulldog and The Anvil..

Edited July 29 by Merzbow

[TheScarlettChad]

I'd just rip off/redo the 1997 Harts vs. America story, With Sting instead of HBK and Austin. Bring Owen over, and have Bret turn heel. Sting having to save WCW again, but this time Bret isn't Terry so he'll gladly show arse and put over The Stinger when it counts. And Bret vs. Sting was a dream match. I'd also keep him as far away from BILL Goldberg has humanly possible. 

[Chris B]

I'd have just brought him in to prevent an nWo run-in during the main event of Starrcade - with him leading a group staring the nWo down.

After that, I reckon you've got a nice run with him teaming with Sting against various nWo members. Bret, Sting and DDP vs Hogan and the Outsiders sounds like a decent main event, and have him go against them in singles for a little while as well. That'd keep you busy for a good few months anyway.

Then, eventually, there's some mileage in Sting/Bret as a feud, probably turning Hart heel during it. 

There was no reason not to go with Hart as the guy for a while. It'd give the nWo a chance to take a break and either split up or come back more dangerous than ever. Whichever way, you needed to close off the build up to Starrcade and do something else for a little bit - and the focus on Sting and Hart as your big two babyfaces would do that for a while at least.

[Jazzy G]

Bret standing against the nWo can also play further into the implication that Hogan et all had been sent by Vince as well without it being outright stated. 

[AshC]

[Merzbow]

So he's still a Hitman, just he's taking out journalists now?

[AshC]

I only twigged this year that the TV show 'The Hitman and Her' with Pete Waterman was a play on him being a pop hit maker.

Had never seen it, in my defence. 😂

[DavidB6937]

12 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

So he's still a Hitman, just he's taking out journalists now?

When did Bill Goldberg become a journalist?

[AshC]

13 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

When did Bill Goldberg become a journalist?

Let's not be reducing the brilliant Bret Hart to a social media meme. 👍

[DavidB6937]

11 minutes ago, AshC said:

Let's not be reducing the brilliant Bret Hart to a social media meme. 👍

Yes. You're right. I'm sorry. He never talks about Bill Goldberg.

[BomberPat]

doing the Starrcade '97 finish properly feels like the right move. It's ridiculous that he debuted as the third most important man in a match between a non-wrestler and a largely retired wrestler, but him debuting as a special guest referee at least does make sense in that they can then say that he's a licensed referee that night, so has some degree of authority to step in during the main event.

Even if he's not the referee, still have him counteract Nick Patrick. Hogan vs. Sting in the main event, Charles Robinson (or some other WCW ref) is assigned. They get bumped, and Nick Patrick replaces him, to groans from the audience. Nick Patrick turns a blind eye to some Hogan cheating, gets down for the pin...and gets dragged out of the ring and decked by Bret Hart before the three.

Bret cuts a short promo, saying that he's not going to stand to see a good man screwed over by a corrupt referee. You don't need to hold people's hands here, the audience will know exactly what he means. If we're going for Bret Hart being a licensed referee (which does require diluting the "debut" by having him show up as a special ref earlier in the show, but it might be workable), then he calls for the bell when Hogan submits to the Scorpion Deathlock, and you get a kind of visual inversion of the ending of the Montreal Screwjob - the heel tapping out to the babyface's Sharpshooter/Scorpion, with the referee enthusiastically calling for the bell, while Bischoff is at ringside distraught, in contrast to Vince barking orders around at Survivor Series. If Bret isn't a referee, all he needs to do is throw the previously knocked out referee back in the ring to make the call, and then celebrate with Sting at the end.

The first question is how you handle the Bret Hart question before Starrcade. If we don't go with Bret as a special referee at Starrcade, then play it like CM Punk coming into AEW - everybody knows Bret Hart is coming to WCW, but nobody on the show is coming out and saying it. There might be hints, but there's no big announcement. It becomes a word of mouth selling point for Starrcade - will Bret Hart show up? Drop hints throughout the show, so that when he does turn up in the main event, the audience are primed for it.

 

After Starrcade '97, the nWo should be on the ropes, and should be effectively done as a faction within a couple of months. The babyfaces have ended their reign of terror, allow a couple of months of feelgood celebration, with the good guys picking off the scraps of the nWo. Take Hogan off TV and PPV in the short-term. Absolutely don't do the bullshit rematch and Sting getting stripped of the title before the next PPV!

Souled Out 1998, do Bret Hart & Sting vs. The Outsiders. Continue to wrap up the nWo story, so that after this match there's a measurable amount of time where you don't even see an nWo T-shirt on a single wrestler. They're done.

From there, you can move Bret away from Sting, or maybe you can do a babyface vs. babyface match between them for the title, where Sting is just able to get one over Bret. Maybe reverse the Sharpshooter into the Scorpion for the win. 

Then Bret can go off and work with Flair, Savage, Piper, maybe even Hogan when he returns. Keep him busy for most of 1998, while Sting is on a good run as WCW Champion.

By the end of 1998, then you start bringing the nWo back in. With them having been off TV for at least a couple of months, it doesn't feel done to death when they start causing havoc again, only this time it's Wolfpac and Hollywood. It's a progression from where the nWo were once before, not a rehash, Nash and Hogan are both trying to get back on top but are at each other's throats. 

That should be the backdrop heading into Starrcade 1998 - Sting is World Champion, Hogan is leading nWo Hollywood, Nash is leading the Wolfpac; maybe it's just the Wolfpac and whatever we call Hogan's clique, they don't necessarily need the nWo branding at all. Sting never joins the Wolfpac, he stands alone against both factions. Bret Hart is courted by both groups. 

Bret Hart issues a challenge to Sting - a rematch for the World Title, in the main event of Starrcade. Sting accepts. 

Bret turns heel on Sting to take the title, and there's one of three routes to get there - either he joins the Wolfpac, he joins Hollywood, or he swerves both sides to lead his own faction; let's say it's Bret, Davey Boy, Neidhart, and Benoit, maybe Jericho, maybe even throw Piper in there as well.

So that sets you up a few months of gang warfare - Hollywood vs. Wolfpac vs. Horsemen, potentially vs. Hart Foundation. Sting is once again left on his own, though now there's a much more serious question of whether he's going to side with one of those groups to get his title back. 

If Bret's leading the Hart Foundation, it's a simple story of Sting fighting through the others to get his rematch, eventually beating Bret to settle their best of three and end the feud. If Bret joins Hollywood or Wolfpac, it's a story of whether Hogan or Nash are prepared to play second fiddle to Bret as champion, and eventually (inevitably) screwing him over, getting to Bret vs. Hogan or Bret vs. Nash, which the heel/face dynamic being whatever feels most natural as the storyline progresses. That should see you well into 1999 at least.

[AshC]

Part of the situation that is overlooked is they wanted Bret involved in the Hogan versus Sting supermatch at Starrcade, while also wanting to get another Hogan versus Sting match done at SuperBrawl.

So really, you needed to spin Bret off right after Starrcade... which they kind of did, but it needed to be an nWo foe (mofo).

Do you bring Bret out for the big promo after Starrcade, challenging Hogan, and then he's jumped by... Savage?

Could have headlined Souled Out with that then, setting up a gimmick rematch for SuperBrawl.

Bret wins at SuperBrawl and Hogan... does Hogan regain? And then you move towards Bret vs Hogan for the belt at Great Canadian Bash, say? 😂

[Supremo]

What I find most fascinating is how quickly they killed Bret’s momentum after Summerslam 97, to the point whereby he was practically worthless to both companies. The lousy bastards.

All his heat transferred to Shawn, knocking about in shit Flag Matches with Vader and the Patriot. I understand why the focus is on the screw job in Montreal, but the way they rinsed him of momentum and stature in those few months before Survivor Series is arguably just as big a hit job.

As a Fed Head l’m obviously more interested in what Bret does if he doesn’t go to WCW. History proved how little he was actually needed in the WWF once he left, but I quite like the idea of him still losing the belt to Shawn in a non-screw job, vanishing whilst they coronate Stone Cold, then coming back in the Dude Love role as one of Steve’s first challengers in the Summer of 98.

Steve was in desperate need of some proper stars to fight around that time. A heel Bret would’ve been perfect. I was going to say Bret could have aligned with Vince, but if Montreal doesn’t happen I’m not sure they even flirt with the idea of Vince as a top heel, never mind realise what magic it was. That might be just as interesting a question. What does Vince become if he never screws Bret? They’d started referring to him as the owner, but I’m not convinced he’d have gone the whole hog if Montreal doesn’t happen and his real dickheadery isn’t so clear for all to see.

Bret still being around when Jericho, The Radicalz and Kurt Angle turn up would’ve obviously been great, but would Bret have lasted long enough? He makes it sound like he hated all the Russo stuff in 1997, so by 98/99 he’d have probably lost his mind.

The amount of homophobia he was throwing at Shawn in 1997, I also worry how bad it would’ve became if he stuck around through the Attitude Era. Felt like a recipe for disaster. Getting him out of that environment before he said something that ended his career was almost a mercy killing!

Vince saved Bret.

Edited July 29 by Supremo

[BomberPat]

The irony of the Montreal Screwjob is that you had Shawn and Bret constantly fighting over who was getting the top spot, both too preoccupied with that to realise that they were about to be eclipsed by Steve Austin anyway, and I don't see that changing if Bret sticks around. That Bret was not only out of the company but never back at that level again, and that Shawn was put out of action for years just a couple of months later, makes the whole thing look so pointless.

Vince is the big question. There are two conflicting ideas really - on one hand, Vince had already worked heel in Memphis, and clearly enjoyed having the opportunity to do so. On the other hand, there's a long-standing idea that Vince thought that people would genuinely take his side about "Bret screwed Bret", and if that's true, then I do think he probably never becomes "Mr. McMahon"; in Memphis he was the outside evil businessman, but I don't think he would have booked himself as the evil promoter in his own company without the Screwjob forcing his hand.

Without Vince, maybe Bret remains the main generational feud for Steve Austin. But in reality, I expect he's retired within a couple of years and working behind-the-scenes, which isn't a very exciting answer. As you say, he was largely being phased back into the "good hand" role rather than being seen as a guy to build around in the future, so maybe once Austin is properly established on top Bret ends up hovering around the Intercontinental Title level. There's a lot of potential knock-on stuff, though, with the Hart Foundation, with Ken Shamrock, with Stampede and the Harts as trainers still being in the loop, that might change a few things behind the scenes, and certainly the political balance of power would be upset with a personality as strong as Bret still around.