Bret Hart vs. Hulk Hogan is one of the WWF’s most famous matches to almost happen. After Hulk, Money in the Bank-style, won the WWF title that just minutes earlier had belonged to the Hitman…
…it seemed inevitable that the WWF’s face of the 80s would clash with its face of the 90s. According to Bret, the two men posed for WWF Magazine in a “tug of war” for the belt, hyping a main event at SummerSlam (or, more accurately, in the SummerSlam).
But the dream match never materialized. McMahon blamed Hogan, saying the Hulkster refused to put Bret over. Hogan blamed McMahon, saying Vince wanted the match to be a non-title affair.
Dream match or not, how dumb would Bret have looked in a balloon-drop celebration without actually winning the title?
It wasn’t the first time the WWF had whiffed on booking Hogan in a long-anticipated match. Just a year before, they announced Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair, the dream match of the 80s, for WrestleMania VIII…
…only to chicken out, supposedly due to low ticket sales for Hogan-Flair house shows.
When WCW signed the Hulk signed with two years later, they cashed in right away…
…booking Hogan-Flair for two pay-per-view main events, a Clash of the Champions, and a European tour.
So when Bret Hart showed up in WCW, fresh off arguably the hottest year of his career and the most talked-about event in wrestling, it seemed only natural for him to face Hogan.
Think of it: Bret Hart, wronged by the WWF and with a legitimate claim to its world title, vs. Hollywood Hogan, the arrogant heel and the biggest name in wrestling history.
Instead, WCW fumbled the Hitman from day one.
Four months into Hart’s run, they turned him heel, aligned him Hogan and the bloated nWo, and squandered all his post-Montreal goodwill.
So how did they end up facing each other? The story was, Hogan began mistrusting Bret, who had been flirting with the Wolfpac (though not literally).
At Fall Brawl, Hogan and Stevie Ray attacked their own partner, injuring his knee.
The following night, Bret denounced Hogan but said he’d have to take time off for injury.
Fast forward two weeks, and Hollywood Hogan (or “The Wood”, as he’d started calling himself) challenged either Sting or Bret Hart.
The Hitman jumped at the chance.
And so, on less than three hours’ notice, the wrestling world would see Bret Hart go one-on-one with Hulk Hogan for the first time ever. On the one hand, WCW was leaving bundles of money on the table by not putting the match on pay-per-view.
On the other hand, it was barely a match at all.
Thanks to Hart’s worked injury, he couldn’t deliver the excellence of execution expected of the Excellence of Execution. This left the technical wizardry to Hogan…
…who displayed flashes of adequacy in his chain wrestling efforts.
“He’s fundamentally sound, isn’t he?” observed Tony Schiavone.
Bret barely got any offense at all as The Wood worked his injured knee. But fans needn’t worry, as there was plenty of time left on the broadcast for Hitman to make a classic comeback.
Instead, Sting had to bail Hart out.
Red in the face at seeing his pal get trounced, the lobster man interrupted Hogan’s ostensible toe hold.
Fellow Wolf-packers Luger and Konnan had to force Hart onto a stretcher. Hitman’s heroic efforts to stay in the match inspired the fans, minus one guy who threw garbage at him.
Without so much as a bell, the match morphed into Sting vs. Hogan.
Meanwhile backstage, two rogue EMTs jumped Luger and K-Dogg…
…then revealed themselves as Buff Bagwell and Scott Steiner. It happened so fast, none of the real EMTs questioned why they were dressed as surgeons.
Bret Hart escaped and made his way back to the ring to cheer Sting on.
Not just to ringside, mind you, but to the ring itself.
Sting being Sting, he didn’t notice anything amiss until Bret DDT’d him. Due to interference by the guy who actually started the match, Sting won via DQ, but that was beside the point.
Bret bounced around to show his knee was actually fine, and that the entire injury angle was just a weeks-long ruse. Yes, the fake injury may have cost his team War Games, and Hogan a title shot, but they at least got to beat up Sting.
Solidifying his second heel turn of the year, Bret worked Sting’s knee.
He even tried to figure-four him on the ring post, but Warrior’s fog cannon got in the way.
Instead, he just kind tugged at his boots until Stinger got the message.
Hogan then got in Sting’s face, said “I quit”, and pretended it was Sting who said it.
Thank God Luger and Konnan broke it up before Hulk could tell him to stop hitting himself.
“Look at that”, said Heenan, seeing Hart giving Hogan a deep tissue massage.
“That is a disgusting picture.”
Before WCW went out of business, Hogan would wrestle Ric Flair four more times, and Hart would wrestle Will Sasso, but they’d never wrestle each other again in front of cameras.
All viewers ever got was that one match—and it was totally fake! Well, you know what I mean.
To make matters worse (or stupider, anyhow) Hart and Hogan did wrestle a few times on house shows in the summer of 1999…
…but they always ended in a no-contest, often due to interference from the West Texas Rednecks, usually presented as impromptu bouts, and never announced beforehand.
It’s as if WCW, in some ill-conceived campaign for non-profit status, vowed never to make a dime off Hulk Hogan vs. Bret Hart.