Bret Hart On Today’s Style Of Wrestling: ‘It’s Too Rushed’

WWE Hall of Famer Bret “The Hitman” Hart has never been shy to voice his opinions and give his critique on the current state of professional wrestling. He recently dissected the entire Wrestlemania 32 card on his podcast, giving his views on what was wrong or right with each match.

In a recent interview with the Portsmouth News promoting this weekend’s one-man shows in the United Kingdom, Hart gave his views on the state of wrestling. While Hart enjoys the athletic ability of today’s superstars, he feels that storylines and matches are not given the proper time to built.

“I think that the wrestlers today are very skilled and a lot of them are really great, gifted wrestlers, like Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, and even Kevin Owens. I tip my hat to them. I enjoy watching them, they’re special talents and they carry that torch to the next generation. There’s a lot of those wrestlers who’ve had a big impact since I left. I’d like to have worked with CM Punk or Brock Lesnar, but I find that there’s something missing in wrestling that was more prevalent in my era. I think the actual storytelling was better.”

During Hart’s prime years with the World Wrestling Federation in the late the 1980s through the late 1990s, wrestling went through different stages. At times, it heavily focused on cartoonish gimmicks and in other instances, it focused on the in-ring aspect and the credibility of the wrestlers.

While the changes were always prevalent, Hart maintained his serious, craftsman-like style of wrestling. That ability not only led him to several reigns as world champion, it helped build a reputation as one of the greatest in-ring technicians the WWE has ever seen.

“I could allow a story to unfold or not be rushed. There’s no drama anymore, it’s just like bing, bing, bing, bing. They’re too busy setting up the next moves and it seems very rehearsed like the whole match is rehearsed. I miss the natural flow in my matches. I watched a lot of my old matches from the ’90s and I like the storytelling better, but that’s just my preference. Fans now like that it’s more fast-paced and there’s not really any pause to tell a story.”

At the same time, Hart still respects the work today’s generation of performers put in. The “Excellence of Execution” is not enthused when people refer to the genre he has spent most of his 58-year life associated with “fake.” In Hart’s words, the second-generation grappler says that “terminology is degrading.”

The former five-time WWE champion refers to professional wrestling as “high impact” and that there are “a lot of injuries” involved. Specifically, there’s one match from Hart’s legendary career that sticks out as an example of storytelling and authenticity — just in case people still have doubts.

“I think fans understand that there’s a storyline process. As an example, you look at my match with Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13, there was a lot of blood and the sharpshooter, he didn’t tap out and all that. It was a very violent struggle and it tells the story of a good guy and a bad guy, but it tells this beautiful struggle of a battle of two people fighting for everything they believe in, and it’s a very magical thing that you can have that kind of match and that kind of performance.”

Having overcome a lot of personal tragedy, Hart also spoke about his recent prostate cancer diagnosis, giving himself a positive outlook.

“I was lucky I had one of those cancers that they say if you get it early and you’re on it quick you can have a full recovery. It’s a 96 percent recovery rate for prostate cancer. My diagnosis was early and I did a lot to make sure I was on top of it.”

[Image via WWE]