Previous Installments: Part 1 (100-76) | Part 2 (75-51) | Part 3 (50-26) | Part 4 (25-11) | Part 5 (10-2)
Over the years, I soured on this match, in part because I was influenced by Bret's own thoughts on it, which are that he had to literally carry the Bulldog through the entire match, as he gassed early on. Diana Hart-Smith wrote about the match, too, saying that Davey Boy had gotten a staph infection in his knee in July, and was out between then and SummerSlam.
That would explain any issues Smith had in the match, not just because of that injury itself, but because it would explain a small gas tank, with him not being in top ring shape. But whatever with all that, because watching it back again, yes, it's mostly Bret Hart making this what it is. And that's just fine. He created, as he put it, a masterpiece.
From Bret's book, Hitman:
We pushed off with Davey looking strong and serious. The crowd was ours and the bell sounded. At first Davey outmaneuvered me with simple and realistic wrestling, but after only a few minutes, he was breathing hard.
"Bret, I'm fooked," Davey panted as I had him clamped in a side headlock. "I can't remember anything!"
"Davey, just listen to me, I'll carry you."
... The drama built, layer upon layer, as every move that came followed a logic that never detracted from the story. ... I've always believed this was my greatest match, especially because I'd carried Davey all the way through it without anyone being the wiser. My dad would tell me later that it's one thing to have a great match, but it's another thing to have a great match in front of eighty thousand people.
Even if you didn't know any of that stuff, it would pretty logically be mostly Bret making this match so great, because, well, who else did Davey Boy Smith have great matches with around this time? He only had a few great singles matches over his entire major league career, at any rate. He was certainly better in tags. But on the right nights, with the right opponents to lead, he was capable of something special. It turns out that he meshed best with Bret and later Owen Hart, guys who understood and shared the Stampede roots. There was a common thread that those guys had, and you can see it, too, in Hart Foundation vs British Bulldogs matches from the 1980s.
When asked to be a "powerhouse," Davey rarely stood apart from other credible and athletic strongmen of the era, such as The Barbarian. But when given the chance to go out and wrestle, he could do a lot more. This is one of Bret Hart's greatest performances (maybe his greatest), and Smith's best singles match, by far.
This match also benefits from being a true spectacle, as Bret mentions his father, the great Stu Hart, saying later. It was the main drawing card of a show with a legitimate 80,000 in attendance, and Hart knows that he's the bad guy here, or rather the second-most popular wrestler in the match in this venue, so he does something he always did exceptionally well, which is subtly play heel even when he wasn't really a heel.
There was always a lingering sort of smarminess and arrogance to the "Hitman," held over from his bad guy younger days in the WWF. He was good at that, which is why he was so easily able to make that transition in '97 into a full-blown heel in the United States, and switch it off to be the hero in Canada or the UK. In all reality, he never really changed much about himself. For a guy who some believe lacked mic skills or superstar charisma, Bret was great at getting the audience to go where he needed it to go, with him or against him.
The pop for the finish to this match is one of the biggest and most emotional you'll ever see - a crowd of truly proud British wrestling fans seeing one of their own reach a height that none of their other countrymen had ever seen in WWF history.
Of course, in the end, it was all a bit futile for Smith, though this loss served as a launching pad for Hart. Bret would go on to beat Ric Flair for the WWF title in September, and slowly but surely make his way into being the company's flag-bearer from 1992-96, while Davey Boy would drop the I-C belt to Shawn Michaels in November, then wind up fired for receiving HGH, along with the Ultimate Warrior, after which he made his way to WCW for an incredibly forgettable stint before returning to the WWF in 1994.
When I think of SummerSlam as an event, as a big-time stage, this is the match I still think of, 22 years after it happened. There have been some phenomenal matches at SummerSlam since this one. The likes of Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, The Rock, Brock Lesnar, Kurt Angle, John Cena, CM Punk, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, The Undertaker, Edge, Christian, and many more have stamped some of their legacy with great matches at SummerSlam.
But this is The One. 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. A bonkers reaction to the finish. One great artist's masterpiece, and the highest point of another fine wrestler's career. Rewatching it for the purpose of this list, I was taken again by the emotion of it, sucked into the story. I don't mind saying I had goosebumps at the finish; at Davey Boy's wife, Diana (Bret's sister), climbing into the ring to congratulate her husband with tears in her eyes; at the family embracing. The Hart family legacy meant a lot to me as a young wrestling fan. When I was a kid and entertaining the idea of maybe trying to be a pro wrestler someday -- which I never did go through with, as life has a habit of crumpling our dreams if we're not careful -- I always envisioned that I would want to at least step foot in the Hart Dungeon someday, if not to train there, at least to just be in that little basement, where some of the modern greats had their mettle tested before setting off for fame and glory. To me, so much started in Stu Hart's house in Calgary. In my head, it was sort of a holy land. Hallowed ground.
I still feel some sort of strange personal connection to the legacy of the Hart family, and the legacy of Stampede Wrestling, and everyone associated. We're at the very end of men and women who are in the wrestling world that can say they were part of the Dungeon, to any degree. It was this mythical room of submission wrestling, where tough men were broken, and tougher men survived. I don't think pro wrestling will ever have anything like it again, or anything like the Hart family again. From Stu to Natalya, it's an incredible history.
Will anything tomorrow night top this match? Never say never. But it's going to take something truly special for this to be replaced as the greatest match in SummerSlam history, at least for me. This is one for the time capsule.