While The Rockers and The Hart Foundation never wrestled on film to the extent of the more prolific WWF tag team pairings of the time, like Rockers/Brain Busters or Harts/Bulldogs or the Rougeaus against either team, they did wrestle enough that, without going back through all of them, it’s hard to definitively say what the best was. The April 1990 SNME main event, November 1989 MSG “20:00” time limit draw, or for all its faults, the “lost” WWF Tag Team Title change from an October 1990 THE MAIN EVENT IV taping are all fair contenders and great matches. You can pick any of them and I won’t argue too much. It’s a great matchup, so ask me on three different days and you might get three different answers.
This is not among those answers, but by far, it feels like their most interesting match, largely because of location.
Not because of environment exactly, as this is a not-super-full Tokyo Dome with 36,000 in attendance, so they are not heated like a Korakuen Hall crowd might have been for the match, but in terms of the differences in the match to account for card placement in the middle of a major Dome show (something they never had to deal with before, always having a fairly clear runway), focusing more on a fast pace with super well executed basics rather than than any bigger offense even by Golden Age WWF standards, as well as slight stylistic shifts in the match.
It’s the shifts that interest me the most. Some are little things, like Bret clearly directing Neidhart to get a little more physical, including one sequence off a tag where Jim holds his boot up for a classic American spot, only for Bret to instead hold Shawn back so Jim can throw a loud club across the chest instead. In general, although not in some Valentine/Garvin type of way, the match is more physical than usual whenever Bret and Jim have a chance. The match is also more Japanese style than a Harts/Rockers tag might otherwise be, with very few double team attacks and more tags once control work was over, and more one on one fighting.
These are not big changes, but in a run by SWS full of appearances by WWF guys who could only really work the one way and failed to adapt (see a Tenryu/DiBiase match from late 1990 or throw a dart elsewhere) and on a show with some having similar problems, it’s something worth noting. These are not things that make a match great, exactly, but they’re always impressive ones to see, wrestlers adapting themselves to less common environments and succeeding in a new way.
Fortunately, underneath the fun and novel little changes, the match is also great in all the ways Harts vs. Rockers always was.
Bret vs. Shawn may not have ever been better than it was in a tag team environment (possibly their 1993 Coliseum Video cage match), and that is again the case here. The chemistry, especially with the real fast basics and sequences based on dodging and outmaneuvering each other that this match affords them, is remarkable, and makes it easy to forget some of their later failures against each other. Individually, Bret once again manages to work from above with an edge but never crossing a line, with the sort of mastery that will forever make people call that sort of a thing “Bret style” work in control. Neidhart is again at his best too setting smaller and faster guys up to take him down after a few attempts at it, and The Rockers are electric. They look like the best tag team in the world, both these awesome hot tags full of life and energy, sympathetic when called upon, awesome bumpers and sellers, crisp as hell, all of the things you want from a flying young babyface team like this. It’s around the in-ring peak for at least half of this match, arguably everyone but Bret, and the match very clearly shows why it is that a lot of people can say that with a lot of confidence.
In short, nothing all that fancy ever happens, and every inch of it is really great.
Shawn goes for a crossbody off the top, but in a kind of classic SWS mission statement, the fancy stuff falls short, and Bret rolls through into a tight pin to win.
There are better Harts/Rockers matches to see, but on top of being a great match on a great show full of other curiosities, it’s another one of those quiet things that I find so impressive, as good and great wrestlers have advantages removed and handicaps put on them, and in the mark of greatness, find a way to succeed anyways.
Wonderful meat and potatoes.
HANDWERK 