In a kayfabe sense, Bret's character was really strong coming from WWE. Pretty much every loss was a screwjob, and he, from a kayfabe standpoint, had Stone Cold's number.
Easy, easy stuff to build off of. I'll believe that his heart probably wasn't in it as much, but that's at least partly because the booking was so haphazard. It's exhausting trying to fight that all the time. There was even a line in his book that said "no one will ever accuse me of taking the business too seriously again".
Had they had good cohesive ideas, it could've been his GOAT run. He was absolutely in his prime in '97.
I think a lot of yall are conditioned to the WWE's brainwashing.
im noticing that a lot of you have a privileged mentality when speaking on this, not realizing that the WCW was bigger than the WWF, had a way better roster, and to top it off - bret hart was never a top-tier name in the business overall while WCW was full of household names.
1.) why would they build off of another promotion's booking? the WWF hardly ever does this, but you expect another promotion to do it?? a bigger promotion than the WWF on top of that.
2.) youre under the assumption that WCW fans were watching the WWF. again more of that privileged mentality.
3.) the WWF roster was the minor leagues in comparison to the WCW. you cant expect him to be booked as strongly in WCW where they had a lot of guys that were either bigger names or hotter than he was.
and despite all of that, they still rolled out the red carpet for him. its his fault that he couldn't get over.
if the shoe was on the other foot, and he jumped to the WWF while vince had a gang of bigger names, bret would've been stuck in midcard hell, and most of yall wouldn't be complaining either.
yall gotta let that WWF childhood nostalgia go.