BRET HART vs. JEAN-PIERRE LAFITTE
Of course, since Lawler and Bret are feuding, the commentary has turned from fairly inoffensive to ungodly obnoxious. We get a replay of SummerSlam 1992 for whatever reason and about a million commercial breaks. LaFitte starts out the match with some stupid looking strikes and smashes Bret into the turnbuckle. I don’t know why that happens in every Bret Hart match but it’s pretty ridiculous. Surprisingly, LaFitte actually hits the elbow that everyone always misses and immediately locks in a rest hold. We get a camera pan to Lawler mugging at ringside and some more uninspired offense. Bret dodges a running nothing onto the turnbuckle and slams LaFitte onto the steel steps, which actually looked incredibly nasty.
A flying clothesline from the second rope leads to some more stupid looking strikes, this time from Bret. LaFitte counters another running nothing by throwing Bret face-first into the top rope, mooks to the crowd and locks in a rest hold. Bret finally breaks out of it but just immediately runs into a weird hiptoss clothesline combination. LaFitte goes to the top, hits a useless splash for the two count and smashes Bret’s throat into the second rope. He also hits some more stupid looking strikes, which according to Lawler is because he told him to hit Bret “once for him and once for me”. That’s…completely pointless, but okay. Why didn’t you just make a handicap match if you apparently have the power to make these matches, Lawler? I mean, you might as well at this point. I think the implication is that Lawler is a complete coward who doesn’t want to get within 50 miles of Bret but that doesn’t make for a very good feud.
LaFitte hits a side slam on Bret to set up the Cannonball, which misses. Of course, it doesn’t matter, because he immediately reverses an Irish whip into the steps anyway. Good god, can Bret get some offense? Face in peril isn’t interesting in tag matches, why did you think it would be interesting here? Finally, Bret knees LaFitte in the balls and hits a Russian legsweep for the two count. He starts his comeback but in the slowest way possible so it doesn’t effect the momentum in any way whatsoever, especially since LaFitte immediately catches him and hits him with a green bay plunge. He goes for the cannonball, but gets crotched, superplexed and locked into the sharpshooter for the win. It seems like this was just a poor man’s copy of their PPV match, which is pretty disappointing considering everything. I feel like we’re regressing here. Hell, they even had the stupid mid-show jobber match.
Bret mooks at Lawler on the outside and knocks him over the barricade. Isaac D. Yankem makes the save and DDTs Bret into the concrete. Wow…we’re really still doing this, huh? Apparently, this set up a cage match between Bret and Yankem in a few weeks on RAW. So yeah, this feud still isn’t ending. They had the perfect excuse and they’re still not doing it.
We get promos from Camp Cornette and Diesel/Shawn/Taker to promote the 6 man tag match for next week to end the show.
