The title of this installment is a pun; let me know if you picked up on it. Let’s see how WWF’s New Generation fared when it came to passing the belt around.
March 20, 1994 – New York, New York
Bret Hart def. Yokozuna {WWF Championship Match}
From WrestleMania X thought their first match was better. It felt tighter and told a more consistent story. Both matches had bad finishes, but this one was almost incomprehensible. Yokozuna loses his balance going for the Banzai Drop and Hart just pins him at 10:38? I don’t care for it one bit and Roddy Piper as ref didn’t do anything to help the match. *¾
November 23, 1994 – San Antonio, Texas
Bob Backlund def. Bret Hart {WWF Championship Submission Match Match}
From the eighth annual Survivor Series. This was a great bit of business. Backlund is made credible in middle age by discovering that the crossface chickenwing is lethal, but Hart is an expert who does everything he can to keep Backlund from putting it on. So Backlund spends the match looking for distractions and working the arm in preparation for the hold. It’s pretty incredible that this didn’t get deathly boring. Lots of little things were great too, like Backlund being ready for the Sharpshooter so Hart eventually just said screw it and put on the figure four, and the finish being a throwback to how Backlund lost to Iron Sheik, with the requisite gaga that accompanies every babyface losing the title to a heel. The chickenwing was on probably twice as long as it should have been (10 uninterrupted minutes, almost 1/3 of the match), but I like that Owen Hart convinced his mom to throw in the towel at 35:11. ***½
November 26, 1994 – New York, New York
Diesel def. Bob Backlund {WWF Championship Match}
From a house show at MSG, so short that the full match was easily recapped on television later. It’s a ten-second (easy enough to time and see that Vince McMahon’s eight-second claim is wrong) squash after a three-day reign, so what is one supposed to say about it? Backlund was a super weird choice for a paper champion, except in that his reign was like those of the early heel WWWF champions; it was short and quickly dispatched. N/A
November 19, 1995 – Landover, Maryland
Bret Hart def. Diesel {WWF Championship No Disqualification Match}
From the ninth annual Survivor Series. Diesel was kind of useless here. It’s rare that the seams show enough that you can see who is running the show in a match, but Hart might as well have been holding Diesel’s hand. Diesel’s selling came and went and he blatantly got in position for a lot of spots. Hart worked his ass off but it wasn’t enough. The finish was great, and Diesel swearing and having a tantrum after losing the title after getting rolled up at 24:54 was terrific, but this was the case of a match that if it was put on today people would crap all over it. That’s called not standing the test of time. ***
March 31, 1996 – Anaheim, California
Shawn Michaels def. Bret Hart {WWF Championship Iron Man Match}
From WrestleMania XII. One of the things I like about being a wrestling fan is that you can find unintended stories in a match that make you enjoy it more. My problem with this match is the opposite; it’s intended story is that both guys were so pensive about being in a sixty-minute match that they spent the first half of it doing next to nothing. The problem with that is even if it makes sense, it’s boring. The first near-fall legitimately came thirty minutes into the match. You could cut everything from the first half out and have a really memorable WrestleMania main event without losing anything but some extra sweat. As it is, it doesn’t really make sense. Later Iron Man matches have exposed this as wanting. Michaels won in 61:52 (overtime), one fall to nothing with a Superkick. ***¼
November 17, 1996 – New York, New York
Sycho Sid def. Shawn Michaels {WWF Championship Match}
From the tenth annual Survivor Series. Sid had so much energy here it’s kind of wild to see. Things tapered off in the middle a bit, but a strong finish (that of course saw the heel cheat blatantly to win the title at 20:02, as per tradition) brought the crowd back to life. It was pretty nutty that the men in the crowd were so behind the evil Sid, but that’s the northeast for you. ***½
January 19, 1997 – San Antonio, Texas
Shawn Michaels def. Psycho Sid {WWF Championship Match}
From the 10th Royal Rumble. That was less good, but thankfully shorter. A lot of rest holds made up the middle of the match. The ending was fiery though, with Michaels giving Sid the same as he got at Survivor Series and winning in front of his hometown fans at 13:49. He probably didn’t need to cheat to win, but Sid had it coming for going after Jose Lothario again. **¾
February 16, 1997 – Chattanooga, Tennessee
Bret Hart def. Steve Austin, Vader, and The Undertaker {WWF Championship Four Way Elimination Match}
From In Your House: Fatal Four Way, we get the first time (not including the Royal Rumble in ‘92) that the title changed hands in a match involving more than two competitors. Michaels vacated the title due to injury a couple weeks after winning it, prompting conspiracy theories that he just didn’t want to drop the title back to Hart at the upcoming WrestleMania. I don’t like conspiracy theories, except the one that says Hart was in on the Montreal screwjob. I’ll touch on that later. This was a fantastic, wild brawl. Vader’s cut added a lot of urgency to the match, Austin’s obsession with Hart gave it a throughline (and made Hart winning at 24:06 in spite of Austin’s post-elimination interference feel satisfying), and in general the violence was just really fun to watch. ****¼
February 17, 1997 – Nashville, Tennessee
Sycho Sid def. Bret Hart {WWF Championship Match}
From Raw 197. Sid seems more motivated when he’s about to win a title. This was mostly punches and kicks, but the finish at 11:55 was very strong. Hart took a wild bump against the ropes and the Austin interference worked well (aside from the actual chair shot looking like a playful bop). ***
March 23, 1997 – Rosemont, Illinois
The Undertaker def. Psycho Sid {WWE Championship No Disqualification Match}
From WrestleMania 13. This was crazy boring, and a weird example of a match where the heel was protected by gratuitous interference, not the babyface. Were we really meant to believe that the Undertaker couldn’t win the championship clean in 1997? The Undertaker? I know Sid is a god, but come on. This was all punches and rest holds before Bret Hart got involved. I’d love to know if there was ever a crowd as quiet for another WrestleMania main event as they were for this one. Rock vs. Cena for the title comes to mind. Undertaker has the distinction of being in two of the top three worst title changes in this belt’s history. He won this one at 21:19. *
August 3, 1997 – East Rutherford, New Jersey
Bret Hart def. The Undertaker {WWE Championship Match}
From the 10th SummerSlam. To date, as I alluded to above, the Undertaker has dragged all but one of the title matches he’s been in way down. I expected this to be pretty good, but damn it was boring. For all the work they did, this could have been one-third as long. Paul Bearer provided a distraction about halfway through and things finally started picking up, but brevity would have been very beneficial here. The finish worked really well, though, and saw Hart spit on guest referee Michaels and Michaels respond by swinging a chair at Hart but accidentally hitting Undertaker. That gave Hart the title at 28:10 and set up the Michaels/Undertaker feud and the debut of Kane and Hell in a Cell. It’s too bad the match wasn’t as efficient as the finish. ***¼
November 9, 1997 – Montreal, Quebec
Shawn Michaels def. Bret Hart {WWE Championship Match}
From the 11th annual Survivor Series. I suppose if you count all the brawling on the floor before the match began then you can call this something of substance. But even then not really, as it felt like they never really got out of first gear. The most interesting thing is to watch the faces of the fans in the crowd and to watch Michaels’ exaggerated, terrible acting job in the face of the supposed screw job. I still think Hart, and thus everyone peripherally involved in the match, was in on it. He made a ton of money in WCW (though he might not have gone had he known what would have happened to Owen Hart and to himself against Goldberg), and the documentary crew filming it all at a time before WWF itself was filming everything backstage just wreaks of a work. Anyway, you know how this went down; Michaels reversed the Sharpshooter and referee Earl Hebner called the match with the aggressive support of Vince McMahon at 12:19, giving the title to Michaels. It’s all pretty tame in the scope of a million other dramatic things that have happened in the ensuing decades. **½
Michaels and Hart were lauded for their ring work during this ear, and while that’s well deserved for their title defenses and non-title matches, it isn’t on display here. Their politicking and whining got in the way of their performances when the title was set to change hands. If anything, the bright spot of this era is Sid over delivering well beyond his general ability, as well as the Undertaker evolving from his zombie style to a quicker and more aggressive one.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
