I prefrred Owen for the most part but between Bret and Shawn 100% Bret. His matches made sense, everything he did he did for a reason and generally avoided the flashy bullshit that there's too much of now. IMO wrestling would be in a better place today if more guys who came after looked more towards Bret than they did Shawn, especially when so many seemingly took the wrong lessons from his ring work. Bret knew how to carry someone to the best match of their lives without having to bump all over the place and as far as I remember never intentionally tried to bury someone in the ring. Shawn was more versatile in the ring and a better athlete, it's more mindset than anything why IMO Bret is better.
People like to shit on Kevin Nash for being a terrible draw for the WWF as champion but Shawn was almost as bad, crowds that were overwhelmingly men were turning on him after WrestleMania XII. It's probably another reason why his insecure ass had such a big chip on his shoulder.
shawn wasn't trying to take the belt to another company. If Bret was taking a break then that would've been different, they would've just vacated the title on raw and move on
but how can you expect vince to let your champion pin your next top guy clean then walk into wcw? vince is an asshole but he did what he had to do
They agreed to a DQ ending, there's a lot of audio from Wrestling With Shadows on what went down between them. Bret would've been fine dropping the belt even to Shawn the next night and he was still with the WWF for another 30 days after the Survivor Series. It reads like you've 100% bought into Vince's narrative and WWE's revisionist spin on this. Bret had been loyal to the company for over a decade at this point, viewed Vince as a second father and was basically forced into going to WCW. The locker room was pissed at Vince and Shawn, talent quit and others wanted to follow before getting talked out of it or refused to be granted their release, such as Owen.
Anyway, the Screwjob was the best thing to happen to the WWF back then because of how it transformed/enhanced Vince's persona. On the other hand the Screwjob had a domino effect on the Hart side aswell that arguably lead to some of the terrible things that followed.
Bret was a really good technical wrestler but the industry is so much more than that. Shawn had the technical skill the charisma and the insane adaptability to be the best.
The fact that he came back from a near career ending injury in 2002 hadn't been in the ring for years and then proceeded to have a better run in the twilight of his career than in his early days is insane.
Bret had an air of realism and believably that Shawn didn't IMO. Though I would give Shawn being more versatile I don't know if I'd put his mic work above Bret's though, neither were great but again Bret felt more authentic.
On the back injury, it's almost like Shawn exaggerated the severity of his back injury and it just so happened to get better for WWE, ignoring the match he had in 2000 at his promotion. His main issue aside from his ego and attitude was drugs. When Austin was near retirement and The Rock (who strongly disliked Shawn because of his disprespecting his grandmother years prior and the main reason they didn't work together) was on his way to Hollywood and were no longer front and center Shawn's back was magically no longer an issue.
That was not the plan. In the original plan, Bret wasn't going to show up in WCW for another month after that match, more than enough time for Bret to drop the title to literally anyone other than Shawn on the way out the door, or even to drop the belt to Shawn but not in Montreal.
Bret only showed up in WCW the next night because of the Screwjob.
Are you thinking of Rick Rude? Bret still didn't show up for another month, it wasn't until December 15th that Bret showed up on WCW TV because he had a 30 day non-compete clause as part of his release.
Bischoff wasn't about to do that again, Vince already sued them twice at that point over WCW using their IP and was the eventual reason why the WWF got WCW for pennies on the dollar. They wouldn't have had the belt to put on TV because they wouldn't have had it. Besides WCW dropped the ball with Bret just as Vince told Bret they would. They had a ready made angle with having the "WWF real champion" and what did they do? Threw in him as "special enforcer" or whatever for the shit show that was Sting/Hogan at Starcade.
