Met Bret with the Hitman crown on
TAIGASTYLE tee, Lee got the Pure crown on
Bucket list, dapped palms with the best there is
Ask Moms, I had the action figs
Now if you wanna talk Sharpshooters, the best there ever will be
Was when he beat Steve, made that man bleed
Made him a made man at Mania 13
And Riki Choshu is the OG
This episode’s signature move: The Sharpshooter. I had the chance to check something major off the ol’ bucket list the other day when I met Bret “the Hitman” Hart at The Wrestling Universe in Queens.
Shook his hand. Told him that he was my favorite wrestler as a kid and the reason that I became a wrestling fan in the first place.
Sidebar, I got that Hitman hat from Roots of Fight and as for the TAIGASTYLE tee, congrats to another technically sound individual, Mr. TAIGASTYLE himself, Lee Moriarty, for winning the Ring of Honor Pure Championship at Death Before Dishonor.
Back to Bret. Let’s talk about The Sharpshooter. A move invented by the legendary Riki Choshu. He called it the Sasori Gatame, loosely translated from Japanese: The Scorpion Hold. Makes sense that when Sting started to use it in the late 80s, he called it The Scorpion Deathlock.
Bret started using it a few years later when he left The Hart Foundation tag team to embark on a singles run. He needed a finisher. Pat Patterson brought up The Scorpion Deathlock as an option and Bret asked around for somebody to teach him how to do it. Wanna know who taught him? Konnan. Which makes sense to me because Konnan would go on to use another submission move that I always thought was dope: The Tequila Sunrise. Guy has some good taste.
And Bret had some classics. He beat Mr. Perfect with the Sharpshooter to win his first Intercontinental title at SummerSlam ‘91. He used The Sharpshooter to beat Ric Flair and win his first World Title in ‘92. But without a doubt in my mind, The Sharpshooter that caused Stone Cold Steve Austin to pass out from the pain and lose the Submission Match at WrestleMania 13 in 1997 is the best there ever will be.
Nowadays, you see The Sharpshooter all the time. Speedball Mike Bailey just used it to beat Mustafa Ali at Slammiversary to win the X-Division title. And Daniel Garcia’s version is called the Dragon Tamer.
But in my opinion the best version was Bret’s version. So here’s to The Hitman and here’s to The Sharpshooter.
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