When Bret Hart retired, he had already been wrestling for 22 years, which was rare in his era given how demanding the business was on people’s bodies. As fun as it is to speculate on dream matches that Hart would have had if he never got concussed in WCW, the likelihood of him actually wrestling for many more years after WCW is slimmer than some would like to believe. Having said that, if he never got concussed, when would Hart hang up his boots?

Let’s say he does do all the things we said he was going to do. He wrestles Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 18, he goes back to NJPW for a tour or two, wrestles the next generation in Ring of Honor and the wider independent circuit, and even has a fun little cameo in TNA and helps them get their monthly pay-per-views and “TNA Impact” shows up and running a little faster. Where is the natural end point for him? In reality, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006 over the weekend of WrestleMania 22, and his DVD came out not long after, so the fences were being mended at that point, but he was inducted mainly because no one thought he’d ever step in the ring again, so a retirement in a different timeline would be a little later.

Ironically, for as bad as the match was in real life, his WrestleMania 26 match against Vince McMahon in 2010 is ultimately the perfect way for Hart to go out. His in-ring style was known for being safe so he could have easily had a 30-year career in the business, which would have given him enough time to appear in NJPW, ROH, TNA, and make his way back to WWE for one last run, a WrestleMania moment with McMahon, revenge for the Screwjob, a Hall of Fame induction, and retirement ceremony similar to what Ric Flair had at WrestleMania 24 two years earlier.

Hart could have been kept on as a producer to help out backstage, something he did offer to AEW but was turned down, and even though there would have still been politics to navigate, his knowledge would have been invaluable at that time. After all, could you imagine “WWE NXT” starting out with Bret Hart and Dusty Rhodes being the guiding hands? That warrants an entire piece in itself!