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#2 Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania 12
There are no ladders or folding chairs or steel cages, just two guys in the ring going for 60 straight minutes, and whoever has the most falls when the time expires wins.
The Iron Man/Marathon match is one of my favourite gimmicks because it is so simple, and because when it's used with the right wrestlers, it brings out the best aspects of pro wrestling - the athleticism, the creativity, the psychology. All those are on full display here, as Shawn and Bret wrestle for a full hour without a single fall taking place.
It's the equivalent of a 60-minute draw, the kind of thing you would've seen between Lou Thesz and Verne Gagne back in the 50s and 60s. The pace is slow and deliberate, with both guys saving their best stuff for the later stages of the match. There's a lot of mat wrestling to start, headlocks, hammerlocks, reversals and what not. Things build nicely as the hour goes on, with both Shawn and Bret getting more aggressive as more time passes without a fall.
The 60 minutes elapses just as Shawn is caught in Bret's Sharpshooter and about to submit. The match is declared a draw and WWF Champion Bret grabs his belt and heads up the aisle. Gorilla Monsoon talks to the ref and the timekeeper and orders that the match is restarted in sudden death overtime - there must be a winner.
Bret is livid, runs back to the ring and starts pounding on Shawn. Bret charges and Shawn drops him with a superkick. While Bret recovers, Shawn crawls to the corner and pulls himself up, nails Bret with a second superkick just as Bret gets to his feet from the first one, pin, three counts.
This was the final step in elevating Shawn Michaels, who started with the company as one half of the Rockers and then became a multi-time Intercontinental Champion as a mid-card heel, into a main event babyface. This was his first WWF Title, and though he switched back and forth from face to heel several times, and sat out a few years with back problems, he didn't leave the main event until his retirement in 2010.
