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“I’m The Best There Is, Best There Was, and the Best There Ever Will Be!”
Bret “The Hitman” Hart is one of those wrestlers that you can love or hate, but you absolutely have to respect the man. While actions in his personal life are controversial, and his outspoken,
sometimes malicious nature have turned fans off, the reality of it is that Bret Hart is one of the true, great wrestlers.
Bret Hart began his career in Stampede wrestling. An amateur wrestling in high school, it was inevitable that Bret would become a professional wrestler, due to the legacy set by the infamous “Hart Family”. Bret would learn his trade in Stampede wrestling battling against a wide variety of talented wrestlers to improve his skills, including the Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask.
Bret joined the World Wrestling Federation in 1984, where he would remain for 13 whole years. Brets WWF career began with him tag-teaming with Jim Neidhart as the “Hart Foundation”. It would take almost three years but the Hart Foundation would go on to win the tag team titles, defeating the British Bulldogs in this match:
Bret was one of the only wrestlers to successfully juggle both a singles and tag team career at the same time, wrestling the likes of Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and the Macho Man Randy Savage.
It took until the early 1990s for Brets single career to really take off however, and it took off with a bang with Bret Hart winning the Intercontinental Title at Summerslam 91 beating Mr. Perfect. I remember this match fondly, because at that point I thought it was “impossible” for anyone to break out of the perfect-plex yet Bret did it, and managed to win the IC Title in the process.
In later years The Rock would refer to himself as the “Peoples Champion” but in reality Bret Hart was the true peoples champion. One of his trademark moves was to give his sunglasses to a kid at ringside when he came to the ring, and he also received the most fan mail out of all the wrestlers, even when he wasn’t in the main events.
Brets success would continue as he won the 1991 King of the Ring. His first real feud since becoming the intercontinental champion was an epic feud with The Mountie, losing the title in the process. He’d regain the title at Wrestlemania 9 against Roddy Piper, in a fantastic and very passionate match that had you glued to your set the entire time:
At Summerslam 1992, Bret would drop the title to Davey Boy Smith. This match was great at the time, however is one of those matches that only grow in stature when we later learned that Davey Boy Smith gassed literally 3 minutes into the match, yet Bret Hart managed to carry him to a 30 minute ***** match, which is generally accepted as the greatest Summerslam match ever:
Bret would soon after that win his first WWF Championship, beating Ric Flair and would go onto successfully defend the title against the likes of Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon and Ric Flair. Unfortunately he would lose the title to Yokozuna at Wrestlemania 9 and then bid farewell to the main event, as Hulk Hogan was back to take that over:
This would result in being a good thing however, as Bret Hart won the 1993 King of the Ring, then entered into a long feud with Jerry Lawler that would continue for years. The hatred between the two was evident and Jerry Lawler played the “weasel” role to perfection.
Bret would return to the title scene at Wrestlemania 10, losing his chance at regaining the title due to the “mistake” of Owen Hart. This disagreement between the two would grow throughout the year, with Owen getting more and more frustrated at Bret every turn. It all came to an intense climax at the 1994 Royal Rumble when in the tag team championship match between The Harts and The Quebecers, the match was stopped with Bret being declared too injured to continue. Owen would attack his knee, the heel turn complete.
Hart would go on to “win” the Royal Rumble with Lex Luger in the infamous finish:
Bret would regain the WWF Championship at Wrestlemania 10, while losing to Owen on the same show. The two would feud for a long time with Bret also feuding with Diesel, yet all the interest was in the Bret-Owen feud which would cost Bret his WWF Title against Bob Backlund at Survivor Series 1994.
In 1995-1996 Bret would participate in various feuds, fighting against the likes of Bob Backland, and many or Jerry Lawlers allies like Isaac Yankem DDS. He would also win his third WWF championship against Diesel at Survivor Series, and would have an epic iron man match against Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 12, losing in overtime.
Bret Hart took a break from wrestling, before returning to the main event scene and helping to elevate Stone Cold Steve Austin in late 1996. The two would go on to have one of the most famous matches of all time at Wrestlemania 13, where Bret Hart successfully completed his heel turn while Austin turned face:
Bret would hammer home his heel turn in the coming weeks, turning Anti-American and breathing new life into the Bret Hart character. Unfortunately this would all lead to a feud with the new Shawn Michaels stable D-Generation X, which would ultimately result in….yeah:
Bret Hart would go onto WCW where he would prove Vince McMahon correct. Vince had always said WCW wouldn’t know what to do with him and to say WCW fucked up would be a huge understatement. Perhaps only the “Invasion” angle was more badly booked than Bret Harts entire WCW run. I’m not even going to bother to recap his WCW run because it makes baby jesus cry. If there’s one thing you want to remember about Brets run, it was this:
The one time WCW got it right. And it was all Brets idea.
Brets wrestling career would come to a premature end when Goldberg nailed him with a kick to the head that would result in a concussion. Bret would continue to wrestle and most likely picked up some more concussions, one of those again due to the clumsiness of Goldberg. Bret suffered from post-concussion syndrome and was forced to retire. Bret would also suffer a stroke, and would go through various health problems over the years.
Thankfully, the end of Bret Harts career was not to be on a sour note. In 2009/2010 Bret Hart made his infamous return to the WWE, providing closure on the long drawn-out Montreal Screw Job story by making up with Shawn Michaels, and beating the shit out of Vince McMahon.
The Bret/Vince storyline would get a lot of criticism, and the match between the two was one of the worst booked matches ever, but none of that is important. What is important is that the storyline led to closure and peace of mind for Bret Hart. It took 13 years, but he was finally able to get revenge on Vince McMahon. In a nice final twist Bret Hart would return at the WWE Over The Limit PPV to assist Jerry Lawler, showing that their long-term animosities were now in the past.
Bret Hart was a wrestler who gave everything he had to the business. The business gave it all back and then some, and it says a lot about the character of Bret Hart that he’s been able to rise above everything, and end his wrestling career on a positive note.
Bret Hart Tribute
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The Bataan Death March (Tagalog: Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan, Japanese: Batān Shi no Kōshin (バターン死の行進?)) ja:バターン死の行進, which began on April 9, 1942, was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60-80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II.[3][4] All told, approximately 2,500–10,000 Filipino and 100-650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach their destination at Camp O'Donnell.[5][6] The reported death tolls vary, especially amongst Filipino POWs, because historians cannot determine how many prisoners blended in with the civilian population and escaped. The march went from Mariveles, Bataan, to San Fernando, Pampanga. From San Fernando, survivors were loaded to a box train and they were brought to Camp O'Donell in Capas, Tarlac.
The 128 km (80 mi) march was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the Japanese Army, and was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.
The March of DeathDead soldiers on the Bataan Death March.
The Japanese were unprepared for the number of prisoners that they were responsible for, and there was no organized plan for how to handle them. Prisoners were stripped of their weapons and valuables, and told to march to Balanga, the capital of Bataan. Many were beaten, bayoneted, and mistreated. The first major atrocity occurred when between 350 and 400 Filipino officers and NCOs were summarily executed after they had surrendered.
The Japanese failed to supply the prisoners with food or water until they had reached Balanga. Many of the prisoners died along the way of heat or exhaustion. Prisoners were given no food for the first three days, and were only allowed to drink water from filthy water buffalo wallows on the side of the road. Furthermore, Japanese troops would frequently beat and bayonet prisoners who began to fall behind, or were unable to walk. Once they arrived in Balanga, the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene caused dysentery and other diseases to rapidly spread among the prisoners. The Japanese failed to provide them with medical care, leaving U.S. medical personnel to tend to the sick and wounded (with few or no supplies). In June 2001, U.S. Congressional Representative Dana Rohrabacher described and tried to explain the horrors and brutality that the prisoners experienced on the march:
They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who fell were bayoneted. Some of those who fell were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai swords from horseback. The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior who surrendered had no honor; thus was not to be treated like a human being. Thus they were not committing crimes against human beings.[...] The Japanese soldiers at that time [...] felt they were dealing with subhumans and animals.
Trucks were known to drive over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue,[9][10][11] and "cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue. Marchers were harassed with random bayonet stabs and beatings.
Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives).
From San Fernando, the prisoners were transported by rail to Capas. One hundred or more prisoners were stuffed into each of the trains' boxcars, which were unventilated and sweltering in the tropical heat. The trains had no sanitation facilities, and disease continued to take a heavy toll of the prisoners. After they reached Capas, they were forced to walk the final 9 miles to Camp O'Donnell.[5] Even after arriving at Camp O'Donnell, the survivors of the march continued to die at a rate of 30–50 per day, leading to thousands more dead. Most of the dead were buried in mass graves that the Japanese dug out with bulldozers on the outside of the barbed wire surrounding the compound.
The death toll of the march is difficult to assess as thousands of captives were able to escape from their guards (although many were killed during their escapes), and it is not known how many died in the fighting that was taking place concurrently.
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Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant, completed but never fueled, on Bataan Peninsula, 100 kilometres (62 mi) west of Manila in the Philippines. It is located on a 3.57 square kilometre government reservation at Napot Point in Morong, Bataan. It was the Philippines' only attempt at building a nuclear power plant.
History
The Philippine nuclear program started in 1958 with the creation of the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) under Republic Act 2067. Under a regime of martial law, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in July 1973 announced the decision to build a nuclear power plant. This was in response to the 1973 oil crisis, as the Middle East oil embargo had put a heavy strain on the Philippine economy, and Marcos believed nuclear power to be the solution to meeting the country's energy demands and decreasing dependence on imported oil.
Construction on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant began in 1976. Following the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States, construction on the BNPP was stopped, and a subsequent safety inquiry into the plant revealed over 4,000 defects. Among the issues raised was that it was built near major earthquake fault lines and close to the then dormant Mount Pinatubo.
By 1984, when the BNPP was nearly complete, its cost had reached $US2.3 billion. Equipped with a Westinghouse light water reactor, it was designed to produce 621 megawatts of electricity.
Marcos was overthrown by the People Power Revolution in 1986. Days after the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the succeeding administration of President Corazon Aquino decided not to operate the plant. Among other considerations taken were the strong opposition from Bataan residents and Philippine citizens.
The government sued Westinghouse for overpricing and bribery but was ultimately rejected by a United States court. Debt repayment on the plant became the country's biggest single obligation. While successive governments have looked at several proposals to convert the plant into an oil, coal, or gas-fired power station, these options have all been deemed less economically attractive in the long term than simply constructing new power stations.Anti-nuclear movement
See also: Anti-nuclear movement in the Philippines
The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was a focal point for anti-nuclear protests in the late 1970s and 1980s. The project was criticised for being a potential threat to public health, especially since the plant was located in an earthquake zone. And because a volcano formation was found near the location of the plant.2000s
Despite never having been commissioned, the plant has remained intact, including the nuclear reactor, and has continued to be maintained. The Philippine government completed paying off its obligations on the plant in April 2007, more than 30 years after construction began.
On January 29, 2008, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes announced that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 8-man team led by Akira Omoto inspected the mothballed Bataan Nuclear power station on rehabilitation prospects. In preparing their report, the IAEA made two primary recommendations. First, the power plant's status must be thoroughly evaluated by technical inspections and economic evaluations conducted by a committed group of nuclear power experts with experience in preservation management. Second, the IAEA mission advised the Philippines Government on the general requirements for starting its nuclear power program, stressing that the proper infrastructure, safety standards, and knowledge be implemented. The IAEA's role did not extend to assessing whether the power plant is usable or not, or how much the plant may cost to rehabilitate. On February 1, 2010, NAPOCOR started evaluating the financial plan of Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), assessing that it may cost $US1-billion to rehabilitate the nuclear plant.
On February 22, 2011, the Philippine government will reimburse the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) ₱4.2 billion (US$96 million) it spent for maintaining the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. It requires an average of ₱40 million a year just to maintain it. In May 2011, it was announced that the plant would be turned into a tourist attraction.
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TALAGA BEACH PROBABLY THE BEST BEACH IN CENTRAL LUZON! But unfortunately this was neglected over the year since the 1st EDSA Revolution of 1986. Opened to public and took over under the Dept. of Tourism during Pres. Cory Aquino's time. Because of the suspicion that part of Marcos weatlh hidden in his Mansion over the hillside where he frequently made his vacation there, Treasure Hunters made a series of diggings inside and around the Mansion. They torn down the beautiful Mansion over the hillside and the Club House along the beach. Looters and robbers feasted on every items left by the Marcoses up to cannibalizing the whole structure of the building. At present the concrete foundation was left as witness to the horrible past of this MAJESTIC PLACE.
Brets success would continue as he won the 1991 King of the Ring. His first real feud since becoming the intercontinental champion was an epic feud with The Mountie, losing the title in the process. He’d regain the title at Wrestlemania 9 against Roddy Piper, in a fantastic and very passionate match that had you glued to your set the entire time:
