WWE Monday Night RAW 25th anniversary: Ranking the 25 biggest stars

10. Bret Hart

Kicking off the top 10 is one of the earliest stars in Monday Night RAW history, none other than Bret “The Hitman” Hart. He may not have as many years in as some of the others on this list, but without Bret Hart, there probably is no Monday Night RAW.

As the stars of the ’80s and early ‘90s went away, somebody had to take the wheel and steer WWE for a while, and that man was Bret Hart. Hart was the WWE Champion when RAW debuted and held the title up until WrestleMania IX, losing to Yokozuna, who in turn lost it to Hulk Hogan a few minutes later. Hart was supposed to regain the title from Hogan at King of the Ring, but Hogan didn’t want to do that and dropped it back to Yokozuna instead on his way out of WWE.

Hart went on to win the King of the Ring tournament, which led to one of the great early feuds of Monday Night RAW as he and Jerry “The King” Lawler battled for the remainder of 1993 with much of it playing out on Monday nights. The end of that storyline bled right into the next as friction between he and his brother Owen became the best program in WWE and lasted through the majority of 1994. Bret had regained the title and was also at it with Diesel. Seriously, Bret worked his tail off in the early days of the flagship.

He took a backseat to Kevin Nash when he won the title and took a little time off but came back to once again feud with Jerry Lawler before regaining the title and starting a feud with the man he will be linked to forever in Shawn Michaels. Michaels won their Iron Man Match for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania XII and Hart left the company for nearly eight months.

Hart returned to get involved with Stone Cold Steve Austin, a program that lasted for months leading into WrestleMania 13. Things had changed a little bit on RAW in Hart’s absence as WWE was getting beaten in the ratings by WCW and Hart really didn’t like it. He developed a new attitude and the double turn at WrestleMania turned Hart heel for the first time in a long time.

Soon after, Bret began to bash American fans and his new Hart Foundation became one of a number of stables on Monday nights, another of which was the newly-formed D-Generation X. Triple H and Shawn Michaels would cross as many lines as they needed to and things got really heated between Shawn and Bret. This played out on Monday nights for months, and while extremely entertaining, you could tell that this was very real.

This obviously led to the Montreal Screwjob, and Bret Hart was gone, not appearing on Monday Night RAW for more than 12 years. However, he made his return on Jan. 4, 2010 and made amends with HBK. He tried to do the same with Vince McMahon but it didn’t go as planned, and this led to some entertaining segments on the way to WrestleMania XXVI. The match wasn’t good at all, but it was good to see Bret back in WWE, and his place in Monday Night RAW history is cemented forever.