I don't agree with this view. "Benoit may have been the real technical wizard". So 10 German suplexes a match makes you a technical wizard does it?
Benoit was just as guilty as having an every match routine as anyone.
Bret Hart's matches were structured, I'll give you that - structured on a foundation of cow shit that is. His matches were so slow that it looked like they were wrestling on cow shit and he always looked clumsy because there was always something going wrong with most of his moves. He couldn't dictate in the ring either, he was always getting pushed around whenever he had to wrestle anyone bigger than him.
Pretty much every match wrestled these days is better than a Bret Hart match.
LOL, you've got to be kidding me. Bret Hart was all about doing things that made sense. He wouldn't throw himself onto a guy lying on a table, he made sure that someone made him crash through a table. Everything he did was to ensure that the audience didn't ask, why would you do that? Now granted, I'm sure if you go through all of his matches, you might be able to find some holes in his wrestling logic, but it would be hard to find that's for sure.
His matches started slow because for him, why would you do big stuff right away when you need to wear guys down in order for bigger moves to make sense. I agree that Bret is his own biggest fan, but you'd be hard to find someone make a better case based on logic alone.
The other thing Bret would do is get the most out of his moves. When you watch a Bret Hart match, almost nothing is wasted. That's what makes his matches great. There's no wasted motion and everything (or at least most of it) has a reason behind it. Headlocks are done at the outset because they are basic to wrestling. In real life, a headlock done correctly could be all it would take to stop an attacker in their tracks. The same could be said about a front face lock. He goes for pins because he's trying to win or see where his opponent is at. He does holds because he's trying to soften people up. In his early heel days he would walk out of the ring because he was frustrated that the babyface had the advantage over him. These are all little things, but they try to make you as a fan believe that these guys are competing versus performing. Nuances are what make a match great and Bret Hart was a master at nuances. Ric Flair was actually good at some of this stuff too, but later in his career he just used them too liberally and it became obvious that he was doing them out of routine.
Matches these days make very little sense. The moves look like they were obviously worked on or "practiced" beforehand and that's what is lost about the art of wrestling. I've called Shawn Michaels overrated, but one thing about his slow selling that I'll give him credit for is that he is at least trying to make it look like shit hurts and isn't easy to bounce back from. Modern wrestlers should go back and watch the selling of previous generations.