Growing up in the 90s as a wrestling fan you couldn’t help but idolise the “Best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.” Bret "The Hitman" Hart embodied the archetypal wrestling hero, who always won out against his evil, and normally devious opponent.
Whether you get wrapped up in the argument of wrestling being fake is a rather moot point. It is a sports entertainment business where the athletes quickly become heroes to their young fans, and Bret became an icon too many around the globe.
The “Hitman” character was a bastion of virtues who would never give up, and always showing courage, being valiant in defeat. WWE owner Vince McMahon took the industry down an X-rated path, which saw Bret Hart not only leave the WWE, being publicly humiliated and screwed by his boss on global television in the “Montreal screw-job”; but ultimately his own career demise moving to rival brand WCW.
Wrestling changed, leaving the old-school superhero behind, with Bret Hart admitting in his autobiography that he fell out of love for the business when the Monday night wars began between WCW and WWE.
Away from the sour ending to his first stint in the WWE the Hart family are and will always be a wrestling institution, with his father Stu Hart not only running Stampede Wrestling, his own Canadian wrestling business, but in his family’s dungeon in Calgary his father trained some of the wrestling greats from Chris Benoit, his brother Owen Hart to Brian Pillman, and the British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith.
Taking time out at the beginning of 2011, in the build up to Wrestlemania 27, Bret Hart sat down with Sport.co.uk Editor Nigel Brown to discuss his views on the current crop of superstars, how the business has changed, who the greatest ever wrestler is, his feelings towards Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels, and whether he will truly ever forgive them.
Hi Bret. Thanks very much for talking to Sport.co.uk. For me, you are the symbol of what wrestling should ideally stand for. When you returned to the WWE, how impressed were you with the talent and the direction it has been taking?
Well thankyou. It means a lot. The talent - there are always hard workers. There are some really great wrestlers as well - Randy Orton and John Cena are great examples. He {Cena} is a really great leader. I don’t know if he comes across as really dedicated, or a hard working wrestler. But his product is a good strong quality product. He emulates what I tried to emulate. He tries to be a real hero. But I don’t know if we have the same wrestling styles.
He really works hard at putting on a good, strong quality product. He is proud of his effort as I was. He really is a leader. He takes command of the dressing room. He is respected and admired by the wrestlers in the same way I was. I see a lot of real goodness coming out of the young wrestlers today. I don’t know how much of an influence I was on Cena growing up, but I know a lot of the wrestlers that when they were younger, they weren’t watching Ric Flair, they were watching Hulk Hogan and Bret Hart. It shows in their attitudes and their work ethic, so as far as the young guys and girls are concerned, they seem to hold me up in high esteem.
UFC has probably taken a swipe at Vince McMahon’s portion of the audience; the same audience that was watching Bret Hart and Steve Austin - real regular hard style, hardcore matches. That audience has moved on now to watching UFC. They want real fighting; intense, physical violence to a certain degree. Vince’s wife has recognised that part of the audience is watching something else and that leaves him with the old formula which is what I am most proud of - Mum, Dad, Grandma taking the kids to watch the wrestling.
I disagree with a lot of people who put wrestling as something violent and something that is not good for anything. I think it is good for kids. It is done in a way that is overly watchful of the PG rating that they got. I think that is the only way it can go, it is a good way to go and wrestling has a place there and has taken a step back from the 90s sort of position when I was in the squared circle.
Wrestling doesn’t have to be overly violent. You don’t have to have wrestlers hit wrestlers over the head with chairs.
Outlaw the chairs. Back in the 90s when I was wrestling they didn’t have chairs. There was always a big red flag if there was blood in a match and often blood was either a rarity or accidental if a few wrestlers collided.
It was never saturated with the gore that maybe it was back in the 70s and 80s of American wrestling. If you look back at the period I was champion in the 90s - from 92 to 97- the Bret Hart era, it was drug free. Steroid testing and drug testing was as real as it is right now. The violence was pretty much cut off. I can remember situations in wrestling back in the 90s where they said you cannot use a chair, you absolutely cannot hit anyone with a chair.
I think it was Undertaker where we had a whole series of suspense built around the chair, but we never hit anyone with the chair.
I remember Vince saying if we can use the chair but not actually hit anyone with it it would be great. We didn’t need all the violence and gore. We knew we had a child audience back then. We didn’t want to lose that. I was a fairly outspoken critic of the direction wrestling went after with the sleeze and the girls. I know they made a ton of money through that direction but it was a more wholesome era when I was champion.
Who was the best pound for pound fighter the business has ever seen?
I have said it lots of times. Dynamite Kid. Wrestling historians will credit Gorgeous George as the one who altered wrestling with long hair and gimmicks. He was the Hulk Hogan of the 1950s.
Dynamite Kid really took to wrestling in the 70s when wrestling was on a downswing around the world, maybe apart from Japan little guys weren’t necessarily of any use. It was about a lot of giant wrestlers back in those days. I always believed he changed the face of wrestling forever. He opened the door for smaller wrestlers.
He had more respect as a 220 pound wrestler than Hulk Hogan or some of the giants people only think about today. I feel that Dynamite Kid has never really got the credit for changing wrestling completely. The moves of Dynamite Kid weren’t just Dynamite. The truth is that Dynamite brought that to America and Canada. He changed the way I wrestled and countless other Americans wrestled.
I remember when the Hart Foundation were wrestling the British Bulldogs, when we started out around 1985. Wrestling was going through the roof, there wasn’t a wrestler or match on the card that could top the Hart Foundation and The Bulldogs – it was the sheer speed. The saddest thing about The Hart Foundation and The Bulldogs was that none of the greatest matches we ever had were ever on film. They filmed a lot of the beginning matches that we had but never the ones that perfected our art.
I watched the matches we had that were on tape. If they filmed some of the stuff a few months later, they would have seen even better and faster action. We perfected it over a lull.
I think the Kid will always be recognised as a phenomenon for the way he looked. That was all that was. Hogan never did that much in the ring.
Hulk Hogan had the X factor in terms of the muscle. He ticked the boxes. He had the image of being the All-American hero – What was your take on him as a wrestler?
He didn’t know a headlock from a headlight. There were a lot of wrestlers that get credit for being these legendary American wrestlers. They really had the same match every night. There was very little mental creativity. Someone like Dynamite was an expert in ring psychology and I think I got that from English wrestling when I came here.
When I came here in 1981 to wrestle for Max Crabtree. He was ahead of his time. He was more like Vince. He had a big vision and I have always admired Max Crabtree in the joint promotion.
It reminded me of that movie Shakespeare in Love. It was fun wrestling over here. The egos and personalities that you got sometimes in America or Canada and the seriousness and physicality of it in Japan got tiring. Wrestling in England, back then; it was a magical riding and hanging out with all those guys.
I remember meeting Mick McManus in the dressing room and when the rest of us came in, we hid under the benches. He was like a terror. When the wrestlers worked, it was a whole team effort. Everyone set their egos aside. It was about the whole show like Shakespeare in Love where everyone is trying to give the best performance as possible and make sure the stars shine as the stars. There was no ‘I want to be the star’ and not him. No jealousies that you get in American wrestling.
When was the last time you saw Dynamite?
I haven’t seen him since 1992. The last time I talked to him was in 2000. I called him from London when I was doing my documentary.
I was going to try and see him but we didn’t hook up. I have always been very sorry for all the hardships he has gone through. Not just myself, but a lot of wrestlers wish they could reach out to him and help him a bit.
He deserves his place on the top of the heap of wrestling.
How hard were the Bulldogs and Jim Neidhart to control on and off-screen as characters?
In the end, I was the perfect babysitter for Jim. It was like steer wrestling- keep him pointed in the right direction. I did that a lot for Jim and I kept him motivated and focused.
Wrestlers tend to self-destruct when they get stressed and I don’t think they even know what they get stressed about. You may have a big pay-per-view coming up and it is easy to let yourself get stressed out rather than making that pay-per-view better.
I thought it was critical for me to keep Jim’s eye on the prize. If we win this match or have a great pay-per-view night, we might get a title shot or the belts back. Often in the end, you started to learn that I was right and if he did work hard and follow my advice and stay diligent, that good things would happen.
When we were together, Jim would definitely carry his end of the law, and I didn't have to carry Jim. I never wanted to pretend it was the Bret Hart show and I had to carry Jim. Jim was a full equal partner and he did everything, but he was shy and not so well spoken back then when I first got into the WWF. The early days with Jim and I was a case of me telling Jim what I wished I could say. We would be driving somewhere and talking - I would start talking about what this is, what I was going to say tomorrow, rattling off ideas and comments.
The amazing thing with Jim when we were back on TV the next day was that I reverted back into my shell and Jim would rattle things off that I wanted to say. Jim was the voice and programmer.
The same with the wrestling. We had the Summer Slam in 1988. It was the first Summerslam and I talked to him about sling-shotting him over the rope out of the ring and I remember trying to talk Jim into doing that for several weeks. He was pretty nervous about doing it.
At first he said no and then after a couple of nights we were doing it together. Jim for a big man was a talented, co-ordinated athlete. I remember him telling me ‘I can do it, I can do it’. I remember when I pulled him back and slinged him over the rope at Madison Square Garden, every single fan on that side was standing up. Is he really going to? And here he goes - a 280 pound rhino over the top rope. I remember Jake “The Snake” Roberts saying you stole the show and it is a credit to Jim.”
How frustrating was it when you saw steroid fuelled wrestlers getting put in front of you? How did you deal with that?
Wrestling was often controlled by the fans and that is what the fans wanted too. They wanted the big muscle guys and Vince was always going to go with the horse that is likely to draw him the most money.
I didn’t really have any problem with getting behind the Ultimate Warrior. I had more of a problem with the leadership issues he had in the dressing room. He just wasn’t a good leader and not a good representative. He was not even articulate with his interviews. I wasn’t a fan.
I was a huge fan of Hulk Hogan - I loved what he was doing and how hard he worked but he was limited with his storyline and his gimmick. It is easy to knock him now. During those days, Hulk Hogan was the man and was worshipped by everyone including myself. We appreciated how he kicked the door in on wrestling and began leading us all to better money and bigger crowds.
With Warrior, the wrestlers themselves didn’t think he deserved it and I didn’t know what the fuss was about. As the business slumped Warrior wasn’t the answer to the problem and they tried Macho Man.
I was working as hard as anyone at that time. I had a huge following. They used to do the TV tapings - they would bring the mail for the wrestlers and a pretty big sized bag for Hogan, Macho Man and pretty good-sized bag for Warrior. But they would have to drag in six bags for me. I didn’t have any T-shirts or merchandise, and I thought there is something wrong with this. If I am getting this much mail and I am this popular during my run as a villain - where is my merchandise? I think that finally when they gave me a break, it was getting a little late.
I was long overdue a break, I didn’t know what made me connect so well with the fans, I just had a strong bond.”
Did you feel at that time you were underappreciated by the men that mattered in the industry?
The wrestlers definitely railed round me. About six months to a year later after I won the title, the wrestlers put all their hopes in me. That helped stop the fall. I don’t know if I get my credit. The truth is that the sky was falling with wrestling pretty fast with all the steroids. Hogan had so much centred around him with muscles and he was a good talker. I got goose-bumps from his interviews, and when I had to fill his shoes, I didn’t have that flamboyancy when talking; I was monotone, I wasn’t 6ft 8in with 25 inch arms. I was just little old Bret Hart from Calgary with sunglasses and red hair.
When I very first won the title, I was as shocked as anyone else. I’m glad I won the title the way I did. I didn’t know I was winning the title until a couple of hours later when I was champion of the world. Things got leaked out that I was going to win the title a few months later at WrestleMania.
Wrestlers would sabotage me and shoot me down and basically present that I wasn’t the guy. I wasn’t big enough or whatever it is.
That was the key to my success; nobody could derail me until I pulled out of the station. Then once I got in that position, I knew I was champion but I didn’t have the confidence yet; I didn’t see it coming. I was very doubtful. I wished I could be in that position, but I kept waiting for people to pull the rug from under me as champion rather thank think this really is my time. This is my belt. I am the star now. The audience changed; they moved on.
All the Hulkamaniacs were petering out. I thought from the time I lost the belt, I was starting to look around and realise, I’m better than him and him and everyone than they have here.
I reached that point in my career when I was like this is my moment. I am going to win back that belt by outperforming everybody. It got bigger. As that started to happen through that period, I sensed from that point on, the wrestlers in the dressing room understood I was the man now and I felt recognised by the wrestlers in the dressing room as the best in the world and they were as proud of me as I was of myself.”
Did you enjoy the pressure of being the champion?
I enjoyed the creativity that I had. I can remember Vince found me at Wembley Stadium. I walked up to him and told him what we were doing. I just want to watch he said. They gave me an outline of what they wanted. I think Vince deep down is a Bret Hart fan. He is the biggest wrestling fan in the world. Often I thought of myself as the toy he never made. He didn’t design me or create me like so many of his other stars. I created myself.
But somehow I ended up in his toy-box. I will grab my Hogan and Warrior toys and my toy became his favourite toy. It was because of my wrestling. Talking to him and understanding him over the years, he was a real fan.
Vince watched the great wrestlers, grew up in the Carolinas. He had a strong education- understood psychology and building a match and loved watching me wrestle.
What are the key characteristics of getting someone over in the ring?
I was always able to take a step back. I was always the little kid first watching wrestling, just like I was talking about Vince. If you are able to use your imagination the matches will be great.
I can remember Steve Austin wrestling. How would Bret Hart wrestle Steve Austin in this situation? You know what Steve Austin and The Hitman are all about and you play with your action figures. If you are able to go back to being a fan first it doesn’t become what is good for Bret Hart, and I think a lot of the great wrestlers are like that.
What is the story here and the pirate who stole my jacket. A shitty story; this is how I would approach it. You start to piece it together and I was good at taking these qualities and incorporating them into the match. You could bring out all the terror.
It was very important for me that the wrestlers that I worked for came back and they had a really good match. It wasn’t just the Bret Hart show. I tried to bring out the best in them and also deliver to the fans what they expected. I never let fans know what was going to happen. Just when they thought I was going to make a left, I would make a right.
I know what is going to happen- the referee is knocked down. This is going to happen. I would try to make sure the referee would get knocked down. What they thought was going to happen was not going to happen, what they thought would happen was nothing they had thought of. Vince was a genius at that. I got that from my father, the ability to dig through the story and where to make the turn and the twist in the story.
How important to you was it first working a major storyline with your brother Owen Hart in the build up to Wrestlemania X?
It was always a fascinating time because I remember when working for one of my other brothers, he said that if I was ever going to do this I could only do it with one brother. I said let me think about it and went to Owen about it. I personally didn’t like it at first.
My mum would be sick about it. I just remember Owen coming back about five hours later, he had a completely different take on it, he was so respectful of me and said: I really need this. Why can’t I? You are the best guy in the company, so I have to wrestle someone else instead when I could wrestle you and be on top. He really changed my reasoning.
He really jumped into the role. I said look, and this is all in the book, that if we do this, we do this all the way, go old school and ride alone on the road. We used to hang out together a lot on the road. I remember saying we have to do it old school and we didn’t ride together anymore. We only talked in the dressing room. It was kind of funny to fool so many people. We had Sunday dinner at my folks where he would show and I would show up with our kids. We wouldn’t talk to each other. We would be polite and talk to everyone else, but we stayed completely away from each other. We were civil, but we weren’t friends.
How did it feel being lifted up at the end of Wrestlemania X?
The funny thing about me and Owen was that we had some tag matches. How should the match go? We worked out a match in these tag matches where a lot of the moves we did - I had Owen doing dives off the top and a lot of the stuff that he was famous for in Calgary- he was a real high flyer. I was trying to bring all that out of him.
I remember we did stuff for the match at Wrestlemania X but it wasn’t working. There was something wrong about it. It wasn’t getting the right vibe. It was really fabulous stuff- really intricate, climbing up the ropes. It was the day before we left for WrestleMania and I called him up and said meet me next to my Dad’s house. He said: “What’s the matter?” I said we need to change the match, everything, every single thing.
You are too much of a good guy, doing too many nice moves. People are going to watch and go I like this guy, a good wrestler. We need to make you a rotten little b******. Do every dirty little trick. I changed the whole match at the last second and that was what we needed to do. If we are going to make it work two brothers, we don’t do this right. I don’t want to be a bad guy and switch. I was the hottest selling merchandise, a large part of my earnings at that time were royalties. I don’t want to lose my royalties by doing the wrong thing in this match I thought. There is a always a time and place later or down the road and maybe we could change the role of the good guy and incorporate all the things.
Owen was the biggest fan I ever had and he understood right away. The only thing with Owen was that he was in my corner. We never argued. We were always pretty close. Owen had a deep respect for me. The match itself when we pulled it all off, I wish I could talk to him to now because he always loved that match we had. Our best matches came at the beginning. We had a few good matches at WrestleMania. Then we had the tour and we had the HartAttack tour and did huge business. They had better gates then the Hogan days. We did draw some pretty good money.
We only got the chance to work up to SummerSlam. I had the title pulled off me at Survivor Series. I was just getting some steam going and then they cut my life short. I never liked the direction. They should have given me more time and more guys to work with.
How did you react when you were asked to abuse your own fans in a storyline?
The way it was presented me- I can remember I was the No. 1 star overseas; Europe, Africa, the Philippines, all round the world. I can remember tours in South Africa and Qatar and when promoters found that I wasn’t on the tour, they cancelled the tour. I remember Vince saying we need to go to SA and I had taken six months out. I had been working for 14 years. It was finally put to me that if I don’t go there is no tour to SA. The promoters want their money back.
I also benefited from my royalties; being their star and when they presented me the idea of the villain I remember telling Vince I don’t like that idea at all and he said I will sell you on it tomorrow. It took him about three minutes to talk me into it and I don’t know if it was the beginning of the biggest swerve that I was ever to go through, but I tended to believe Vince was a sharp, shrewd businessmen. He always seemed to know when to do things and I trusted his judgement.
I did think that the way it was presented to me I could be the hero in the United States. The fans were getting rowdier and not cheering for the good guys. They were cheering the bad guys and booing the good guys. They were going to screw up the show.
The kids who cheered for me in the front row were being drowned out by 18-year-old loudmouths saying you suck. It was hard when the kids were sitting on their hands and didn’t want to get involved with the loudmouths. They started to shutdown the kids part of the audience. That became the whole trendiness- when I worked with the WWE, there were just goofballs.
When you began to feud with Shawn Michaels did you know deep down it would all end in tears?
I thought that when I was trying to find the right thread for myself, I would tell Shawn. I always thought we were on the way to doing great business together. I thought we were always on the same page. We ended up getting into a shoot- hurting his feelings and getting offended. I kind of sucked it up and that manifested.
It would have been better if he could understand what I saw was the big picture to make everyone think we hated each other. We had done business together and got some of the biggest gates and turned the tide, but I think of the things we didn’t get to do.
Shawn Michaels and “The Kliq” is a well documented period in WWE history. Was it hard for you in the dressing room? Did you feel isolated?
A lot of the wrestlers relied on me. It was like controlling a bunch of gangsters trying to take over. There were good guys- Kevin Nash, Razor Ramon, and Shawn destroyed that harmony. When I was champion there was real harmony and wrestlers were happy to be on my card. It was gone.
Why didn’t Shawn leave and follow his mates to WCW?
I think Shawn had enough sense to realise that WWC was a graveyard. Those guys are a bunch of idiots. I had a couple of opportunities in my career to go there. I never wanted to go there and didn’t want to end up there, but when I had that huge contract it was enough for me to overlook the stupidity of how they operated.
How could people watch this style of wrestling? There is no comparison. I would much rather Bret Hart and Steve Austin. The only guys I rated were Rey Mysterio jr and Eddie Guererro. They weren’t getting their fair share of the credit.
Do you have any regrets over the Shawn Michaels episode and the Montreal screw job?
I regret the whole thing happened. It was probably the situation that I could have handled differently- I should have been more sensitive to Shawn’s feelings. It could have been handled differently with hindsight.
I should have kept that deal with Vince. I really regret that I left and got kicked in the head by Goldberg who didn’t know how to wrestle. He thought you could kick wrestlers as hard as you want but we are only human you can’t destroy us every night. He didn’t have the grasp of how physically responsible for another wrestler’s body you were.
Have you truly forgiven things with Shawn and Vince?
Yeah I think so. I am always grateful for all the good they gave me. It was a lousy ending. I think they didn’t treat me right. I was straight up and honest with Vince.
Were they the first to throw the olive branch to you?
Vince called me when I had my stroke and especially after Owen’s death. There were a lot of mixed feelings as to what happened with Owen. You get a lot of strange thoughts and bad thoughts in your head. You wonder if it was an accident.
I remember when I talked to the police and the authorities. When they levelled it was just an accident- this was the stunt co-ordinator who didn’t know what he was doing. Vince was hurt and still has bad feelings. When you take that into consideration and you realise he did a lot for me and didn’t want something like that to happen to anybody. You have to be sensible.
He did a lot more good than bad. I will never forget what happened but I forgive him.
To read about Bret "The Hitman" Hart's fantastic career in detail you can purchase his autobiography HITMAN: MY REAL LIFE IN THE CARTOON WORLD OF WRESTLING at all good bookstores and online at Amazon.co.uk.
Bret Hart's Autobiography is published by Ebury Press.
