Dark Side of the Ring 1x2

1. [SOUND]

2. [MUSIC]

3. Bret was amazing.

4. By any standard, Bret may go down as one of the top technicians in the industry.

5. Bret took the business seriously.

6. I think sometimes to his detriment, he took himself a little too seriously.

7. Bret believed he was the WWF champion.

8. On November the 9th, 1997, professional wrestler Bret Hart had fought and

9. clawed his way to the top as world champion.

10. But in a matter of seconds,

11. he would realize that those who make you can just as easily destroy you.

12. Here's the problem, Bret didn't want to lose at the championship.

13. It's your last night in the company, we need to crown a new champion.

14. You know what?

15. We'll just take it from him.

16. It's like I remember when I was a kid exactly where I

17. was standing when John F Kennedy had been assassinated.

18. And I remember just as precisely where I was

19. when I found out about the Montreal Screwjob.

20. Screwing a Canadian hero in Canada, how much more evil can one get?

21. I still feel to this day like I have a neon sign on my head.

22. I fucked you, Bret.

23. Never told you about it, but I fuckedyou.

24. I was so mad, like I just ran and explode.

25. The Screwjob changed so many things in the business.

26. The innocence of wrestling changed.

27. This was one of the worst things in the world that happened to me in this business.

28. Say what you want about wrestling.

29. That was real, he really screwed that guy.

30. The incident known as the Montreal Screwjob

31. marks a turning point in the history of wrestling.

32. Never before had the curtain been pulled back

33. to fully reveal the behind the scenes drama.

34. A dark plot of betrayal was exposed, legacies were redefined, and

35. fans would never see wrestling the same again.

36. [MUSIC]

37. It's one thing I always say about the Screwjob is that if you go back and

38. you look at all the facts, my story has never changed.

39. It's always been the same story right from day one cuz I tell the truth.

40. I'm Bret Dave Manhart, the best there is, the

41. best there was, and the best there ever will be.

42. I always say I was a real world champion cuz I really

43. traveled all around the world and defended my belt.

44. This is my history and my life here, all these guys.

45. Despite everything that's happened with the Screwjobs and

46. all that kind of stuff, for me it's mostly happy memories.

47. My name's Jim Cornette.

48. For the past 35 years I've worked for every major professional wrestling

49. promotion in the United States as a manager, announcer, trainer, matchmaker.

50. Pretty much done it all.

51. I was actually there, I actually lived it.

52. I'm giving you my perspective, just because my perspective happens to be

53. entertaining, then some people take exception to that.

54. I was the executive vice president of talent relations.

55. I've been a writer, producer, director.

56. Brother love is an alter ego of mine.

57. You name it, I've worn a lot of hats in the WWF WWE.

58. It's Bret Dave Manhart.

59. The patriarch of the Hart family was Stu Hart.

60. And Stu was an age old veteran, double tough.

61. The dungeon was the basement in the Hart family house.

62. Well, the dungeon is hard to explain.

63. My dad, 60 or 70 year old man, we go down there and

64. torture a bunch of football players and body builders.

65. I don't feel my arms hurt.

66. Let me show you a hold here.

67. You just take your arm like this.

68. I just ease this hand.

69. The Hart family is one of the most famous families in the history of our business.

70. The sons were all wrestlers, the daughters all married wrestlers.

71. They had a wrestling bear that lived under their porch.

72. It was like the Munsters house for the people in Calgary.

73. Stu would invite everybody over and make breakfast.

74. They had a bunch of cats and he'd take the thing where he's flipping the eggs and

75. he'd flip the cat shit over there and then go back to flipping the eggs.

76. It made them tough is what it did.

77. And Stu began the stampede wrestling promotion in Alberta and

78. had a very successful company there for a long time.

79. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to this another edition.

80. And Bret Hart was kind of a pale skinny, maybe 21 year old kid or whatever.

81. But you could tell he kind of knew what he was doing.

82. And I'm more confident right now than I've ever been.

83. There's no reason right now that him and me shouldn't have those belts right now.

84. The Harts were very integral to professional wrestling around the world.

85. In 1984, Stu Hart is trying to keep his struggling territory afloat.

86. The rapidly expanding WWF strikes a deal to acquire the

87. entire promotion, along with Stu's main star, his son, Bret.

88. When Vince bought Stu Hart Stampede Wrestling in 1984, he

89. took Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart, who was son-in-law as a team.

90. The Hart Foundation, they were managed by Jimmy Hart, no relation.

91. They were a tremendous tag team and

92. Bret Hart had a perfect foil in Shawn Michaels.

93. When you have two guys like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels

94. that are as talented as they are at what they do to begin with.

95. And then sometimes there's just chemistry.

96. You find a duet between two singers that have never

97. worked together before, but suddenly it's a hit.

98. Look at this.

99. 360 at mid air.

100. Internationally, we're getting reports back that

101. we've got a megastar on our hands in the form of Bret Hart.

102. His work had made him this megastar.

103. That was all they wanted to see.

104. That's all they wanted to talk about.

105. And at the same time, Ric Flair was the

106. champion and Ric was having some health issues.

107. We needed to make a change.

108. So Vince is looking at it going, why not, Bret?

109. That's the kind of guy you want to reward.

110. Vince McMahon's one of the most unique individuals on the planet.

111. If you could cross a genius with PT Barnum and

112. Donald Trump, you would get the love child that would be Vince McMahon.

113. Vince honestly is a third generation wrestling promoter.

114. Vince controls creative.

115. Vince controls talent choices.

116. They run the lunch schedule past Vince McMahon to this day.

117. Over the years, Vince had a good relationship with Bret.

118. I don't know, I think that once Bret became champion

119. in Saskatoon, there was a change that was taking place.

120. [APPLAUSE]

121. The criteria for a world champion in those days,

122. there wasn't a set physical list of maneuvers or whatever that you had to perform.

123. It was whoever Vince thought could be the guy.

124. Vince McMahon decides who the champion is going to be.

125. It's not actually won by anybody.

126. So Bret didn't beat Ric Flair.

127. He won the championship in a scripted contest, okay, in a storyline.

128. Bret served to have that accolade.

129. But at the same time, remember that someone made you champion.

130. You didn't really beat anybody.

131. I think Bret looked at the WWF Championship like guys years ago used to.

132. Maybe it was cuz of his father and his lineage.

133. But when you were chosen to be a champion of a major company,

134. it meant that the promoter thought that you were the best talent,

135. that you were the best draw, that you would

136. make him the most money, that you were the guy.

137. While Bret's star is rising in the WWF,

138. a fledgling promotion suddenly starts edging

139. out Vince McMahon and the television ratings.

140. WCW in the early 90s was a secondary competitor to the WWF.

141. I happened to be Eric Bischoff.

142. As the executive producer, at least I had a voice within WCW.

143. WWF is up here.

144. WCW is way down here.

145. There's no way I can be better than the WWF, but I gotta be different than that.

146. They're tape, I'm live.

147. They target their content towards kids.

148. I decided I wanted my characters to be more reality based.

149. I would use their real names.

150. WCW came after our talent.

151. The perception was they offered them a lot more money.

152. When Hulk Hogan left the WWF, I think it hurt Vince personally.

153. It stung a little bit.

154. And the first big names to go were Scott Hall, Kevin Nash in the very beginning.

155. Ted DiBiase left.

156. Roddy Piper shortly thereafter.

157. The curtain call as it came to be known happened because Nash and

158. Hall were leaving to go to WCW for their big contracts.

159. It is my last appearance for the WWE, and it's also Kevin Nash's last appearance.

160. It was at Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the world.

161. After the last match, Hall and Nash and Michaels and Helmsley,

162. two of them good guys, two of them bad guys, all went out to the ring and

163. had a big hug and a big kiss and waved bye to the fans.

164. Who had no idea what was going on with Shawn and those guys.

165. They broke kayfabe in front of the fans in Madison Square Garden.

166. The word kayfabe is like a lot of wrestling terminology.

167. It comes from the days of the carnivals.

168. When you break kayfabe in wrestling, you let the fans and

169. the general public in the inside world and ruin the illusion.

170. It wasn't like that.

171. It all just happened organically.

172. Because the fans were going crazy.

173. It was like a magical moment.

174. Here we are 25 years later talking about it.

175. You had been chosen and selected to be in a secret brotherhood.

176. And you kept those illusions private and to yourself because it was a code.

177. It was the code of kayfabe.

178. Now as competition between the two biggest promotions heats up,

179. wrestling's fourth wall starts to crumble, exposing its secrets.

180. And while Bret enters the biggest rivalry of his career, he never could have

181. imagined that it would end up leading to his ultimate destruction.

182. [MUSIC]

183. Before their off screen feud would boil over into one of wrestling's most

184. controversial moments, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels' contrasting in-ring

185. styles led to some of the greatest matches of all time.

186. As far as wrestling styles between Bret and Shawn, Bret was more basic,

187. more grounded, more hard hitting, more technical.

188. Michaels from the other side and no.

189. Michaels, he's an incredible performer, but

190. also a lot of his stuff is more pretty and a little bit more gymnastic.

191. He's caught by Bret Hart.

192. Now look at that.

193. Shawn Michaels is probably the greatest performer all around.

194. Plus he was different.

195. He wasn't a big giant.

196. My contract was gonna expire.

197. Eric Bischoff has sent feelers out to me.

198. There were two separate occasions when I began to talk to Bret about coming over.

199. And I heard the initial offer was 2 million and then it

200. was 2 million something and it got up to like 3 million.

201. And I'm sure they were rounding off, but at that point, what's the difference, right?

202. Vince heard about them giving me an offer.

203. And then Vince said, he goes, I'll make you an offer.

204. And we worked on a contract.

205. It was 1.5 million for 20 years, I think.

206. Bret favors loyalty over money and accepts the counteroffer from Vince McMahon.

207. But then a mutual animosity between Bret and Shawn begins to take hold.

208. Shawn was starting to get overwhelmed with negative.

209. Doing a Chip and Dale kind of gimmick is not a heroic thing to do.

210. Shawn Michaels saw an opportunity to be more and more

211. of a top guy and also to be more and more of a prick.

212. Nobody breaks into this wrestling business to work their way to the middle.

213. I mean, if you don't wanna be on top, you're in the wrong business.

214. I don't really care if you wanna have dinner with me.

215. Do you wanna wrestle me?

216. You do?

217. Okay.

218. I don't think that they were really that different,

219. which is probably where the real life rivalry came into play.

220. First day when I walked out and I end up trashing Shawn

221. Michaels on the interview about his Playgirl magazine center fold.

222. Before I went out, I said, Shawn,

223. it's okay if I bring up that Playgirl magazine

224. and take a jab at that and say something about it.

225. He was, no, go ahead, say whatever you want.

226. World Wrestling Federation needs a hero.

227. They need a role model.

228. They need somebody they can look up to.

229. Not somebody that poses for girlie magazines.

230. And I came back and Shawn was just crushed.

231. He almost looked like he burst into tears.

232. Now we're doing live TV and

233. these guys are saying things on live TV about each other.

234. Shawn made reference to Sunny Days.

235. Sunny is Tammy Sit, she was one of the valets.

236. She was the first real big pin up girl of the WWF.

237. And Shawn was making the inference that Brett was having some

238. kind of an affair or some kind of relationship with Sunny.

239. Even though lately you've had some sunny days, my friend,

240. you still can't get the job done in any situation.

241. Oh boy.

242. Now from a fan's point of view, it's getting exciting.

243. But if you're the other guy, you're hating the dude who's talking about you.

244. Cuz now you gotta call home and explain that to your wife.

245. You don't mess with a guy's wife or his family or

246. else you find yourself laying in a ditch somewhere.

247. So we're in Hartford, Connecticut one night at the Hartford Civic Center.

248. And all of a sudden the door busts open and in comes the Brooklyn Brawler.

249. And he says, hey, Vince, Shawn and Brett have just gotten a fight in the bathroom.

250. Shawn finally comes into my dressing room.

251. We haven't talked for about a couple months.

252. I just remember I was just trying to be nice.

253. I almost forgot that we ever had issues.

254. I said, hey, Shawn, I was brushing my hair.

255. And he goes, you think I'm gonna talk to you?

256. And whatever it was, Brett just leg dived him and took him down right there.

257. So I grabbed him by the hair and swung him around the dressing room.

258. I think his feet roged me off the ground a couple of times.

259. If anything, it was like two prostitutes fighting in downtown or something.

260. Here comes Shawn, and he's hot.

261. And he has got in his hand a handful of his hair.

262. It looked like a small possum.

263. And I'll never forget this.

264. He said, this is an unsafe working environment.

265. As far as I know, I think if anybody was

266. sleeping with Sonny, it probably was Shawn.

267. As the backstage friction between Brett and Shawn intensifies,

268. Vince begins to lose the TV ratings war and is forced to cut costs.

269. [MUSIC]

270. Vince comes back and looks at the commitment that he had made to Brett Hart.

271. And it was a drain.

272. It was a drain on the company for what we were bringing in at the time.

273. Vince told me that basically he couldn't afford to pay

274. me the contract that he'd given me, kind of broke my heart.

275. Like where it's like, okay, I get it.

276. I remember I got off the phone from him and I said, I guess I'm done.

277. I hung up on Vince and I signed my WCW contract.

278. I can't remember exactly what day or

279. when I heard that Brett had made the deal and was going to WCW.

280. But Vince told us, Brett is gonna finish up at Survivor Series.

281. He dropped the belt and he'd be free.

282. It didn't turn out that way.

283. With Brett leaving the company, Brett wasn't just leaving the company.

284. He was leaving the company and

285. going to our competitor that was beating us in the ratings.

286. To have our champion leave the company is bad enough.

287. To have them leave the company with the championship is a kick in the nuts.

288. The time honored tradition is when you're leaving a

289. territory or a promotion, you lose on the way out.

290. I gotta tell you, in the beginning,

291. there wasn't a whole lot of worry about it because it was Brett.

292. And we thought that there would not be any issue with Brett dropping

293. the championship to whoever we asked him to drop the championship to.

294. When I first heard that I was wrestling Shawn was

295. maybe about three or four weeks before Survivor Series.

296. Anyway, so Vince pulled me, he's all excited,

297. he goes, we're gonna drop the belt to Shawn.

298. So I saw Shawn, I thought this is your chance

299. to open the door for a certain dialogue.

300. So I remember when we shook hands, I said, Shawn,

301. I just heard that we're wrestling at Survivor Series.

302. I said, I want you to know that you'll always be safe

303. with me in the ring, that I'll always be professional.

304. I would never do anything to hurt you or injure you or anything like that.

305. And he looked at me and he said, he goes, I appreciate that, but

306. I just want you to know that I am not willing to do the same thing for you.

307. And he turned around and walked out of the dress room and slammed the door.

308. Vince, even though he knew that Shawn and Brett hated each other,

309. somehow he thought this match was magically gonna go in the ring and

310. everything was gonna work out like he wanted.

311. And the closer that we got to the match, the more obvious it was that it was not.

312. One of the things he'd given Brett in that brand new contract with all the bells and

313. whistles was reasonable creative control of

314. his character and the way he was presented.

315. I'm the boss of my last 60 days.

316. Why would I lose to Shawn?

317. He's disrespected me.

318. I'm not wrestling Shawn or I'm not putting Shawn over under any circumstances until

319. he proves me that he's got enough respect for me to put me over first.

320. And I was on Brett's side cuz Shawn was the prick, not Brett.

321. But we had to get the belt back.

322. The news of Vince's current champion signing with his

323. main competitor would spell his defeat in the ratings war.

324. With his back to the wall,

325. Vince must get his belt off Brett and what he's about to do.

326. Will echo far beyond the wrestling world.

327. [MUSIC]

328. With his last match in the WWF less than 24 hours away,

329. Bret Hart is refusing any scenario which has him losing

330. the belt to his real live Nemesis, Shawn Michaels.

331. Bret is growing suspicious of what his boss, Vince McMahon, might do.

332. Showed up that day and I was ready for my match.

333. But I did have suspicions about the referee.

334. I remember thinking the only way they can screw me,

335. if Shawn will never pin me or make me tap out.

336. So I wasn't worried about that.

337. I said, but the way it'll work is they'll get the referee.

338. Hello, I'm Earl Hebner.

339. I'm a referee.

340. My relationship with Bret was great.

341. Most of the time he always wanted me to ref his matches.

342. People think, I can count to three and it's over.

343. That's not the ball game.

344. We're sort of a coach.

345. You're thinking for three people.

346. It's very, very hard.

347. Okay, so let's get into the Montreal story.

348. Do we have to?

349. [LAUGH]

350. Just kidding.

351. [LAUGH]

352. The day before that show, I got on a plane, got in my seat.

353. The stewardess came back and said, Mr. Hebner, I said, yes, ma'am.

354. She said, you have a first class seat.

355. I said, my ticket don't say first class.

356. She said, Mr. Hart bought you a first class seat.

357. So I went on up here, sat beside Bret.

358. And we talked and Bret said, will you promise me one thing?

359. I said, what's that?

360. He said, you won't count me out?

361. I said, nope, I will not count you out.

362. I said, you know they're gonna ask you to screw me tomorrow.

363. But he got the tears in his eyes and he got his lip

364. quivered and he was like, the hell with that eyesore.

365. I swear to God on my kids, I would never, and he was so adamant.

366. And I shook his hand and I said, just tell me if something like that's gonna happen.

367. Complicating Matters, a film crew producing a documentary called

368. Wrestling With Shadows is following Bret to capture his last WWF match.

369. From the second I land, I've got the entire High Roads production film crew.

370. They're filming and they got the boom mics and the

371. whole thing and they follow me wherever I went.

372. It was like a lot of people that I didn't even know all around the building.

373. The idea was that Vince would get with Bret.

374. I think that Vince felt that once he got in front of

375. Bret face to face, that they would work something out.

376. But I remember the whole camera crew come

377. in, like they wanted to bike me out there.

378. And I kinda thought, it's not how I operate.

379. He goes, just in case.

380. My name is Harry Zefrani.

381. I was the sound recordist on Wrestling With Shadows.

382. The director told us, look, we gotta be very low profile about this.

383. Nobody should know that Bret Hart is wired.

384. It was a private meeting and Bret went in wired.

385. Didn't let Vince know that he was recording it.

386. I never ever wanted to leave here with any kind of bad feeling.

387. But this week has been a bad week for me.

388. I feel kind of betrayed a little bit.

389. The way this whole thing has been depicted,

390. it's really hard for me as a hero here to come up short.

391. I was determined to stick to my guns, that I was not backing down.

392. And right away, Vince goes, well, what are we gonna do?

393. I think what I'd like to do is get through today.

394. I think tomorrow I should just go in and do my speech and forfeit the title.

395. I think it allows me a chance to leave with my head up and leave in a nice way.

396. I would think it'd be a run-in type thing.

397. Yeah. - But I'm open to it.

398. All right, yes.

399. I'm open to it.

400. Going into this match, you knew what was gonna happen.

401. I knew that there was a point in the match where Bulldog and Owen would run out.

402. Referee would lose control of the match.

403. Ring the bell, there would be no winner, and

404. we would go off with a lot of chaos going on in the ring.

405. So the match would end in a disqualification?

406. Yeah, basically a no contest.

407. [MUSIC]

408. I remember walking out to the ring and I knew, okay,

409. be leery of submission holds in a match like this.

410. But I already talked to Earl and I thought about it and I said, okay.

411. I trusted Earl and I put my guard down.

412. That was my fatal mistake.

413. I'm walking down to go to the ring and I'm getting pulled aside.

414. Jerry Briscoe says, Vince McMahon wants you to ring

415. the bell when he puts Brett in the shop shooter.

416. I said, what?

417. He said, well, are you gonna do it?

418. I said, I don't know.

419. Jerry Briscoe is a producer agent,

420. one of the toughest son of bitches on the face of the earth.

421. He grabs everybody along.

422. He says, is Brett Hart gonna pay you?

423. This is what Vince wants.

424. Do you want a job or not?

425. I said, I don't have an idea of what I'm gonna do right now.

426. Y'all mess my mind up.

427. And this is the truth.

428. I'm thinking he had opportunity to drop the bill.

429. I know this is not right, but I gotta have a job.

430. I told my brother to put all my shit in the car.

431. Just hang on, look good, get all my shit out the dress room and put it in the car.

432. So I'm walking to the ring.

433. God, I promised Brett I wouldn't count him out.

434. That was the longest walk of my life.

435. We had a great match planned out and Sean was a great wrestler.

436. We're gonna start fighting before the bell starts.

437. I don't think this match has officially even started.

438. Finally, after about ten minutes of brawling up and fighting out in the crowd

439. and stuff, I eventually fight Sean back to the ring,

440. throw him in the ring, and now the match starts.

441. I get in the ring, I ring the bell to start,

442. and I'm going, God, don't put the sharpshooter on.

443. The match lasts ten, fifteen minutes.

444. Look at this.

445. Putting Brett in the sharpshooter.

446. My gosh, how humiliating.

447. He's gonna beat him with his own finish.

448. Sean actually didn't know how to put the sharpshooter on.

449. He steps through the wrong way, folds my legs the wrong way, and

450. I moved my legs and switched them the right way.

451. I remember when he put it on and I flipped over, I could see Vince McMahon and

452. I could see him, he's got this cold look on

453. his chest and he's yelling to ring the bell.

454. Ring the bell, and he kept saying it to the guy, ring the bell.

455. As the match was going on, I'm going, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

456. I hated it.

457. And I remember in that moment of looking at the

458. timekeeper, and Vince snaps at him, ring the bell.

459. They're screwing me right now, and I remember reaching back and

460. showing that I wasn't submitting, and I grabbed Sean's leg and started to reverse.

461. And you could hear the bell, bing, ding, ding.

462. If I hadn't rung the bell, Vince McMahon was gonna ring that bell.

463. And at first I was like, I wanna just kill Vince,

464. I wanna just jump through the ropes and just punch him out.

465. I couldn't believe he did it to me after all the years that I gave him all the

466. matches and all the hard work on the evening.

467. Disrespecting me like that, you son of a bitch.

468. I jumped out of the ring, ran across the floor, jumped the hockey fence, and

469. could still hear the bell ringing, jumped in the car, and we drove off.

470. I had enough sense to paint WCW backwards so that you could read it on TV.

471. Brett did the WCW for the fans there in Montreal, but it was what it was.

472. I had a nice good gobbler spit, and I just leaned over the top rope.

473. [MUSIC]

474. Hollywood couldn't recreate something better than that.

475. I wrecked a bunch of monitors and

476. threw $100,000 headphones out into the crowd and stuff.

477. Because of a couple of guys who couldn't get along,

478. they hit on the most talked about match ending in the history of

479. professional wrestling since the dawn of time.

480. Widely viewed by fans as wrestling's most treacherous act,

481. the Montreal Screwjob would tear the lid off of wrestling's sacred brotherhood.

482. But as true architect has yet to be revealed.

483. [MUSIC]

484. This is where I've told a couple of these things.

485. I've never gone this far, but I figured, like I said,

486. I'm not gonna talk about this on TV any time in the rest of my life.

487. So I guess at this point, I don't care who gets mad at me.

488. So it was me and Vince Russo at Vince McMahon's house.

489. My name is Vince Russo.

490. I was the head writer at the WWE during the infamous Montreal Screwjob.

491. And quite honestly, I wasn't even originally slated for this documentary.

492. And then I wanted to be a part of it because I was there.

493. Like, I knew what would happen.

494. So I'm sitting there that day.

495. First Vince gets up and he takes a phone call from Bret.

496. What I could tell you about that phone call

497. is, Vince pitched many different scenarios for

498. Shawn Michaels to take the belt off of Bret Hart.

499. And Bret soured on every single one of them.

500. Vince told Bret we'd go back to the drawing board and that's exactly what we did.

501. Well, this finish won't work and that finish won't work.

502. And Bret just wants to come out and

503. hand the belt over on TV the following night without getting beat.

504. I'm sure he does.

505. So then he goes and he calls Shawn.

506. Every time Vince goes in there, then I have to sit in a room twiddling my thumbs

507. with the guy that I hate worse than anybody in the world, Vince Russo.

508. We'd get in these creative meetings and the three of us would argue.

509. And it wasn't the three of us, it was Jim and me.

510. We could not be farther apart physically, philosophically, mentally, morally.

511. If one of us was an African American lesbian nun and

512. the other was a Nazi skinhead Martian from

513. outer space, we could not be more different.

514. The problem is, he's still living in 1970.

515. I'll never forget he made the comment, when a

516. guy comes out of a box, he's instantly over.

517. Like bro, this is like 1996, who's coming out of boxes, bro?

518. Vince Russo's never had any respect for professional wrestling.

519. He booked the wrestling program to pattern after Jerry Springer.

520. Our styles completely crash.

521. Finally Vince comes out, and I'm about lost my religion with the whole creative

522. team thing anyway, cuz it's not my style of wrestling.

523. I'm living in Connecticut, I'm miserable, I

524. weigh 280 pounds, cuz I'm aggravation eating.

525. I'm not in my element here.

526. I said Vince, I said there's got to be something we can do.

527. I said it's your company and it's your belt.

528. So then Vince looks at me and says, well then how would you do it pal?

529. Well now it's a challenge.

530. Once again, I'm going through every finish I can think of or

531. every situation I ever think of where nobody wanted to do a job.

532. I said, goddamn, double crossing.

533. You can learn more about modern wrestling from these classic books and

534. classic magazines than you can by talking to people

535. today, because history always repeats itself.

536. In 1931, there was another double cross in Montreal, the Battle of the Bite.

537. Strangler Lewis controlled the championship and

538. nobody could get it away from him because it was worth so much money.

539. Lewis has a title match in Montreal against Henri Deglane.

540. Henri Deglane, they lock up and

541. immediately Deglane grabs Lewis's own hold on Lewis, the headlock.

542. And takes him down and they go down on the mat because Lewis is working with him and

543. probably they're gonna do some kind of reversal.

544. Deglane starts screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs.

545. The referee checks Deglane.

546. Huge bite Mark on the guy's chest.

547. Apparently, when Deglane got the headlock on Lewis, Lewis had bitten him.

548. Here's the thing.

549. It was actually Dan Kolov.

550. Deglane's corner man had bitten him in the locker room and then did this.

551. And then when they locked up, boom, headlock, nobody can see what happened.

552. Referee disqualifies Strangler Lewis and awards the title to Henri Deglane.

553. That's a double cross.

554. And it's as old as the hills in wrestling.

555. So when Vince says, well, how would you do it then?

556. Bret's hold is the sharpshooter.

557. [MUSIC]

558. But let Shawn get Bret's hold on him.

559. If the referee just calls for the bell as a submission,

560. nobody can tell anything was wrong because that's what it's supposed to look like

561. anyway and to tell anybody anything was wrong.

562. I said, Bret Hart, of all people, would have to expose the business.

563. I said, what's he gonna do, call the newspapers?

564. But then Vince, and he gave that hump like he does whenever you would be discussing

565. tomfoolery and he would say, all right, let's get back to reality and we went on.

566. Do you recall during that meeting with Vincent and Cornette,

567. Cornette ever told a history lesson about

568. double crosses that had happened in the past?

569. Unless I was in the bathroom during that scenario,

570. that scenario did not take place in front of me when I was sitting at the table.

571. I'm not gonna call Jim Cornette a liar.

572. And when I was sitting at the table and

573. Cornette was sitting at the same table, I pitched that exact scenario to Vince.

574. So basically out of pure frustration, I said Vince, I said screw it Vince.

575. Have Shawn put the sharpshooter on Bret and have the referee call for the bell.

576. Do that.

577. Vince Russo didn't know what a double cross was.

578. He was sitting there with his eyes open.

579. People tell me all the time, Vince, you take credit for the Montreal Screws.

580. I wish I didn't pitch the idea.

581. That was a miserable night.

582. It was one of the worst experiences in my life in the wrestling business.

583. I swear on my mother's grave, my father's grave, my wife's life and my dog's life.

584. The story I just told you is true.

585. Vince Russo is the biggest liar in professional

586. wrestling and imagine the territory that takes in.

587. [MUSIC]

588. When I was sitting there at the monitor, I saw him going to the spot.

589. That's when I shit myself.

590. Holy, he's actually gonna do this.

591. And look right now, close up on the goosebumps.

592. [MUSIC]

593. Now I'm thinking, I don't know who else knows about this.

594. I just know that there is a high probability that somebody in this

595. building is gonna wanna beat the shit out of me in the next ten minutes.

596. And I'm gonna get out of here.

597. When I'm starting my car up and starting to pull out, I heard

598. a car rev the motor and saw the headlights pop up behind me.

599. That had to be Hevner.

600. I beat him out of the building.

601. [MUSIC]

602. Just as Bret Hart was double crossed on live

603. television by his boss, Vince McMahon, WWF executive,

604. Bruce Prichard, has blindsided himself by the sudden change in plans.

605. So it's chaos.

606. I'm not even realizing what's happening in front of me.

607. How did you feel about not being involved in-

608. God, I was pissed off that I wasn't smart enough as to what they were doing.

609. And I was pissed off because I was left in the back alone in a position

610. where everyone thought they knew that I was involved.

611. And I wasn't.

612. I felt very alone.

613. I felt betrayed.

614. That piece of shit's locked himself in his office.

615. Cameras are off.

616. Show's over.

617. I got screwed.

618. And I was so mad.

619. There's Shawn suddenly in my dressing room.

620. He's swearing to God that he had nothing to do with it.

621. Shawn, you weren't in on that?

622. My hands are clean.

623. Let's wash water to God.

624. He was a bad actor.

625. But one of the two was in on it, that I think.

626. Shawn had to be in on it.

627. You know, at that time, I had no idea.

628. Well, now we know Shawn was just putting on an act.

629. [MUSIC]

630. There was this hush in the dressing room and everyone was kinda stunned.

631. My Undertaker got so mad that he kicked over one of those big steel barrels.

632. He just slammed the door and said something about he was going down to Vince's

633. office to get a straight answer on why they did that to me.

634. You know, Vince, you gotta go over and talk to him.

635. Explain why you did what you did.

636. You gotta give him one.

637. And by giving him one, if he's gonna hit you, you gotta take one.

638. Brett came out of the shower and told Vince get out of his dressing room.

639. And then he said, if you're still here when I get out, I'm gonna get dressed.

640. I'm gonna punch you out.

641. Brett finished the shower.

642. I mean, he went back in and took his sweet ass time to finish his shower.

643. And Vince stood right in the middle of the room waiting for him to finish.

644. [MUSIC]

645. So I finished shower and I come out.

646. And it's funny cuz I walk out of the shower sopping wet, naked.

647. Vince said something to me along the lines of,

648. this is the first time I ever had to lie to one of my talent, which is such a lie.

649. I remember tying my shoes.

650. And I remember when I got tying my last shoelace, I started to tie it.

651. And I go, this is it.

652. I'm gonna punch out Vince McMahon.

653. I can't believe I'm doing this.

654. And we walk towards each other, end up tying up just like a pro wrestling match.

655. And I remember just sinking down and kinda just turning my whole body and

656. thinking 14 years and coming up right between our arms.

657. And I hit Vince McMahon with the most beautiful Mike Tyson uppercut.

658. I popped him literally right off the ground.

659. He went straight down, out cold.

660. Everybody was stunned.

661. No one could believe it.

662. He was dead silent for a while and nobody said anything.

663. And then Bret said, get out of my dressing room.

664. I mean, I have to say that I remember Shawn

665. Michaels, he was bawling his eyes out like a baby.

666. And I remember thinking, I know you were in on it.

667. And he knew it.

668. He was waiting for me to make my way over to him and finish him off.

669. But I just tapped him on the shoulder and I said, Shawn, thanks for the match.

670. Or he couldn't believe that I thanked him for the match.

671. And then he looked up at me and he just burst into tears, like really bubbling.

672. I had never to that point heard of that much drama and backstage, just bullshit.

673. Sometimes I lost sleep over what I should have done that day.

674. Bret, you're not gonna understand this now,

675. but Vince was trying to protect his business.

676. It was never about not trusting you.

677. He didn't trust Eric.

678. I went to Vince's office and said, I need to talk to you.

679. He said, okay.

680. I said, I got a meeting with everybody today and we'll take care of it.

681. Set everybody down and said, what I did last night was my call.

682. It's not Earl's fault and anybody don't like it can

683. come to my office and I'll release your ass right now.

684. Screws you, I was already in the makings.

685. They had to find somebody that would do it.

686. The conversation I had with Vince where we really had the

687. big heart to heart was the following Wednesday in Stanford.

688. And I told him what I thought.

689. Vince's reaction was, if you had known, then you would have known.

690. You would never be able to say that you didn't know.

691. Shawn Michaels risked everything for you and for this company.

692. So before you condemn Shawn Michaels, understand what he did for you and your family.

693. There were a lot of what if scenarios discussed the night before.

694. And I think that everybody believed that at the end of the day,

695. Vince was going to be able to convince Brett to drop the championship.

696. That didn't happen.

697. So Vince asked Jerry Briscoe to let Shawn know there was a spot in the match

698. that Shawn, when you get him in the sharpshooter, will ring the bell.

699. Of all people, Brett Hart, who was raised in the wrestling business,

700. whose father was a wrestler, who went through the code.

701. He's the one that exposed the business.

702. We're talking with Brett Hart, the hit man today.

703. How are you?

704. It was very important to me after 14 years of probably the most dedicated,

705. loyal, hardworking service that you could ever get out of a professional wrestler.

706. I'd given this man everything you could ever ask for.

707. And I made it very, very clear that my character was

708. not in any way, shape, or form gonna be humiliated.

709. Brett was telling any and everybody that he could.

710. He didn't lose, he was screwed.

711. And it was something that Vince felt it was important to address on Monday night raw.

712. Did you or did you not screw Brett Hart?

713. There's a time honored tradition in the wrestling business.

714. If someone is leaving, did they show the right amount of respect?

715. And the people are like, no, we don't wanna like the rich billionaire boss.

716. We liked Brett Hart, he was our hero.

717. Brett Hart didn't wanna honor that tradition.

718. Vince was really giving Brett Hart all kinds of shit for

719. not honoring the time honored tradition of doing the right thing on the way out on TV.

720. This didn't happen ever before.

721. Vince in this interview just came across

722. very cold, calculated, and very, very healish.

723. I truly believe that Brett Hart screwed Brett Hart.

724. And you can look in the mirror and know that.

725. Rather than sweep this incident under the rug, Vince capitalizes on it by

726. transforming this real life incident into a storyline where

727. he reinvents himself as an evil, conniving mastermind.

728. When I debuted, the fans didn't know that Vince was the owner.

729. He was an announcer.

730. And then once the word got out there, he actually owns the company.

731. He's the power behind the throne, this and that.

732. Vince ran with it.

733. Mr. McMahon is one of the greatest heel characters of all time, yes.

734. I mean, you've heard arenas full of people chant asshole, asshole.

735. [APPLAUSE]

736. If they had done it right, everybody prospered.

737. Shawn Michaels became the WWF Champion off a big win.

738. Vince McMahon became the catalyst to the evil empire of Mr. McMahon.

739. And they handed the hottest wrestler in the world.

740. Bret Hart took WCW and they dropped that ball.

741. [MUSIC]

742. In the aftermath of the Montreal Screwjob, wrestling changed forever.

743. The fourth wall had fallen.

744. Vince McMahon's villainous character would propel his company into the stratosphere

745. while Bret Hart would make his lackluster debut in WCW.

746. If you look at how Bret Hart even came to

747. WCW and how they launched me the very first day.

748. Why don't we bring the man out that's gonna referee this match?

749. I remember like referee is so lame, like such a lame way to bring me in.

750. Is that what you want?

751. Referee.

752. Eric Bischoff was an imbecile trying to run wrestling and

753. didn't have any idea about how to run wrestling.

754. I have to take some responsibility in the fact that

755. there may have been better ways to bring Bret in.

756. I would be honored to be the referee.

757. But at the same time, we'll never know that because the plans that we did have for

758. Bret were executed so pissed poorly because of his just detachment from it all.

759. He didn't get over in WCW with zero impact.

760. Hey Bischoff, with the WCW, I quit.

761. [APPLAUSE]

762. I think the legacy of the Montreal Screwjob is

763. that nobody knows if it was really a screw job or not.

764. I happen to believe it was the real deal.

765. To me, I feel the same way now seeing him back as

766. I did the first time I saw it as the total work.

767. Everybody was in on it and they all did it together.

768. Now look at Bret's face.

769. He doesn't look too shocked to me.

770. You're gonna spit on Vince and then the truck is gonna go tight on Vince,

771. go tight on Vince, get Vince wiping the loogie out of his eye.

772. Vince has been in the TV business his whole life.

773. Nothing's gonna happen without his consent.

774. Everybody knows you're leaving.

775. You're gonna stand in what's now your opposition's ring on a global broadcast.

776. And you're gonna motion the call signs of your competitor.

777. If that's not okayed by a big boss in my mind, they're gonna cut away from that.

778. I mean, I've never discussed it with Shawn.

779. I wasn't there and I didn't ask guys who were there.

780. Watching it as an educated fan,

781. I would say it was a complete collaboration by all parties.

782. That's all I got to say about that.

783. People do say it was a work and Bret was in on it.

784. No, man, this is the way this piece of history went down.

785. Conspiracy theorists will always be conspiracy theorists.

786. But unfortunately, sometimes when people want more of a story

787. to be there that just isn't there, they try to create it.

788. When we did an interview with Scott Hall,

789. he believes that the Montreal Screwjob is this very scripted sort of thing.

790. He's not one of them too, is he?

791. [LAUGH] I'm sorry, it's ludicrous that Scott Hall would

792. say that he didn't talk to Shawn Michaels about this.

793. I know they all talk to each other about everything, but especially about this.

794. Why wouldn't they?

795. I will tell anybody to their face that thinks that this was a work.

796. You are a dumb stupid.

797. These are death threats.

798. I've gotten a bunch of them.

799. But these were some of the most creative and some of the most picturesque.

800. So I framed these.

801. Get by the ring one more time, you make a target under those lights,

802. you won't know where it comes from, bye bye.

803. They pulled it all off because I trusted the referee.

804. Poor Earl, he's just a little guy, I feel so bad for him.

805. To put that on him was such a rotten thing to do.

806. For the last 15 years, it's been the shits.

807. There's always a chance, and in the arena, you screw Brett.

808. We never talked for a long, long time, many years.

809. Even though Brett and I are friends now, this is still upsetting.

810. I guess you could tell I'm kind of breaking down a little bit, but

811. it's something that will be with me forever.

812. A lot of people say, hey, it was their idea all the way

813. from Vince Russo to Jim Cornette to Triple H to Shawn to me.

814. We all said it.

815. The Montreal Screwjob is remembered all kinds of

816. different ways by all kinds of different people.

817. For the fans, it was like one of the first big behind the scenes things that

818. exploded and they heard about and they realized that there was more intrigue in

819. the locker room and in the boardroom than there sometimes was in the ring.

820. As soon as you start doing that, as soon as you don't

821. believe it's real anymore, it's not really worth watching.

822. That's the way that people feel when they lose faith in their hero.

823. That's when you lose people in wrestling, because they believed in the people

824. involved, even if they didn't always believe

825. all the action, they believed in the people.

826. I take a lot of pride, almost ridiculous pride in being the wrestler that I was.

827. I believe that I was the guy that reinforced the wrestling aspect of

828. the wrestling show and that's what I like to be remembered for.

829. The reality of the situation is that if two guys just could have

830. got over themselves, well, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

831. Any final thoughts on Jim?

832. I've ignored him for years and it's on and on.

833. It's my personal enjoyment at this advanced stage to

834. remind everybody at every opportunity that he's a liar.

835. It's freaking wrestling.

836. It means nothing.

837. I will live to piss on his grave.

838. Even if I'm in a Walker, my wife already has instructions.

839. She's out of the will.

840. If she doesn't get me there, if I'm not ambulatory,

841. I'll find Vince Russo's grave and I will piss on it.

842. And there will be a picture of that hanging on my wall when I pass away.

843. And hate is a hell of a motivator.

844. [MUSIC].