Bret Hart is still pissed about Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon’s legendary WrestleMania X ladder match, and more than 30 years apparently hasn’t changed a thing. According to The Hitman, Michaels basically took a match concept Bret personally showed him and turned it into one of the most famous matches in WrestleMania history.
Speaking to Inside The Ropes, Bret Hart admitted this one still gets under his skin. In fact, he says he still loses sleep over how everything went down.
“That really pisses me off, that one. It really, really pisses me off. I lose sleep over it even now, you know. It pisses me off because I’ve always been really honest, and I remember, like, my first year that I was in WWF, 1985 or so, I went to Vince and I said, ‘I have this idea for a match. We’ve done it in Calgary for years, but it’s a great idea for a match. It’s called a ladder match.’”
According to Bret, Vince McMahon didn’t even know what a ladder match was at the time. Hart explained the whole thing to him, including how they could hang money or a championship above the ring.
“And he goes, ‘What’s a ladder match?’ And I explained it to him. You hang a sack of money, like $10,000 or $20,000 or something, for the winner, and you climb up the ladder and try to get the money, or you could do it with a belt. And I explained all this to Vince, and I said, ‘I’d like to do a ladder match.’ I remember that was in ’85, and he goes, ‘I’ll think about it.’ And I never heard another word about it.”
Bret didn’t give up either. He pitched it again a few years later, but Chief Jay Strongbow wasn’t exactly rushing to get a ladder into the ring.
“Then I went to him again, like about two or three years later, and brought it up again, and it never went anywhere because I think—I remember Chief Jay Strongbow, who was old school, if you remember him at all or know who he was, but he was an old, pretty smart old guy about wrestling. He was one of Vince’s lieutenants or bookers, one of the agents, they call them.
And he came up, and I started telling him about the ladder match, and he called it a ‘Tennessee town-killer match.’ And I go, ‘It’s not a town-killer. It’s not a bad match.’ He was like, ‘These stupid gimmick matches, they don’t draw. They’re bad ideas. Just go out there and wrestle,’ kind of thing. And it’s like, this is a really good idea if you just would give it a chance.”
Eventually, Hart brought the idea to McMahon again while he was Intercontinental Champion. This time, Bret wanted to actually show Vince what he was talking about, and he asked him to promise that WWE would only use the concept with him.
“Nothing ever happened for a few more years, and so when I was—it must have been when I was Intercontinental Champion—and I came to Vince again, and I said, ‘I just want to tell you about this ladder match one more time. It’d be a great idea sometime, somewhere.’ He couldn’t remember me telling him about it. And I said, ‘I’m going to tell you about this idea for a match, but I want you to promise me that you’ll only do it with me. Let me show you how to do the match.’”
Hart already had experience working ladder matches, so he knew exactly what he wanted to demonstrate. McMahon finally told him to find someone and show him the match that night.
“It’s like, I know how. I’ve had a bunch of these ladder matches, and it’s going to be—it would be great. And he goes, like, he’s kind of like, ‘Go find somebody, anybody you want. Pick any wrestler that you think you could do this match with and show me this ladder match tonight.’”
That’s where Shawn Michaels entered the picture. Hart says they were good friends at the time, so he went straight to Michaels and personally explained how the entire match worked.
“And I was really tired. It was a TV taping, and it’s like I had to wrestle maybe three or four times that night on top of wrestling this ladder match. And so it’s just a demonstration. Vince is going to see this match. So I go, and I was good friends with Shawn. So I go find Shawn Michaels and say, ‘Shawn,’ and I tell him about how this ladder match works. And I said, ‘You want to have this ladder match with me so I can show Vince how the match works?’ And so I’m explaining everything to Shawn, like how it works and what to do, you know.”
They didn’t have much time to put anything together, and Bret wasn’t trying to steal the show. The whole point was simply to give McMahon a taste of what the stipulation could become.
“But anyway, so we have this ladder match, Shawn and I, with very little preparation. And I have, like I said, I’m not exaggerating, I had three other matches that night that I had to worry about, which were on TV. This one wasn’t even on TV. It’s just for Vince to watch.
So Shawn and I go out and have this ladder match, and it was just a demonstration. So, like, if you ever see the ladder match, which I think might be on a Coliseum video or something, it was just a demonstration. I didn’t want to go 100 miles an hour. They’re pretty—it’s a pretty serious match. So it was just a demonstration to show how good it could be.”
There was just one problem — the guy they were supposedly demonstrating it for didn’t even watch. Hart says he went straight to McMahon afterwards and got an answer he definitely wasn’t expecting.
“And we did the whole match, and it was pretty good. And I think I won. I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure I won because I was Intercontinental Champion. I think they hung the belt up, if I’m not mistaken. So we did the whole demonstration. I remember I came back to the dressing room, and I go to Vince. I said, ‘Did you see it?’ And he goes, ‘I missed it.’ Yeah. And I’m like—and it was like this sort of, like, now what?”
Bret didn’t get another obvious chance to use the match after that. As he joked, trying to put together a ladder match with someone like Yokozuna wasn’t exactly going to work.
“And so anyway, I had that demonstration match with Shawn, and I didn’t have any situation where I could do a ladder match with anybody, any of my opponents. Like, good luck doing a ladder match with Yokozuna or something.”
Then came WrestleMania X, and that’s where Bret believes Michaels screwed him. According to Hart, Shawn saw how much potential the concept had during their demonstration and later pitched doing it with Razor Ramon.
“But anyway, so that year, it was always my match. Vince was never going to do it with anyone else but me. Shawn, who didn’t have very much integrity back then—and this would be a good case to prove that—but he stole my match. Stole the idea and went to Vince and said, ‘Can you put Razor Ramon and me in a ladder match?’”
Hart had plenty going on himself at WrestleMania X, including his match with Owen Hart and winning the WWF Championship back from Yokozuna. None of that stopped him from being pissed about Michaels getting the ladder match.
“And all I remember is at WrestleMania, like, I’m winning the belt back from Yoko, and the whole thing with Owen at WrestleMania X, which was great. I was really happy about all that, but you stole my idea.”
Bret believes fans could have ended up talking about a completely different legendary ladder match. He says he and Owen could have used the stipulation instead of eventually settling their feud inside a steel cage.
“You know, to be honest, Owen and I would have had a ladder match instead of the cage match, and we’d be talking about that match still today. It would have been unbelievable.”
Hart then really took the gloves off. He called Michaels and Ramon “scumbags” and claimed the two deliberately took his match while basically daring him to do something about it.
“But Shawn stole my idea. Went to Vince, and him and Razor, who were both scumbags, stole my match on purpose. They did it with sort of like—they did it like they wanted me to know it. Like, ‘We stole your match, so what are you going to do about it?’ kind of thing. And it pissed me off. It really did. And I knew Shawn saw the potential of the match and stole the idea.”
So while plenty of wrestling fans look back at Michaels and Ramon’s WrestleMania X match as an all-time classic, Bret definitely doesn’t see it that way. Every time somebody praises it, he apparently has one word running through his head.
“And I hear people say Razor Ramon and Shawn Michaels, you know, that match was one of the greatest matches of all time. I go, ‘Theft. Theft.’ They stole my idea, stole my match, and it should have been me and Owen that had that match. And I’m still bitter about it. Whenever you watch that match back, I want you to think theft from now on.”
Hart’s version of events makes it pretty obvious why this one has stuck with him for so long, although one detail is worth noting: Bret says he asked McMahon to promise the match would only be used with him, but he doesn’t actually say Vince agreed. Either way, Hart clearly believes Michaels saw what he had created, recognized its potential and beat him to the punch in spectacular fashion.
What do you think about Bret Hart still calling Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon’s iconic WrestleMania X ladder match “theft” all these years later? Let us know in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
