Bret Hart says the Montreal Screwjob was not where Vince McMahon’s problems with him started. During a conversation with Inside The Ropes, Bret claimed WWE had already been slowly tearing down his red-hot 1997 run for months, cutting the momentum out of the Canada vs. USA storyline and putting him in situations that made less and less sense as the year went on.
Hart said the anti-American character took off harder than WWE expected, and he believes that eventually became a problem for Vince. What started as one of the hottest angles in the company suddenly lost direction, with Bret saying the creative ideas dried up and he was being sent out to repeat the same material instead of pushing the story forward.
“This whole thing about me turning into this Canadian heel had backfired on Vince. It was too good of an idea. I could never understand because it had so much momentum at first. But I noticed every week, after a few weeks, that they kind of cut the power. Vince just cut everything. Suddenly I get to the TV and it’s like, ‘What am I saying today? What do you want me to do?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, we want you to go out there and call Triple H gay.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not really — why am I doing that?’”
Bret said he still went along with what WWE gave him, but he could feel the character losing steam because there was no longer any real creative effort behind it. He said the promos became repetitive and he started getting the sense that WWE was intentionally pulling back from something that had been working.
“Vince just kind of cut the power. Suddenly they had no more ideas for me. I’m just going out to the ring and saying the same thing that I said last week about Canadians. I remember going, ‘They cut the power.’ There were no more creative juices being put into my character and my storyline.”
The situation got even stranger to Bret when Shawn Michaels was turned heel. Hart said one of the reasons he agreed to become a heel himself was because it created a natural way for him to work against Michaels as a babyface without putting the two right back into direct competition behind the scenes. Once Shawn turned heel too, Bret felt WWE had wiped out one of the main reasons for making the change in the first place.
“Then they turned Shawn heel, if you remember, and I remember going, ‘Why would you turn Shawn heel? Now we’re in competition with each other again, and now there’s all this friction.’ The whole reason I turned heel was that maybe I could work with Shawn as a babyface. I wanted to work with Shawn and work with a lot of guys, but I didn’t want to have heat with Shawn the way I was set to.”
That is where Bret’s suspicion really started to grow. He said it felt like Vince and Shawn were “in cahoots” while his own storyline was being weakened, and he began to believe the changes were not just random bad booking. Bret pointed to his opponents as another sign, especially when he found himself working as the heel against Vader, someone Hart viewed as a natural monster heel himself.
“It was like Vince and Shawn were in cahoots together, at least mentally. Now I’m fighting The Patriot and Vader. I remember fighting Vader on Monday Night Raw, and he’s the babyface and I’m the heel. And I’m going, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ Like, how can I be getting sympathy or Vader getting sympathy where I’m beating the crap out of him?”
Bret said that pairing felt completely backwards, and he believes it was done on purpose to weaken what he had built. Looking back, Hart now says he thinks Vince already knew how he wanted the relationship to end and was simply waiting for the right moment to finish it.
“I remember going, ‘It’s stupid.’ It was done intentionally to throw me the worst guy that I could work with as a heel. The biggest heel in the company — I’m working with him. And I just remember going, ‘This is backwards.’ I think Vince knew what he was going to do with me all along. He was going to tear me down and spit me out and destroy me, and he was just waiting until the right day to do it. And that was in November.”
Hart said things became even more obvious at WWF One Night Only in England. According to Bret, Davey Boy Smith had been told for weeks that he would beat Shawn Michaels in front of his home-country crowd, only for the finish to be changed once they arrived. Bret remembered Davey being crushed because the new plan went directly against what he had been promised.
“I remember that Davey was going over, right? For weeks, it’s like, ‘Davey’s going over on Shawn. He’s going to beat Shawn in England.’ Nobody knows anything different. We get to England, it’s all changed. Shawn’s going over on Davey, and Davey’s crushed. Davey was devastated, and I didn’t blame him because it went against everything they told Davey. It’s like, ‘No, we’re beating you in your hometown.’”
The loss itself was only part of Bret’s problem. Michaels had Triple H, Chyna and Rick Rude around him, while Bret and Owen Hart were initially nowhere to be found despite Bulldog being a member of the Hart Foundation. Bret said he and Owen immediately realized that the setup made the entire group look incompetent while Davey was being overwhelmed in the ring.
“I remember me and Owen are in the back going, ‘This makes me and Owen look like a couple of idiots because we’re not even around to watch our guy.’ Davey’s a part of the Hart Foundation now. And I remember going, ‘This is sabotage.’ They’re making me and Owen and everybody look like absolute idiots. They’re beating the crap out of Davey in the ring and we’re not coming out to rescue him.”
Bret then took the accusation even further, saying he believed Vince McMahon, Shawn Michaels and Triple H were all involved in deliberately making the Hart Foundation look bad. By that point, he said he no longer saw the situation as a simple creative disagreement and started believing the company wanted him gone regardless of how well he performed.
“I just remember going, ‘This is intentional to make us look bad or to kill us off,’ which is what Triple H and Shawn and Vince were all planning or plotting out together. I remember going, ‘This is not good business. These guys have bad intentions.’ That was the start of realizing that Vince — it didn’t matter if I had a great match. It was time for me to go. He was going to destroy me until I left.”
Hart even believes his final WWF Championship reign may have been part of the plan. Bret said he could never understand why Vince would put the title on him if the company already wanted him out, and he now believes the idea was to give him the championship so Shawn Michaels could eventually beat him and tear him down on the way out.
“I never understood why Vince put the title on me, but I think he put the title on me to kill me off. He put the title on me and he wanted Shawn to destroy me and beat me. I just didn’t get that far.”
Everything eventually exploded in Montreal in November 1997, but Bret’s version of the story is that the damage started long before the Screwjob itself. He believes WWE spent months stripping away the momentum of his character, weakening the Hart Foundation and setting the stage for an ugly exit that had already been decided behind the scenes.
Do you think Bret Hart was deliberately being torn down throughout 1997, or is he connecting normal wrestling politics to what ultimately happened in Montreal? Let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments.
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