Bret Hart knew his anti-American character was working when fans started booing him out of buildings. He knew it had gone way too far when they started chasing him down highways and allegedly trying to run his car off the road.
While speaking to Inside The Ropes about his infamous 1997 heel run, Hart revealed just how dangerous the hostility became once fans stopped leaving their hatred for his character inside the arena. What started with some of the most heated reactions of his career eventually had Hart asking Vince McMahon for security just so he could safely leave WWE shows.
Hart said the entire character worked because he wasn’t simply throwing random insults at American audiences. He took real issues, leaned into his Canadian identity and committed completely to making people despise him.
“Well, you know, I tried to take real stuff and, you know, like I just went with it and it’s like, okay, so I’m a bad guy and I’m a Canadian. I’m going to, you know, I’m going to do all this like—and then I just kind of got behind it and started trying to. And, you know, I thought some of my promos were pretty good and the intensity, and I could tell that—I had cars trying to rub me off the road at night and fans, wrestling fans chasing me down the highway when there were cars and shaking pitchforks at me and stuff like that.”
That’s a pretty terrifying way to find out your promos are getting over. Hart wasn’t traveling with an entourage once the show ended either. He was usually alone, meaning there wasn’t much separating Bret Hart the performer from people who apparently weren’t interested in waiting until the next WWE event to confront him.
“It was—I’m not kidding—it was pretty scary sometimes because I’d be all—I used to travel all by myself. And there’d be two or three cars that would just follow me and try to run me off the road and stuff.”
Eventually, getting heat stopped being the biggest concern.Hart went directly to Vince McMahon and told him he needed protection when leaving arenas. By that point, he believed some of the people waiting outside didn’t simply want to yell at him or flip him off. He feared someone could seriously hurt him. You’d think that would’ve been enough to get someone assigned to him. According to the Hitman, it wasn’t.
“And it was like, you know, it’s like I remember I had to tell Vince, I said, ‘I need security at the end of the night when I try to leave the building. There’s nothing but hostile fans out there that want to run me off the road or kill me,’ you know.”
“And they never ever did get me any security. And it was always—it was very intense for sure. And I just, I guess, kept trying to be the best heel I could.”
And he certainly didn’t stop. The irony is that 1997 ultimately produced some of the best character work of Hart’s career. He became a hero in Canada while simultaneously being despised across the United States, turning the same wrestler into a babyface or heel depending on which side of the border WWE happened to be running that night.
But there was apparently a price for making people believe it that strongly. Inside the arena, Bret Hart wanted American fans to hate him. Once he was alone in his car with two or three of them chasing him down the highway, he probably would’ve preferred they hated him a little less.
What did you think of Bret Hart’s anti-American heel run in 1997, and should WWE have provided him with security once fans started following him after shows? Let us know in the comments below.
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