Vince McMahon apparently picked one hell of a night to party with the WWE locker room. During a conversation with Inside The Ropes, Bret Hart said McMahon showed up hammered at a San Antonio strip club, ignored Pat Patterson’s warning that the whole thing was a bad idea, let wrestlers hit moves on him and eventually left in a limo driven by Sgt. Slaughter — who Bret claims pushed a police cruiser straight into a ditch.
The night started with Bret picking Owen Hart up from the airport after the brothers had gone months without seeing each other. WWE had also just informed the roster that strict drug testing was coming, including testing for marijuana, and Bret happened to be carrying a massive bag of weed he had been given in El Paso. Knowing he couldn’t take it back across the Canadian border, Bret convinced Owen to smoke with him before they headed to the strip club.
“I said, ‘This might be one of the last chances if we got to smoke a doobie if you want to.’ And Owen didn’t want to smoke one, but he was like kind of like—I don’t know how to say I twisted his arm, but I kind of talked him into it. And I said, ‘This is the last time.’ And I remember he goes, ‘Last time? Oh, okay.’”
Bret said the weed was extremely strong, so he was already very high when Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson unexpectedly walked into the club. His first instinct was to stay far away from Vince because he was terrified his boss would immediately realize what was going on. Then Bret got a closer look at McMahon and realized Vince had his own problem.
“I didn’t realize that when Vince came in he was hammered. He was so drunk. I don’t know how he got so drunk within—because the TV tapings, so it had to just end. It’s like he must have gone to his room and drank a bottle of scotch or something. I don’t know what he did. But Vince is in the bar now, the strip club, and he’s totally like hammered, like really drunk.”
Vince was apparently in a great mood despite being completely loaded, and that opened the door for things to get stupid fast. Bret said Hawk started talking about hitting Vince with the Road Warriors’ finish, while Hulk Hogan stood there encouraging him to go through with it.
“Hogan stirring them up to—he goes, ‘We, me and Animal ought to go over there and just do our finish on him.’ And Hogan’s like, ‘Go ahead, brother. Why don’t you do that, brother?’ or something.”
Animal picked Vince up, Hawk climbed onto a table and everyone waited for what Bret thought could be a brutal landing on the carpeted concrete floor. Instead, Hawk completely pulled the clothesline.
“All of a sudden Hawk came off the table with this powderpuff… fake-looking clothesline. They never even touched Vince. And Vince fell backwards and Hogan and Beefcake caught Vince and they set him on the ground.”
Jim Neidhart wasn’t impressed. Bret said Neidhart looked at him and declared, “Hart Foundation would have done it,” which put Bret in a terrible spot because Jim almost immediately picked Vince up. Bret knew exactly what was expected of him.
“All of a sudden it’s like I look and Jim picks up Vince and it’s like everyone looking at me kind of like, ‘What are you gonna do?’ And I looked over and I just took off and I took Vince’s like clothesline right in the bar. Took him right down.”
Bret and Vince hit the floor hard, but instead of firing him on the spot, McMahon looked over and demanded a drink. Bret wasn’t about to argue with that.
“Me and Vince are lying on the ground like this and I just remember lying there like this and me and Vince are looking at each other and it was a pretty hard landing. And I looking over and Vince goes, ‘You owe me a drink.’”
“I said, ‘Whatever you want.’ You know, I’m just lucky I didn’t get fired. And he goes, ‘I want a Dewar’s on ice.’ That’s—I remember this so clearly. Dewar’s on ice.”
Pat Patterson could apparently see exactly where the night was heading and wanted nothing to do with it. Bret said Patterson directly warned Vince that drinking inside a strip club with the wrestlers was asking for trouble, but McMahon brushed him off.
“Pat, to be honest, Pat was pissed off at Vince. I remember him saying like, ‘This is a bad idea. Don’t be in here drinking with—like this is a bad situation.’ And Vince is like, ‘No, I’ll be fine.’ And Pat was like, ‘You’re on your own. I’m leaving.’ And he left. He tried to protect Vince.”
Patterson’s warning didn’t exactly miss the mark. By closing time, Bret said the wrestlers had been drinking heavily and still wouldn’t leave, so police were called to clear everybody out. Vince had a limo waiting outside with Sgt. Slaughter driving, and that’s where the story somehow got even crazier.
“I’ll never forget it. There’s a police car with a policeman in it and I remember Sergeant Slaughter just putting the limo in drive and he pushed the police car which was in park right off the road. Pushed it right into the ditch.”
Bret claims the officer sitting inside the cruiser actually laughed as Slaughter shoved the vehicle off the road. Instead of ending with arrests, Bret says the whole thing turned into a negotiation. The wrestlers agreed to leave peacefully if police escorted them to Ric Flair’s hotel, where everyone believed another party was waiting.
“I remember the cop laughing and going, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.’ And he pushed his car right off the road.”
“There was a negotiation went on that we would leave the bar and go peacefully if the police would escort us to Ric Flair’s hotel room. Somehow it was decided that there’s going to be a party in Ric Flair’s room.”
Bret said roughly 30 cars packed with wrestlers, women and other people then followed the police into downtown San Antonio. Considering Vince had already shown up drunk, taken wrestling moves in a strip club and watched his limo shove a police car into a ditch, getting everybody back to the hotel probably should have ended the night. Instead, that’s where things really went off the rails.
What do you make of Bret Hart’s story about Vince McMahon’s night at the strip club, and which part sounds the most insane to you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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.
