Vince McMahon apparently wasn’t anywhere close to finished after leaving the strip club. During a conversation with Inside The Ropes, Bret Hart said the party moved to Ric Flair’s San Antonio hotel suite, where Vince demanded Flair’s room key, smoked from Bret’s giant bag of marijuana and then started trying to take down wrestlers one by one while completely hammered.
The group had been escorted to the Marriott on the River Walk after leaving the strip club, but there was one obvious problem when everyone arrived: Ric Flair wasn’t actually in his room. Earl Hebner was inside sleeping on a rollaway bed, while Flair was somewhere else partying. Bret figured there was no chance the hotel was simply going to hand over another guest’s key, but Vince apparently had a different idea.
“I just remember Vince McMahon walked over to the counter and he goes, ‘Give me the key to Ric Flair’s room.’ And I remember the guy goes, ‘We can’t give you the key to the room.’ And Vince goes, ‘I’m Vince McMahon. Give me the key to his room.’ And the guy just turned around, gave him the key to the room and I remember going, ‘I’m glad it’s not my room.’”
That was apparently enough. Bret said the entire group went upstairs, walked into Flair’s suite and found Hebner sleeping there in his underwear. A full party broke out, but there wasn’t much booze left besides a bottle of straight vodka. By around 3:00 in the morning, the party was already dying — and Bret wasn’t ready to call it. That’s when he remembered the giant bag of marijuana he still needed to get rid of before crossing back into Canada. Bret sent Owen Hart running back to his hotel to grab it.
“I said, ‘We need to save this party because I’m having too much fun.’ And so I said, ‘I need you to go race back and go to my room and get that big bag of weed I got in my suitcase. It’s in my suitcase and I got to get rid of it and I can’t take it across the border.’”
Owen returned with exactly what Bret had asked for — a huge Ziploc bag stuffed with strong marijuana. Brutus Beefcake then started rolling what Bret described as a massive joint that looked more like a cigar. Then the joint started going around the room, and according to Bret, Vince McMahon joined right in.
“I remember Beefcake rolling a joint that was about that long with a whole bunch of papers. It was like just this huge—it’s like a cigar.”
“Next thing you know they light up the joint. Even Vince is smoking the joint. Owen smoke. Everybody smoking the joint. And I keep going like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’”
That alone was ridiculous considering WWE had just told the roster that drug testing was coming and marijuana would be included, but Bret says the night got even crazier because Vince was still extremely drunk.
“So next thing you know, Vince is drunk, hammered. Like he’s silly, stupid drunk.”
Bret said Vince had his shirt off, still had his tie on and suddenly decided he wanted to wrestle everybody in the room. Curt Hennig was one of the first targets, and Bret said Vince quickly found out that trying an amateur wrestling takedown on Hennig was a bad idea.
“All of a sudden Vince is trying to shoot double leg takedowns on different guys.”
“He shoots a double leg takedown on Curt Hennig, who’s talking to me by the door—the door of the room—and he’s on his knees and tries to take Curt down, who was a pretty good amateur, and he wasn’t going to let Vince McMahon take him down in front of everybody.”
Hennig stuffed the attempt, trapped Vince in a front facelock and started lightly bouncing his head against the door while laughing. Vince wasn’t discouraged. Bret said McMahon came after him about a minute later, and Bret handled it almost exactly the same way Hennig did.
“Kurt just kept taking his head and banging on the door. Not hard, just enough to kind of like annoy him, like—and he’s laughing at me.”
“I remember he tried doing me, trying to tackle me against the same door about a minute later. And I did the same thing Kurt did. It was—I was like, my boss, I better be playful with him. Which I was. And Kurt was too. I recall me and both laughing pretty hard.”
McMahon apparently wanted to keep going through the room until he got to Jim Neidhart. Bret said Vince looked at Neidhart like he was considering another takedown, but Jim brought up the scene in “Die Hard” where someone crashes through multiple floors of a building. Vince immediately thought better of it.
“As soon as Jim mentioned that movie and the scene, Vince—where he turned around, walked away from Jim. Jim was the only guy didn’t, because I think he thought—and he was probably right—that if he did a double, tried to do that on Jim, Jim would have thrown him off the—you know, to the lobby.”
Hercules Hernandez wasn’t interested in playing along quite as gently. Bret said Vince tried another takedown, Hercules caught him in a front facelock and launched him through the air. McMahon came crashing down, but by pure luck he landed directly on Earl Hebner’s rollaway bed.
“Herk grabbed him in a front face lock like this and he just took him like a suplex and he threw him right up to the ceiling. He threw him right over his—like right in the air and Vince went way up.”
“Vince falls and lands, luckily, thank God, he lands right on Earl Hebner’s rollaway bed, which is in the middle of the room.”
Vince bounced off the bed and landed on his feet, but Bret immediately noticed the look he gave Hercules. Bret then claimed that was exactly what happened.
“I remember Vince stopped and looked at Herk and he gave him a look and I remember saying, ‘He’d be gone tomorrow.’”
“I never saw Herk ever again. They fired him the next day for real and I was like, dumb move. You got to take care of the boss. You can’t throw the boss around like that.”
There was still one final embarrassment waiting for Hawk. Bret said that out of everyone in the room, Hawk was the one wrestler Vince actually managed to take down and pin flat on his back.
“The only guy that Vince took down and pinned right on the ground, pinned flat on his back, was Hawk. And I remember when that happened, I said, ‘He’s never gonna live that down.’”
After all of that — breaking into Flair’s room, smoking Bret’s weed, shooting takedowns on the roster and getting launched through the air by Hercules — Bret still remembers the night as one of the best times he ever had.
“That was one of the most fun nights I ever had.”
Bret Hart’s story is completely insane even by old-school wrestling standards. Vince McMahon went from partying with his roster to smoking Bret’s marijuana and trying to wrestle everyone in sight, and somehow the night ended without somebody getting seriously hurt.
What do you make of Bret Hart’s story about Vince McMahon at Ric Flair’s hotel party, and which part of the night stands out the most 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.
