Bret Hart was on top of the world following his SummerSlam victory over Undertaker in August 1997. Not only did he finally have the quality title match he desired for so long, but he also tied Hulk Hogan’s then-record of five WWE Championship reigns. Coupled with the security of a newly signed twenty-year WWE contract, things couldn’t have been going any better for the Hit Man. Or so he thought.
About six weeks after SummerSlam, Hart was ordered to Vince McMahon’s office for a meeting. According to Hart, McMahon claimed that WCW’s dominance over WWE was sending his company into financial peril. As a result, he intended on breaching Hart’s contract ($10.5 million over twenty years). Instead of paying him his full salary, McMahon informed his champion he would receive his money at the back end of his lengthy deal. The meeting ended with McMahon urging Hart to see if he could get WCW to offer him the same deal they offered him the year before when he was a free agent: $9 million over three years. If Hart could successfully ink a deal with WCW, WWE would no longer be responsible for the $10.5 million owed to the Hit Man. McMahon gave Hart until November 1 to negotiate a contract with WCW.
Heeding his boss’s advice, Hart reached out to WCW to see if the same deal was on the table. They came back with $7.5 million over three years—almost as much as McMahon was giving him over twenty years. Despite the large amount of money, though, Hart’s home was in the WWE ring. “I never had any intention of leaving,” says Hart. “Naively enough, I thought whatever was happening with me and Vince would get sorted out.”
Hart claims to have called McMahon on October 31, to discuss his WWE future and ultimately inform him that he would not be taking WCW’s deal. They spoke only briefly before McMahon told the Hit Man he would call him back later with a detailed outline of his future. According to Hart, the call didn’t come until minutes before the midnight deadline, and to make matters worse, the conversation turned somewhat sour when McMahon’s outline was not to Hart’s liking. Before hanging up, McMahon told his champion to think with his head and take the security of the WCW deal.
Moments later, Hart signed his WCW contract and faxed it back to Eric Bischoff. Just like that, his fourteen-year WWE career was over.
With his champion’s signature on the rival’s contract, Vince McMahon had to do everything in his power to ensure another Alundra Blayze incident wasn’t on the horizon. In December 1995, WWE Women’s Champion Blayze abruptly left to sign with WCW. In her initial appearance on Monday Nitro, the buxom blonde held up the WWE Women’s title she once proudly carried and proceeded to throw it into a garbage can. The sight of a WWE titlist disrespecting WWE on WCW television remains one of the most infamous moments in sports-entertainment history. In an attempt to avoid another embarrassing situation, McMahon wanted Hart to lose the WWE Championship to Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series in Montreal, Canada. This would eliminate any chances of the Hit Man showing up on Nitro with the WWE title. The last thing Hart wanted to do, however, was lose the gold in his home country.
Jim Neidhart and Owen Hart console Bret Hart.
Considering McMahon’s powerful position, a fan could assume Vince would simply demand that Hart surrender the gold to Michaels at Survivor Series. This was not the case, though. Hart’s contract stated that he had full creative control over the final thirty days of his term. And as luck would have it, the Hit Man had no plans of walking out of Canada without his WWE Championship.
During this time period, McMahon held weekly conference calls with Triple H and Shawn Michaels. On the Wednesday before Survivor Series, he alerted both Superstars to Hart’s unwillingness to surrender the gold. Being the true historians of the game that they were, both Triple H and HBK grew irate over the news. To them, doing what was asked of you on your way out the door of a promotion has always been a time-honored tradition. Every competitor who has ever laced a pair of boots lived by this rule. To hear that Hart was refusing to honor McMahon’s wishes offended Triple H and HBK.
In his 2005 autobiography, Heartbreak and Triumph, Michaels recalls his exchange with McMahon during the conference call: “I’ll do whatever you want. We’ll just take it off him. I’ll just swerve him or whatever I have to. You tell me what needs to get done. You and this company have put up with so much from me. My loyalty is here with you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“What are you talking about, Shawn?”
“Whatever it takes. If we have to do a fast count or get him in a hold and tell someone to ring the bell, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
“That’s pretty serious. That has to be a last resort. I still have until Saturday to talk to Bret. That may have to be a real option. This cannot be discussed with anyone. Pat [Patterson] can’t know—nobody can know about this but the three of us right now.”
Saturday came and Hart still refused to give in to the demands. As a result, Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels felt they had very little choice.
Early on Sunday, the day of Survivor Series, HBK came up with the plan to get Hart in a Sharpshooter. Once it was locked in, referee Earl Hebner, who would be tipped off prior to the start of the match, would immediately call for the bell. And just like that, the unsuspecting Bret Hart would see his fifth title reign, as well as his WWE career, come to an embarrassing end.
Michaels and Hart shared a private moment together prior to the start of the Pay-Per-View. This was wildly uncharacteristic, considering the ill feelings both men developed for each other over the years. Perhaps Hart, realizing the end was near, was trying to extend an olive branch before departing for WCW. Either way, their exchange did not resonate well with HBK, who was forced to feign compassion, knowing that he was about to screw Hart out of his most prized possession.
Shawn Michaels applies the Sharpshooter to Bret Hart.
“It was the most uncomfortable talk ever,” remembers Michaels. “He and I had a lot of conversations over the years… mending and breaking down, mending and breaking down. And on this day, we had another one. I never felt lower. We shook hands and I knew full well what was going on. I look back at it now and I feel like a scumbag.”
But there was no turning back for Shawn Michaels. He had a job to do: take the WWE Championship from Bret Hart. Everything went according to HBK’s plan during the bout. Finally, during a late-match offensive, Michaels put Hart in a Sharpshooter. Well before he could truly lock in the move, the referee called for the bell. Vince McMahon, who had come down to the ring midmatch, simultaneously called for the bell as well.
Michaels’s music blared over the loudspeaker, as the Canadian crowd looked on in disbelief. Their hero had just lost the WWE Championship, despite never tapping out or screaming “I quit.” They could tell something wasn’t right.
HBK also pretended something wasn’t right. He looked over to McMahon, as if to say “What’s going on here?” But he knew exactly what was going on.
“Vince wanted to take 100 percent of the heat,” says Michaels regarding his denying involvement. “I told him ‘no way,’ but he said it was his decision and he would take the heat. I understood his perspective, but in the end, I was the guy holding the gun. I was the guy who had to shoot [Bret Hart].”
After the match, Michaels, still acting as if he had no clue, grabbed his title and darted toward the back, leaving Hart in the ring alone. Mystified by what had just transpired, the former champ did the first thing that came to mind—spit a gigantic wad of phlegm directly into McMahon’s face. He then signaled the letters WCW in the air with his pointer finger, before finally leaving the ring and destroying any WWE property he could get his hands on. Nothing was safe from Hart’s wrath. He trashed everything from television monitors to headsets. As he continued his rampage, the Canadian crowd grew more and more enraged by the betrayal.
“It was a pretty volatile moment,” recalls Hart. “I always thought that it wouldn’t have taken much to start a riot in that building that night. I probably could’ve gotten that whole crowd to storm the back of the building and turn some cars over in the streets. It was a powder keg that night.”
Bret Hart stares in disbelief at Vince McMahon.
But the Hit Man regained his composure and headed back toward the locker room. As he walked past his puzzled family, he began to think that all his previous success had been for naught. Instead of remembering his five WWE Championship reigns, Bret Hart believed fans would now remember him for losing in Montreal.
“That was a bitter pill for me to swallow. It was a sad feeling for me to know that everything I had ever done meant so little to Vince. All my loyalty was for nothing.”
Once in the back, Hart took a quick shower in an attempt to cool his mind. It didn’t help. When McMahon arrived in Hart’s locker room, the two engaged in a verbal altercation. After a few minutes, Hart grew tired of the words coming from his former employer’s mouth, so he punched him in the face. To this day, the incident remains one of wrestling’s most notorious moments, despite never being caught on camera.
“I think it was the perfect thing to do. It was fair, from my standpoint. I had been so misled and maliciously wounded in the ring. I felt so betrayed, like I had let the whole country down. I don’t think people sensed how important it was for me to win that match. I still think people underestimated how proud Canada was of me at the time. So I think that dustup with Vince was the perfect response. If I had to do it all over again, I don’t think I would’ve done anything differently. It was pretty sweet decking Vince.”
McMAHON ON WWE TV, SEVEN DAYS AFTER BEING PUNCHED: I was disappointed in Bret when he hit me, very disappointed. I sustained a concussion as a result of it, with vision problems to this day. I’ll get over it. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Bret seems to be crowing about that; that I’ve read. He feels proud of striking me. It wasn’t a question of a confrontation, because even at fifty-two years old, I dare say that perhaps things would have been a little different if there were a confrontation. I allowed Bret to strike me. I had hoped that he wouldn’t. I had hoped that we could sit down and try to work things out as gentlemen. That’s what I had really hoped for. But that’s not what happened.
Immediately following Survivor Series, angered Hart fans started to point their frustration toward McMahon, claiming that “Vince screwed Bret.” The WWE owner, however, saw things much differently.
McMAHON REFLECTS ON SURVIVOR SERIES, SEVEN DAYS LATER: Some would say I screwed Bret Hart. Bret Hart would definitely tell you I screwed him. I look at it from a different standpoint. I look at it from the standpoint of the referee did not screw Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels certainly did not screw Bret Hart, nor did Vince McMahon screw Bret Hart. I truly believe that Bret Hart screwed Bret Hart. And he can look in the mirror and know that.
I would certainly take responsibility for any decision I ever made. I never had a problem doing that. Not that all my decisions are accurate. They’re not. But when I make a bad decision, I’m not above saying “I’m sorry” and trying to do the best about it that I can. Hopefully, the batting average is pretty good. I make more good decisions than I do bad decisions. As far as screwing Bret Hart is concerned, there is a time-honored tradition in the wrestling business that when someone is leaving they show the right amount of respect to the [WWE] Superstars, in this case, who helped make you that Superstar. You show the proper respect to the organization that helped you become who you are today. It’s a time-honored tradition, and Bret Hart didn’t want to honor that tradition. And that’s something I would’ve never, ever expected from Bret because he is known somewhat as a traditionalist in this business. It would’ve never crossed my mind that Bret would not have wanted to show the right amount of respect to the Superstars who helped make him and the organization who helped make him what he is today. Nonetheless, that was Bret’s decision. Bret screwed Bret.
Who actually screwed whom is a debate that still rages today.
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Michaels also found his post–Survivor Series life to be difficult. Many of his colleagues disagreed with his actions in Montreal, leaving HBK to fear for his safety. So he and Triple H came up with hand signals to help protect themselves.
“If something broke down, we were going to jump on whoever we had to jump on, if we could take them. If not, we were going to get the heck out of there. It was a very tense and uncomfortable time. Life got a hell of a lot harder after Survivor Series.”
While Michaels feared for his life in WWE, Hart took his game to the rival organization. Following the events of Survivor Series, many believed WCW was getting sports-entertainment’s hottest commodity. Unfortunately for them, though, they failed to find a way to capitalize on Hart’s popularity.
HART ON HIS TIME WITH WCW: I never thought WCW and Eric Bischoff had any brains. Before I went there, I knew they were a bunch of mindless idiots who didn’t know a lot about wrestling, and that I would probably sit on the bench, spin my tires, and become disgruntled. I expected all those things, and they all happened. I think Vince was the one who told me that WCW wouldn’t know what to do with a Bret Hart. I remember thinking he was so right. I didn’t want to leave WWE. Not for the money, not for anything. I just wanted to stay. I always thought I would go back and work for Vince after the three years with WCW.
I wanted so much to make a difference in that company. I was ready to give everything I had. And for Bischoff to say otherwise is clueless. I only did what they told me to do. There was never a case of me not wanting to do something. If anything, I tried to take their lousy ideas and make them sellable. The fact that I didn’t go anywhere has to go back to them, not me.
Vince Russo was another clueless nonwrestler who never worked a match in his life. He didn’t know anything about wrestling psychology or how to build a match. He had no idea. Neither did Bischoff. The average wrestling fan has more scope and psychology than Russo and Bischoff ever had. They were just wrestling fans.
Despite his disdain for Bischoff and Russo, the Hit Man went on to become a two-time WCW Champion. To Hart, those championship reigns couldn’t compare to wearing the WWE Championship.
“Most of the time, I just threw the WCW belt in my bag and never thought twice about it. Those WCW title runs never really mattered to me. I had more important matches working for my dad. Even when I won it in Toronto, there was some stupid run-in with Dean Malenko and interference with about a half-dozen guys. It was such a convoluted ending that when I held the belt up, I almost rolled my eyes.”
More than a decade after Survivor Series, Hart and Michaels still think back to the infamous night. Ironically, Hart is able to find some good from what happened, while HBK wishes it never happened.
HART: It’s the most real thing that ever happened in wrestling, and it stands out as a pivotal moment. I think wrestlers hold me in the highest regard now as they look back and recognize that I took my responsibility as a wrestler so seriously that I had to take the position that I did. I think they respect that. I think Shawn respects that. I don’t know a lot of wrestlers that would’ve taken the position that I did, let alone follow up afterward and knock out Vince. But it defined me as a character. It defined me as a Canadian. Years later, I got voted the thirty-ninth greatest Canadian of all time. The people who voted said they did so because I stood up to America and Vince McMahon. I’m still pretty proud of myself for that day.
MICHAELS: I regret everything with Bret. I wish I had something better to say than I was angry and out of control, but I don’t. I was tough to deal with back then. I felt like nobody wanted me to succeed and everybody wanted me to fail. But I was not going to let anybody take me down.
Bret had a great career and so much of it now is focused on Montreal, and that sucks. He deserves better than that. He was great at what he did, but I guess you could say that’s partially his fault because he focused so much on it. It was a bad time and a bad situation.