WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart recently appeared on RingRustRadio to talk about various topics. Here are the highlights.
The world champion in WWE right now is Triple H, something many fans disagree with. What are your feelings on Triple H winning the Royal Rumble and being booked in the main event of WrestleMania 32?
I find it harder to watch wrestling nowadays. I was a really big fan of Daniel Brian and CM Punk. They were great wrestlers. I think Triple H is a guy in a different mindset and is more about how you look. More into a guy like Batista, The Rock and Brock Lesnar. I will say though, I think Brock is a great wrestler. If they all look like Hulk Hogan or big muscle-bound guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he would be really happy. That to him is what wrestling is all about. He thinks that is the type of guys you should push, and maybe that’s why he is the champion. I am personally a guy that’s more about wrestling. I don’t really have an interest in watching bodybuilders stumbling around the ring. Most of the time, they aren’t the best athletes. It’s not about how you look; it’s about how you wrestle. Wrestling fans are the priority. I’m a big fan of Kevin Owens and I think he’s a great wrestler, and I’m also a big fan of Brock Lesnar and I think he should have won the Royal Rumble. I wasn’t too impressed with the Rumble this year. I thought it was really flat and a lot of bad calls were made about who got pushed and who didn’t. I think it’s a sad state of affairs when they have the biggest wrestler in the world, the Big Show, go out there and be thrown out of the ring by just one guy is just stupid booking. I think you look at someone like Mark Henry who is billed legitimately as the strongest man in the world, he goes out there and he’s thrown out of the ring in less than 30 seconds? It all just makes me wonder. They have all these other guys that they are pushing, but then they lose track of what the Royal Rumble is all about. I was extremely disappointed this year. The Rumble was always one my favorite pay-per-views but it has been lackluster and hasn’t lived up to what I had hoped for. The last few years have been downers as far as the Rumble goes. I will say, WrestleMania they always surprise me. When I was there watching it, I was surprised that they pulled it off and it was really exciting to watch. I’m hoping they can pull a rabbit out of their hat with this one, but I am not so sure they can this year.
The Montreal Screwjob is obviously something that wrestling fans will always talk about and it’s been discussed at nauseam, but something I’ve always been curious about is proposed compromises by either you or Vince. Aside from the DQ finish and vacating the title the next night on Raw, which was the agreement that was supposed to happen, do you remember any other interesting scenarios in terms of alternate finishes against Shawn or even alternate opponents that you would’ve agreed to drop the title to?
There were a lot of things suggested in the weeks leading up to that match. I was pretty much in an unflinching position. I wouldn’t go back on my position at all. I offered Vince that I would drop the title to any single other wrestler including Steve Lombardi (Brooklyn Brawler) in any way he wanted me to except for Shawn Michaels because of the way he disrespected me as badly as he did. I didn’t care if Shawn wanted to do anything with me unless it was going to be me winning, and that’s all there was to it. There wasn’t a whole lot put forward that day. We all showed up in Montréal, and I had a fixed position, but I was willing to hear him out on a possible way out of it. There is always a million ways out of it. People say there always has to be an outcome, but that’s not really true. There can always be a blurry outcome after a pay-per-view. There have been lots of times in pay-per-views before then and even since then where it has happened. There have been lots of times where wrestlers have refused to drop the title. Wrestlers like Hulk Hogan or Honky Tonk Man refused to drop the titles, and those kinds of things were never done to them. I was very open to outcomes, but my issue was with Shawn and how he had disrespected me. I made that clear to Vince months ahead of time. Vince said I could leave any way I wanted to. He had said I could forfeit the belt, which was his original idea, not mine. If there was ever a situation of me leaving the company, I had free run to do whatever way I wanted to. Other parties at the time had Vince’s ear, and he can be very twisted and pulled in other directions. I think Shawn and Triple H were really pushing him, and I think it was Triple H’s idea to do the screw job and Vince eventually went along with it. In hindsight, I don’t think anyone can look back on it today and say it was a good idea. It was a stupid idea and it worked out really poorly for everyone involved including them. There are a lot of better ways to do business than that. As far as an alternative ending, when I showed up that day Vince agreed with everything. He said we can do it my way and there can be a run in with all the other wrestlers involved and end it in a disqualification with me keeping the title and I was happy with that. I didn’t need to come up with another idea. If he had told me he wasn’t sure on what we should do about the ending, then I would have been very receptive to try to find a solution to give him what he wanted, and at the same time protected my integrity and respect I had for the business.
You had the opportunity to work with many of the biggest stars of your era and put on countless great matches, but who are some guys you never had a chance to wrestle that you wish you could have looking back now, and why?
I would love to have worked with Hulk Hogan as an example. I know we did a little bit of stuff here and there. That was a match we should have had. ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage is another guy that I really would have loved to have done a storyline or a long feud with. Either as a babyface or the bad guy or vice versa. There was lots of opportunities for us to do the dance, but we had a few matches in a few different places like in Japan or on a Saturday Night Main Event. We gave them glimpses of what we could have done, but we just didn’t get a chance to really show anybody what we could have done. I would have loved to wrestle Kurt Angle. I just missed him, as he became a star right after me. John Cena, take him today and Bret Hart circa 1997 U.S.-bashing bad guy. You throw John Cena with Bret Hart we would have been brilliant and we could of made a lot of money together. We would have had a lot of fun wrestling each other with great stories.
You can listen to the interview here:
