Straight from the Hart (35 page)

Somewhere up yonder, I know there’s a raspy voiced new recruit, with just a touch of hell in him, who has just dropkicked wide open the Pearly Gates and has likely admonished a startled St. Peter with his signature greeting, “You’ll do nothing, and like it!” Take it from me, folks — heaven will never be the same.

In closing, to paraphrase Elton John, “It seems to me, Pill, that you’ve lived your life like a Roman candle in a hurricane — your candle having burned out long before your legend ever will!” Rest easy, old friend.

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Only a few weeks after Pillman had been laid to rest, another decimating blow was dealt to the Hart Foundation and, all things considered, to the entire wrestling business with the infamous “Montreal screw job,” as it has come to be known. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that whole tawdry affair, it goes something like this.

In the fall of 1997, the Hart Foundation (consisting of my brothers Bret and Owen, and brothers-in-law Jim Neidhart and Davey Boy Smith) was still riding high in the WWF, holding most of the major titles, with the world title held by Bret. That November at Survivor Series in Montreal, Bret was scheduled to defend his title against his old nemesis, Shawn Michaels. Based on what I’ve heard, Vince McMahon and his advisers wanted the Hitman to drop the strap to Shawn. Bret, however, was about as fond of Shawn as Donald Trump is of Rosie O’Donnell and also felt that having to lose to him in his native Canada was a deliberate slap in the face. As a result, he informed Vince that he simply couldn’t see fit to putting Shawn over. Although McMahon and his chief booker at the time, Vince Russo, did their level best to get Bret to oblige, he reiterated his abject disinclination to lose to Shawn, claiming that in his humble opinion the Heartbreak Kid simply wasn’t fit to wear the title. Finally,
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with things at a protracted impasse only days before the big show, McMahon and Russo made out as if they had capitulated to Bret’s refusal to lose to Shawn and instead came up with some kind of compromise finish, which would have enabled Bret to retain the title — or so he was given to believe.

McMahon and Russo, of course, subsequently reneged on their promise to Bret (that he didn’t have to drop the strap) and then proceeded to orchestrate this sneaky double-cross which involved referee Earl Hebner making out as if the Hitman had submitted to Michaels (who, to add insult to injury, had Bret in his own signature submission hold — the sharpshooter). Hebner then ordered the timekeeper to ring the bell and raised Shawn’s arm and handed him the belt.

When Bret got up and realized he’d been royally screwed (without even being kissed), he went totally ballistic and contemptuously hawked a big loogie in Vince McMahon’s face at ringside and later punched him out in the dressing room. Bret was so bitter and enraged afterward, in fact, that he was quoted in Vince Russo’s book
Forgiven
as saying that he “felt like showing up at the building the next day with a gun and blowing people away!” The Montreal screw job remains one of the most controversial incidents in the annals of our business. Not only as Bret’s brother, but also as one who’s been on both sides of the proverbial fence in the wrestling business — as a wrestler and also as a booker/promoter — I’ve been asked many a time what my take on the whole sordid scenario is. I’ve spent a fair bit of time endeavoring to see it from both sides and will now attempt to render an objective and hopefully insightful assessment — straight from the Hart!

As for Vince McMahon and his cohorts in the WWF, I honestly don’t know whether they could have perpetrated a more poorly executed fuck job if they had tried. I say that for a number of reasons. First, the half-assed and illicit way the title was switched certainly didn’t do much for the new champion, Michaels.

As a rule, when a major title changes hands, one of the primary objectives is for the new title holder to be able to get off to a good start by going over strong or getting a good reaction when he wins the belt. That usually involves a hot finish

— something impressive and well conceived, which sets things up nicely for the new champion’s title run. That, obviously, wasn’t the case here, as the shoddy
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manner in which the belt was transferred got over about as well as someone passing gas on a subway car at rush hour. As a result, it essentially reduced Michaels to lame duck status as champion — which, of course, considerably compromised his drawing ability.

Beyond that and probably even more damaging, the shoddy title switch cheapened the hell out of the image of the belt itself. It’s important to keep in mind, regardless of whether wrestling is perceived to be a work or not, that at that time the WWF title was still regarded as wrestling’s Holy Grail — our sport’s equivalent to the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, World Series or whatever else. In the eyes of wrestling fans, it was every bit as sacred as those prestigious titles. That changed in Montreal though. As major league baseball fans can ruefully attest, if the perceptible integrity of your ultimate championship is compromised or tarnished — which is what happened in 1919 when Shoeless Joe Jackson and his crooked Black Sox teammates threw the World Series — it can place the whole sport in jeopardy and take years to recover. The Montreal debacle had a similar effect on pro wrestling and left the WWF with a pronounced black eye and made it the object of all kinds of derision and ridicule.

On a purely personal level, the whole unseemly abortion certainly didn’t do a whole hell of a lot for Vince McMahon’s image either. Prior to Montreal, while there may have been some conjecture about him being ruthless, arrogant and, at times, unethical, he was nonetheless respected by most as a shrewd, savvy operator whose vision and entrepreneurial acumen had transformed the WWF

from a regional promotion into a huge worldwide phenomenon. Not only did the Montreal miscarriage cause the public to see him as a devious, profligate swerve artist, but the heavy-handed and incompetent way it was carried out made him look like a bumbling screwup who couldn’t even pull off his own ill-conceived treachery. That sure as hell isn’t the type of image the CEO of a multibillion dollar publicly traded corporation wants to cultivate.

In a lot of ways the whole surreptitious scandal reminds me of Watergate

— what with the sneaky, devious intent and the remarkably amateurish execution. Surely Vince and his coterie of supposedly clever and resourceful co-conspirators could have come up with a more subtle, fool-proof plan of attack that, at the very least, would have kept the commander-in-chief from being
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incriminated or caught up in the middle of things — just as most people would have figured the same for Richard Nixon. We all know what Watergate did for Nixon’s career and his legacy. Fortunately, the WWF isn’t held to the same type of circumspect scrutiny as the White House and because
Wrestling Observer
publisher Dave Meltzer doesn’t quite carry the same cachet as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did, Vinnie Mac couldn’t be impeached or run out of town on a rail. The whole botched comedy of errors nonetheless still compromised Vinnie Mac’s image in much the same way as it did Tricky Dick’s.

Aside from all the negative publicity Vince incurred, I would imagine that the whole fiasco must have adversely affected his working relationship with a lot of the boys as well. I would have to think that stars like Steve Austin, Undertaker, Mick Foley and others must have been thinking to themselves, as they watched the whole charade unfold, “If Vince is capable of screwing one of his longest serving, most loyal and dedicated stars in this manner, then he’s just as likely to screw any one of us in a similar fashion.” Breaching the sacred trust of the boys, upon which the success of any promotion is predicated, is, in my humble estimation, one of the worst transgressions a promoter can be guilty of.

Beyond making Shawn Michaels a lame duck champion, compromising the all-important image of the world title, irrevocably tarnishing his own image and that of the whole company and seriously jeopardizing his working relationship with much of his talent, the Montreal screw job also served to make Bret a major martyr, which, of course, considerably enhanced his marketability with the rival WCW — which, I suspect, wasn’t what McMahon and Russo had in mind either.

I’ve heard a number of excuses put forth as to why the WWF felt they had to orchestrate things the way they did. One was that McMahon and company were afraid that Bret, who was reportedly poised to defect to the WCW, was planning on taking the belt to WCW and “dissing” it on
Nitro
by tossing it in the garbage — something former WWF women’s champion Madusa Miceli (a.k.a. Alundra Blayze) had done a few years before. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that Bret would have ever even contemplated something as lame and disrespectful as that — especially when you consider that when Madusa did it, it had virtually no effect on anything anyway. Lest anyone think otherwise, it
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didn’t hurt the WWF at all and, within a matter of weeks, no one seemed to remember, or even care. As I recall, the only person who suffered from it was Madusa, herself, as her once promising career seemed to go straight into the toilet after that. If Bret had done the same, I don’t think it would have done much to enhance his marketability or his image, nor would it have affected the WWF anywhere near as much as some have made out.

As well, if Eric Bischoff and his WCW cohorts had, in their infinite wisdom, chosen to actually flog the WWF belt on their own show, I think it would have only served to make WCW fans perceive it as more prestigious than the WCW

title.

I also read some irrational reasoning in Vince Russo’s illuminating book
Forgiven
, which put forth the notion that the WWF had no choice but to screw Bret, because he had it written into his contract that he had creative control over everything he did in the ring, including finishes. I’m honestly not sure if Russo was misinformed, or simply full of shit, but if that was actually the case, something is seriously out of whack. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that about like Carl Weathers (who played Apollo Creed) or Mr. T being given complete autonomy over what their characters can do in the
Rocky
movies and then, after sizing up the script, informing Sly Stallone, in no uncertain terms, that their character can’t lose to Rocky Balboa? As Ric Flair exclaimed in his book, when assessing Bret’s rationale for refusing to oblige the office: “Gimme a break!”

If there’s one iota of truth to Russo’s curious contention that Bret did, in fact, have complete creative autonomy over his finishes, the WWF should be embarrassed to even admit publicly that they were so naive or clueless they would actually submit themselves to something so ludicrous and they have no business even running a wrestling promotion.

Talk about the tail wagging the dog, the inmates running the asylum or whatever other clichés might apply! Taking things one step further, if the WWF was giving stars like Bret creative control it stands to reason that they probably would have had to grant other equally exalted superstars, like Austin,

’Taker, Foley and others, the same type of creative autonomy. By that token, if the WWF happened to book two such superstars, with the same veto powers,
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against each other and neither was inclined to do the job for the other, how the hell would they resolve things? Rock, paper, scissors?