This is an article from back in 1997 written by Dave Meltzer. Goes through the entire back story of what happened to Hart in his "last days" in the WWF.

http://web.archive.org/web/200604061....com/facts.asp

I'm sure most people know the whole story already, but I still found this a good read. Found it a bit hard to read at times because of the background picture and tiny print, but found it interesting enough to get power through.

expert tip: hold control down and move your your mouse scroller up to make text bigger. Heading out now but will give a read later today or tomorrow.

Huge Bret fan, will read with great interest

While I'm a Bret fan, and for the most part find him to be pretty genuine, there are quite a few things — between the Meltzer account, Bret's book, and the Bret/Shawn rivalry DVD — that he contradicts himself on as time passes.

I'm from Ottawa too.

I was at the RAW after Montreal. What a **** show... would have much rather been a fly on the wall backstage.

Good read, thanks.

love this quote from Vince on 11/7/97:

he definitely shows how responsible he is as the ratings continue to dip and product continues to suck.

^^ Well, 15 years ago, Mcmahon was in a position to say something like this and pretty much delivered. There was so many things since then that caused Mcmahon to not do stuff like this anymore (Benoit's death, too many drug-related suspensions, sucking up to the main advertisements, Linda's election). We got to find some way to make this product fun again. They might as well bring back Nash (can't believe I said that).

Also from Ottawa. I had tickets to Survivor Series if I could get to Montreal, as well as tickets to RAW in Ottawa. I'd lost my job three weeks prior and couldn't afford to get to Montreal, and once I found out what happened, I refused to go to RAW in protest, which was a pretty good decision since the show was awful.

Would like to hear opinions on who's at fault,

A true company man (Bret) would do as their told and drop the belt as he was asked to do.

As the CEO of the company Vince was obv paranoid that Bret would not drop the belt the next night on RAW and leave with the belt, highly unlikely.

I put most of the blame on HBK for being such a massive ****ing douche. If he was the least bit professional around that time, probably none of this even happens.

That said, the majority of whatever blame is left I put on Bret. Vince was in a completely untenable position by that point, news of Bret signing with WCW had leaked out and Vince had to get the title off Bret that night so that Nitro doesn't open the next night with Tony announcing the impending arrival of the current WWF champion. Bret should've just done the job as the right thing for business regardless of his feelings for Shawn at the time. That said, Vince has to share some of the blame for allowing things to escalate to that point.

Damn, I was at that Raw too.

My tickets were so lol. I was basically sitting behind the stage. I don't remember much from that show, but I'll never forget...

There was a tag team that road to the ring in motorcycles, think it might have been the guys from Disciples of Apocalypse. Harris Brothers possibly? Well, these poor bastards could not get their motor cycles to start. There must have been five or six guys working on these bikes as you could see people running around figuring out how to change the structure of the show.

Also, I went to Raw not knowing a single thing about what happened at Survivor Series the night before. I wasn't buying PPVs, and streaming wasn't an easy thing. I'd usually read the results online. That day I went to school, got home, and got right back on a bus to head to Raw.

I wish Vince would've just held his end of the bargain and kept Bret around. The WWF really could've used someone with some in ring ability in 1998 and whether or not Bret liked the direction the show was going, he was doing a fantastic job adjusting with the times. Bret was a company guy during his entire stay in the WWF. He probably took the business a little too seriously but that is probably what got him to the top in the first place. Nonetheless, he clearly had no interest in leaving and a guy like that simply isn't someone that you should try to lose.

On the other hand, Shawn was a drug riddled prick, albeit a very talented one. It was still likely in the best interest of the WWF to have his belligerent attitude out of the promotion. I'm curious what Vince would've done with him if he hadn't broken his back. He probably would've bent over for him enough times to kill even Steve Austin's heat.

God Bret was such a bitch.

Every time Bret Hart gets mentioned it's like a batsignal for Dylan to come say something silly.

There.was a documentary film in 1998 called Bret hart wrestling with shadows. A crew followed him for a year and goes into harts family history as well as primary source footage of things that went down prior to Montreal. I highly recommend it. It's very interested how Vince, WWF, Bret, and wcw turned out after this event and next two years

I'm sure nobody here has ever heard of it...

So ur saying this could have been a worked shoot?

lol @ new posts

clearly you guys have never read advanced dusty finishes for advanced bookers.

Not yet, just finished reading,
How to make wrestling fun when booking on the fly.

I read the book. Severe lack of bloody mufflahs, though.

Right heah on da muddasheeap!

It's crazy to me that Dusty was actually quite good on the mic given his ridiculous manner of speech.

Especially on commentary

Huge Hart fan and was a total mark around that time and didn't really understand the business at the time. The Screwjob was basically the last time I ever watched wrestling religiously. I had no desire to watch WCW (didn't like Hart on their show) and loved the attitude era but was never "attached" again if that makes sense.

Watching the interviews with Bret and HBK now (the 3 hour long one with JR is a must-watch) I feel like it's about what most people said:

Bret took himself way too seriously and HBK didn't really seem to take much seriously at all.

Bret forgot that the business was bigger than his reputation and sort of put Vince in a spot where he didn't have a ton of other options (all the other spots to drop the belt were bad and lol @ just giving it up on Raw).

HBK is responsible for things ever getting that bad though because the entire refusal to put Bret over lead to everything. If he'd have been more mature about the situation, it never gets that far.