I read Bret's book, and I watched the documentary, but I have a hard time believing that Bret would A) coincidentally had a film crew filming him for that match, and B) Why go back to the WWE after that happened?

Does anyone have any insight as to if this was planned or not? Seemed to have generated a ton of buzz for both Vince, Shawn, and Bret.

14 years is enough to forgive and perhaps bret needed money. no way it was a work though.

Screwjobs were common in situations like this during Bret's early career (including one by Vince Mcmahon-Wendi Richter vs Spider Lady aka Fabulous Moolah), so it makes plenty of sense that they were suspicious.

I don't know if Vince would have even allowed those cameras backstage. He does not like stuff like that from my understanding. That's what makes me suspicious.

Id love to read more old backstage stories. I can only find the same ones over and over again

Bret said at the time that the money was a big part of it. He took a huge hit in the market crash.

He gave Barry Blaustein a lot more backstage access for "Beyond The Mat" and that was hardly a feel good documentary.

Apparently he lied to everyone about what kind of documentary he was making

No chance the Screwjob was a work.

Whenever Vince is involved and wrestling there is always a chance.

The screwjob being a work would be the last secret the entire industry has.

Vince, HBK, Bret and Earl at the very least had to know about it and none have every said word about it despite every single one of them had reasons both positive and negative to reveal it and with Bret and Earl falling out with Vince and the WWE/F over the years.

That...seems like a difficult thing to know to be true.

Yeah I imagine that is completely true, just illustrating that Vince did give outside camera crews a lot of backstage access even after "Wrestling With Shadows".

Definitely a shoot IMO.

I'm sure someone involved would have cashed in with a book by now if it wasn't.

Survivor Series 1997 was incidentally the last WWF/E PPV that I ever ordered and watched live. Pretty much every piece of evidence that came out then and since has shown that this was a shoot on Bret Hart, but for some reason, there's always been a part of me that believed that this was a worked-shoot played out to perfection.

1. The WWF/E was in serious financial trouble at the time and were actually considering bankruptcy, if they couldn't make a public offering to keep them afloat. Bret Hart was their biggest and most marketable star at the time, but he was also an expensive commodity which is why he was allowed to negotiate with the WCW in the first place. Shaving Bret Hart's considerable contract off the books only works if you don't have to pay the next guy in line a similar amount of money. So, you make the next man in line someone that is virtually free: Vince McMahon. There are very few ways to make a non-wrestler a main event talent; being the one who on-screen can decide winners and losers outside of the confines of competition is one way to do that. The "Screwjob" probably worked even better than they could have hoped.

2. Owen Hart remained with the company afterwards. I find it hard to believe that Jim Neidhart and Davey Boy Smith so easily got out of their WWE contracts, and yet, Owen Hart had to struggle through. And, along similar lines, there were a lot of other veteran "wrestling guys" that remained with the company after the incident and have remained loyal to the WWE throughout, which I struggle to comprehend considering how egregious a breach in etiquette a "screwjob" is in the wrestling industry.

3. There have been numerous imitations and spoofs of the "Montreal Screwjob" that the WWE portrayed through the years, which would be understandable. But, Bret Hart participated in two similar worked events in his career afterwards as well, which makes it seem like just a big inside joke on the internet wrestling community to me.

4. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels both grew up in the kayfabe world of professional wrestling; they didn't grow up in the "sports entertainment" world that we've been accustomed to. There's a part of me that believes that they weren't buying into the "sports entertainment" direction that the WWE was going into and were willing to put on a legitimate "show" for the wrestling industry that says: "How can it be "fake" when we don't even know what's going to happen?"

I've already made this longer than anyone is going to read; but listing some of the other things people have mentioned along with these there is at least a little doubt in my mind that this was a 100% screwjob.

The problem with the theory is that basically to be true everyone in the lockerroom had to be in on it and not only that but they never told anyone who never told anyone so you never get to the point where someone with a grudge revealed it.

All the guys who stayed after the screwjob had to have known in your words. Owen had to have known AND never tell his wife. Bret had to have known and never told Owen's wife or put it in one of his books where he talks pretty openly about how much he hated people like HBK even after the company killed his brother through negligence.

I think the biggest key to destroy the theory is Earl Hebner. He was fired from the company and blacklisted there due to basically stealing from them (he was selling unauthorised merch at events) and when ending up in TNA he had tonnes of value available to release this info somehow either in an autobio or just on TNA programming itself.

Like, literally the only way i can see this happening is if they all signed gag orders AND they didnt break them later on when drunk/high/ridiculously broke which would have been entirely unprecedented in the industry. Simplest solution is always the most likely to be true all things being equal. It was a shoot on Bret and it was like third or fourth Vince did to people and those left behind stayed out of loyalty to Vince or self interest that extended beyond not really caring about Bret. Who went off to better things regardless as he wanted and it was all born out of him refusing to drop the title in Canada, something that is much more looked down on that screwjobbing a talent who wont work to book.

Yeah, im gonna be the bad guy and say he should have manned the **** up and done his job and dropped the title as planned to generate monster heat on HBK. Though Vince and friends really should thank him a lot for indirectly killing the WCW and making the WWE such a dominating force in the industry thanks to creating the new VKM character which Stone Cold capitalised on to make one of if not the biggest story in the industry's history.

reason vets stayed in WWE:

I am under the assumption that most of the guys in the back sided with Vince's decision on this one, since Bret was being a douche.

I watched the In Your House 5-on-5 Hart Foundation vs. L.O.D. Steve Austin, Golddust and Ken Shamrock match last night. At the start of the match Jim Ross mentioned that a documentary crew had been following Hart around. I think this would suggest that the film crew didn't just happen to be there during the screwjob in kayfabe style.

I feel like my wording is weird in the above, but I hope you guys know what I'm saying.

P.S. That has to be the best 5 on 5 non-survivor series match ever. Hell it ranks up there with all matches above 2 on 2.

Bret was giving Shawn a taste of his own medicine; I don't entirely defend Bret putting his foot down and refusing to job here, but he was a far less egregious offender of the "refusing to job" thing than almost any other marquee name has been along the way. Hogan was ridiculous, Michaels was up until and beyond the Montreal thing, Triple H has done plenty of this, etc. There aren't a ton of examples like this about Bret, so for him to have done this one time to a guy who routinely did it himself hardly strikes me as a horrendous crime.

Bret was guilty of being pretty much the biggest mark in the world, and he took himself way too seriously, but if you give a guy creative control in his contract, how does it become wrong when he actually utilizes it once or twice? Why is that clause even there if not to be exercised non-egregiously?

You guys mention that someone would have said something eventually, but these guys literally lived kayfabe. They grew up in it and believed the story lines so much to a fault. Even when I listen to older guys being interviewed like piper or Heenan, or hogan, they talk as though the matches were real, or the story lines were real. I think if a few wrestlers pre-WWE got together and did a circuit tour and talked about backstage hyjinx, being on the road and dishing about the business they would stand to make a pretty penny.

I believe the Wrestling With Shadows documentary crew started following Bret around prior to Summerslam, well before the screwjob. Just FYI.

LKJ, the difference between hogan, hbk not wanting to job is that Bret was leaving immediately after for wcw. Big difference. Yes hogan and hbk and whoever else r jerkoffs for doing it as well, but not really in the same ballpark IMO.

Its also worth adding Bret would rip on people like HBK for being douchebags not putting people over and putting themselves ahead of the product. He refused to drop the title because he is Canadian and his last PPV and i assume the first PPV after he finalised leaving was in Canada. I think his reasoning was much worse than Hogan who held back Perfect because he was a selfish douche. I mean Bret wanted to beat an opponent at Montreal then the next night on Raw drop the title to HBK, its completely ridiculous to expect that.

Whatever way you spin it, making millions of a guy, who by all accounts seems to behave well over several years and then screw him the one time he doesn't want to job is just bushleauge. Or big business I guess. I'm sure it was the right decision financially but it also shows what kind of human being Vince is.

I've heard all the justifications but in the end I still put most of the blame on Vince for not finding another way to handle this situation.

LOL yea you are right, Vince should have let Bret go out on his own terms while the WWF teetered on bankruptcy