Are you aware that the creative control specifically granted iit for his last three months or so with the company, and thus took effect because an exit had been agreed upon? If you specifically grant creative control for the exit, then the wrestler is still a douche for exercising it? Is that coherent to you?

Somehow I think you've probably seen the doc but you're just flat-out wrong here.

Bret offered to drop the belt to anyone. He offered to hand the belt to Vince the next night on RAW. He just didn't want to drop it to Shawn in Montreal. Plus as LKJ pointed out, he had 30 days creative control at the end of his contract.

REASONABLE creative control

Not dropping the belt, and then forfeiting the belt the next night on Raw so you leave without being defeated and go to the rival company that is putting WWF out of business is not reasonable.

Not to mention I think at the point that WWF was in, all that BS creative control goes out the window and you do whatever it takes to save the company. What good would it do letting Bret ride out on his high horse and 3 months later WWF goes under? Bret knew all this, which is why he needed to suck it up that night

Okay, so the attitude is that one side should screw all agreements/ethics/anything, and the other should forgo something specifically granted in their contract or they're a douche? So basically only one side even has the ability to be a douche then?

As ajohnson said, Bret would have jobbed the belt to Austin...he was vetoing one specific booking to a specific wrestler at a specific event. That's unreasonable? And where did you get that "reasonable" control is what the agreement was?

Also, on top of LKJ's point, just because Bret has spent a lot of his career in the WWF by that point, he has no obligation to feel any loyalty to them. In fact, he's probably thinking that it's good if they go under at that point so the company he's working for gets a monopoly on the market.

Just because the WWF is on the verge of going under there, Vince is allowed to shed all business and personal ethics? That's a garbage argument. Lol.

Bret knew his option of a non-finish in Montreal and forfeiting the title the next night was screwing the company. He knew how bad of shape the WWF was in. That is why he was a douche. Suck it up at that point, and don't try to go out on a high note to the competitor while possibly putting all your boys in the back out of work.

Reasonable creative control is what I always read. WCW was the only morons that gave out complete creative control.

The argument is that Bret was not being reasonable with his option under the circumstances.

Aside from his friends in the back being out of work, what obligation does he have to his old company? He wasn't doing anything he didn't have power to do.

Edit: So clearly between you and I it boils down to whether exercising his contract option was within reason or not.

I'm still curious as to my first question. Bret was the only one who could be a douche here, and Vince basically couldn't? One gets total Machiavellian immunity and the other doesn't? Because that's how your point reads.

I guess I'm also still curious as to the other point: Vince couldn't offer an alternative booking to the only one that was vetoed? He just rams through the HBK booking without exploring other options? And Bret is the only one being unreasonable?

Vince is always a douche. That's a given. In this case, I think Bret was a bigger one.

For refusing one specific booking as specifically granted in his contract?

I guess my question is: what would a reasonable exercising of contractually granted creative control look like?

this. end of thread thanks for coming!

The only way way know that Bret was willing to drop the title to "anyone but HBK" is because Bret said so. It's easy for him to say he would have dropped the title to Austin (realistically, the only other choice besides HBK). But there's really no way to prove it. And I would guess that, since one of his reasons for not losing was because it was in Canada, he would have said no to that also. So then Vince says, "OK, lose to Kane," and Bret would say that Kane isn't on his level.

BTW, why didn't Undertaker wrestle at that event? He could have been conceivable as a champ also.

How would we ever know the real answer? They are always kayfabing, so it's like the lady and the tiger type of thing.

I'd say it pretty strongly stands to reason that Vince denies this if it was a lie.

In any case, since we only know of him having refused to put one person over, we can only convict him of that specific instance. Simple as that.

If Bret had ever refused to do any other job, we'd have heard about it by now.

I think the Bret vs. Shawn DVD was as close to 100 percent truthful on all sides as you'll ever get. Bret's beef was about Shawn "backing out" of the Wrestlemania 13 rematch (by questionable knee injury), then telling Bret he would not be willing to job to him. It had little to do with anything else, really (including Canada).

Now, you can choose to believe Bret or not. I personally do.

I do, however, think Bret takes it a little far when he says the WWE and McMahon destroyed his character that night. That's just stupid.

The thing is, if this was just about not being willing to risk Bret taking the belt to WCW and pulling an Alundra Blayze with it, it just seems that McMahon could have been blunt and said that he needs the company to hold onto the belt between appearances during this lead-up to separation because he couldn't risk it. That problem would pretty much be solved, right?

I understand the other aspect is putting one of your guys over him for the belt before he leaves, but the thing is that they had to know that the screwjob would instantly be known to the masses to be a screwjob, and that in doing so it would neither make Bret less credible nor make HBK more credible as Bret left.

One post earlier said that Bret was demanding to go over Shawn before leaving, but that wasn't true either. The booked finish was a schmozz...so they weren't avoiding making Shawn lay down for him. That was never the plan.

Anyway, I agree with the end of Dan's post, Bret made himself too much of a martyr over the whole thing, but I still can't see him as the villain of the situation.

No, he wasn't demanding to go out with a win, but he was still refusing to lose, making the WWF's new champ look weak.

In the old, regional days, Bret would have lost a "Loser Leave Town" match and moved South. Bret obviously knew that, but he didn't want to go out like that.

Bret screwed Bret.

So are you of the opinion that a person who is given creative control in their contract for the final 30 days of their deal should never exercise it or they have screwed themselves?

Cornnette suggested Bret losing to Shamrock. Shamrock as champion would have been worse for the WWF than Bret just taking the belt to WCW imo.

Sigh...., if only there was some way to see the other side of the coin, and just ponder on what events might occur if Bret left as the WWF champion, and not just for the following month, but for the following year.

Because, there may be that part of me that thinks that everything probably worked out for the best with the screwjob happening. WWF won the war, WCW got really exposed for their stupidity, and everything went fine, except for Owen's death, very horrible and that stunt shouldn't need to happen in the first place.

The "Bret screwed Bret" line was what Vince said about the situation.

As for Bret and his creative control, it's one thing to refuse to dress up as a rooster or something. It's another to refuse to lose your title when you know that will be your last PPV event ever. Bret's plan was to schmozz finish the PPV, voluntarily give up the title on Raw the next day. Then what? He shows up on Nitro as a WWF champ who didn't lose it in the ring.

Yeah, the creative control stuff is so they dont have to cut promos about how they enjoy molesting grandmas, not so they get to decide how and when to drop any title they hold when they terminate the contract (or it draws to a close, i forget which it was).

I think the reason most of the people at the WWF didnt care that Bret got screwjobbed was because he broke the number one rule of a wrestler, dont go into business for yourself which is basically what he did.

I think the well being of the company dependant on the situation shouldn't even be involved in this discussion. It's a business, and if Bret has the creative control in his contract then he has every right to refuse to job the title off, no matter the circumstances. Hell, if he wanted to he could have left the company still as the champion, but he wouldn't have. The mere fact that he was going to relinquish the title means that Vince screwed Bret and basically nullified a finely negotiated point of his superstar's contract.

Vince is clearly the bad guy here, and has zero ethics.