17 years ago, we were waiting in anticipation today to see what was going to happen on WWF Raw is War after the startling conclusion to Survivor Series. Viewers had an itchy trigger finger on their TV remotes, ready to switch between WWF Raw and WCW Monday Nitro at a moment’s notice. How was the WWF going to respond to the screwing of Bret Hart? Was Bret going to show up on WCW? Was this an angle? Was it real?
Professional wrestling changed forever on Sunday, November 9, 1997. It was the Watergate moment for professional wrestling fans. For the first time ever we truly had the curtain lifted and could look inside. In the theatre of professional wrestling, we got to see something real for once. We got to see a finish changed without an actor’s knowledge. If you didn’t know much about pro wrestling dirt sheets, you certainly went to your library on the following Monday to check out the World Wide Web to see exactly what happened to Bret “The Hitman” Hart. He didn’t tap out to his own Sharpshooter against Shawn Michaels and it seemed like nobody was happy. Bret spat in the face of Vince McMahon. Michaels looked unhappy. If you called the Ross Report Hotline you might have known early on: Bret was going to WCW, but he wasn’t supposed to go like this.
There are few moments in modern professional wrestling more discussed than what is now known as the Montreal Screwjob. Even this article is likely to fall into redundancy. Everyone has their opinions and everyone has their viewpoints. You could watch “Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows” to get one perspective or WWE Network’s viewpoint during their Monday Night Wars recap that aired to get another. Hart’s extremely popular WWE DVD was once to be called “Screwed: The Story of Bret Hart”, taking the career of one of the greatest wrestlers in WWF history and boiling it down to his final moment as WWF World champion.
The greatest coverage of the Screwjob can be found written by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer. You can find a copy of it here. You can also find Meltzer’s reply to the WWE Network version here. Both are incredible reads, easily the closest the professional wrestling industry has come to investigative journalism. Meltzer didn’t come into this with any bias. He didn’t have a horse in the fight. Meltzer was actually on negative terms with Bret Hart due to what Bret felt was unfair coverage and treatment from the Wrestling Observer newsletter (probably coming from the fact that Meltzer loves Ric Flair and Bret always felt that Flair was overrated) until Meltzer’s coverage of the Screwjob. Meltzer might have been bashed by WCW in the past for being a “dirtsheet writer” but it wasn’t like the WWF gave him any love either. Vince Russo’s WWF Magazine used to take shots at Meltzer and other dirtsheet writers all of the time. The Observer coverage of the Screwjob may still contain perspectives and missed information but it’s the closest account we have.
With all of the information in front of us, there’s also the claims by the late Chris Kanyon that Bret Hart hinted to him that the Screwjob was a work. Lance Storm has also considered the possibility, as have other wrestlers. It’s tough for a wrestler to think of something in the business not being a work. I don’t blame them. Could the goal have been for Bret to leave the WWF to goto WCW, make tons of money and return down the road? Could this have all been a plan for Vince McMahon to build his Mr. McMahon character into the greatest heel the business has possibly ever seen?
I thought I’d revisit a few of the subjects from the Screwjob based on all of the accounts we have.
Question One: Could the Screwjob been avoided?
This is probably the most important question. Could Bret had gone to WCW another way? Did there have to be a double cross?
The answer is that no, there did not have to be a double cross. Could this answer be found without the context of looking back?
Vince McMahon first started having his doubts about Bret Hart on September 8, almost exactly two months before Survivor Series 1997. He once again asked Bret to take a paycut and Bret refused. On September 22, Vince said they were planning to intentionally breach the contract. This is what I consider to be the most important date for the Screwjob and where a decision should have been made to take the title off Bret Hart. There’s a Pay Per View that for some reason always gets ignored in the subject/debate about the Montreal Screwjob. That Pay Per View was In Your House: Bad Blood.
The main event of Bad Blood was the epic first ever match to take place in Hell in a Cell between Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker, thus launching the career of Kane and making Shawn Michaels the number one contender for the WWF World championship. What was the WWF World champion doing at this same event? He was in a tag match with British Bulldog against The Patriot and Vader. Bad Blood happened on October 5 and Vince McMahon told Bret on September 22 he wanted to breach his contract. Why didn’t Vince take the title off of him at this event? It was in St. Louis, Missouri so there was no worry about Bret’s status as a “hero of Canada”. The attention would be on Michaels and Undertaker, so Bret dropping the belt wouldn’t have had the same level of attention (Owen was actually winning a vacant Intercontinental championship that same night). Finally, one of the scares for Vince was that Bret Hart would walk to WCW as champion. He allowed Bret to start talking to WCW on September 22 according to Meltzer. Wouldn’t you want to take the title off of him as quickly as possible?
So who becomes WWF champion? Who cares? You could have started Bad Blood with Bret refusing to wrestle that night and because of it, Commissioner Sgt. Slaughter strips him of the WWF World championship, putting the belt up on the line in the Hell in a Cell main event. Shawn Michaels wins, becomes champion, and goes into Survivor Series in Montreal as champion against Bret Hart as the challenger. Bret can once again complain about the company screwing him (in storyline) while there’s no need to legitimately screw him in the main event. He’s no longer champion.
I don’t want to make this about fantasy booking but right then and there, Vince McMahon had the opportune night to take the title off of Bret and put it onto someone else. If he had to have Bret lose to someone, he could have lost to Vader in a singles match instead of the forgettable flag tag match. Vader goes on to fight HBK, Bret can go onto doing whatever they need him to. It doesn’t take much creativity.
So when did Bret actually officially be on his way to WCW? That didn’t happen until November 2. Bret’s contract was already breached but he didn’t make an agreement to sign with WCW until then. That agreement with WCW included Bret Hart wrestling in the WWF until December 8th, more than a month later. While Vince had fear of Bret trashing the belt in the way Alundra “Medusa” Blaze once did to the WWF Womens championship, Bischoff later admitted they couldn’t do it since they had too many lawsuits against them already. Ric Flair showing up to the WWF with the WCW Worlds Heavyweight champion also already put an end to wrestlers doing that on live TV. But McMahon was said to be too paranoid about it. Why wasn’t he paranoid enough to take the title off Bret?
That said, we can answer unequivocally that there was plenty of time for Vince McMahon to take the title off of Bret Hart, especially since he knew in September that he planned to breach Bret’s contract. The moment you decide that? That’s the moment you change your champion.
Question Two: Was it a work?
There’s a short answer to this, but I’ll break it down first.
The only way it works as a work is for there to be so much predictable coincidence it’s maddening. First of all, you had WCW being given on a silver platter one of the biggest drawing names in Canada. Running shows in Canada back in the late 90s was a financial plus for American wrestling companies as the dollar was low and that meant you could spend less on the shows. Had WCW, especially Eric Bischoff, even considered that sort of advantage, Bret on a proper WCW tour of Canada would have meant money in their pockets that didn’t come before. Their handling of Bret was also atrocious, but had they booked him properly? WCW would have been flying with a major main event draw to tide fans over in 1998. Bret should have delayed the rise of the WWF for a little longer but he was instead a redundancy in their upper card. For this to be a work, WCW had to be on the take with how awful they handled Bret. Incompetence is rarely, if ever, conspiracy.
Then there’s the Mr. McMahon character. The first time Vince McMahon spoke publicly about the Screwjob, involving the infamous “Bret Screwed Bret” line, Vince was actually hoping to be painted as the good guy in the situation. He didn’t want people to hate him. He thought people hating him for this meant they would hate the WWF and turn to WCW permanently. His entire statement was about trying to show the WWF as the underdog and Bret as the advantageous, selfish coward. It didn’t work. The fact it didn’t work was what led to McMahon using himself in the angle with Steve Austin. He was turning a negative into a positive. If it was a work, the plan would have originally been for Vince to come out as the bad guy. Laughing and celebrating about screwing over Bret. Instead, he gave that heat to Shawn Michaels and a little person impersonating Hart.
But now the short answer. When Martha Hart filed a lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation over the wrongful death of her husband Owen (not the same as her lawsuit over royalties which Bret denounced), WWF attorney Jerry McDevitt stated that the only reason Bret was standing beside Martha in the lawsuit was a vendetta against Vince McMahon over the Screwjob. Even in the unreal world of professional wrestling, it makes little sense for the WWF to use an angle they were a part of in the hopes that Bret simply didn’t want to expose it out of pride. If it was an angle, Bret just had to say, “Your honor, the WWF is claiming my reason for supporting this lawsuit is out of a fake wrestling storyline” and WWF would have found themselves settling for a lot more money than they did. To believe the WWF and Bret Hart kept an angle quiet through Owen’s wrongful death lawsuit is an insult to so many people, it’s hard to even begin.
The Screwjob wasn’t a work. Period.
Question Three: Have we moved on?
This is probably the hardest question to answer.
In a lot of ways we just roll our eyes when it comes to anything Survivor Series related. The word “screwed” has become just as common and reviled as “twist” in the cinema world. When an angle screws over a wrestler, especially when the “screw” is by an authority, we just sigh and think of it as another rehash of Survivor Series 1997.
It has been 17 years. We have seen Bret reconcile with the WWE. We haven’t seen a high profile “screwjob” by the WWE in years. While the company certainly dug up the bones and tried to re-write history on the WWE Network, the true story has been out for over a decade. Earl Hebner might sell “Damn Right I Did!” shirts referencing the Screwjob, but on Busted Open Radio he did an interview calling Vince the devil and talking about his regret, calling it the worst thing he has ever done. This article is being written relaying a lot of facts we already know, nothing really new coming to the table except the Hebner interview.
It feels like we have moved on, but the professional wrestling business will never be the same. That Sunday changed everything. Prior to 1997, we didn’t think as much about the motivations of the wins and losses. There were a minority of smark marks bemoaning the control that Kevin Nash and Hollywood Hogan had, but we thought about wins and losses under the context of the wrestling story. Since 1997, we really can’t do that anymore as an average fan. Now we think about the overall booking, the reasons beyond the story. We think about if a guy is in the doghouse of the promoter or if he’s going to lose to be on his way out. CM Punk’s pipebomb couldn’t happen without the Screwjob. When Daniel Bryan was losing to Randy Orton in 2013, people didn’t think of it being a story. They thought the company was intentionally trying to screw Bryan and his heat. The WWE used their Authority story with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon to fan those flames and to this day, fans have no doubts in their minds that they changed the mind of upper management and turned Daniel Bryan into a Wrestlemania main eventer. Look all over the Internet and you’ll see that word come up for Bryan, for Dolph Ziggler and for many others. They are not just losing matches, they are getting screwed.
Maybe we all moved on from the Screwjob itself, but we’ll never be the same. Fans are being born in 1997 and after, knowing very little about what the Montreal Screwjob was. But you’ll bet they know what being screwed means in the wrestling business, and they’ll also have opinions of who is getting legitimately screwed. The screwjob was never a storyline, no matter how many times it’s now used as a storyline mechanic. It’s that simple fact that drives into our brain the hardest. To this day, people still try to say “Wrestling isn’t real” as some sort of insult, as if we don’t realize something so obvious. Yet that’s why we’ll never get over the Montreal Screwjob.
For one night 17 years ago, pro wrestling was real.
Photo by WWE.com
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