Bret Hart is not letting Shawn Michaels rewrite the story of the infamous Hart Foundation vs. The Rockers match, and he told Inside The Ropes exactly why Michaels’ suggestion that the botched finish was intentional felt like a cheap shot.
Character Name (Credits: Ringside News)
The Hitman revisited the night the Hart Foundation was supposed to drop the WWE Tag Team Championships to The Rockers on Saturday Night’s Main Event. Both teams spent the entire day laying out spots, convinced they were about to deliver one of the best tag matches of their careers.
Then, mid-match, Jim Neidhart crashed into the top turnbuckle the way Bret usually did, and the turnbuckle popped. The entire top rope hung loose, wrecking everything the two teams had planned.
Bret Hart Says He Begged the Referee to Stop the Match
Hart said he and Michaels repeatedly pleaded with referee Freddie Sparta to stop the match so the rope could be fixed, but Sparta froze and kept calling for the finish. “I’m like, ‘Go home? I don’t have a rope,'” Hart recalled. “I remember saying, ‘Freddy, fix the rope. It’s a commercial. Stop the match. Fix the rope.'”
The match collapsed from there. “This match has turned out from being the greatest tag match we’re ever going to do to the worst match I’ve ever had in my life,” Hart said. Backstage, he was furious — especially when Gorilla Monsoon asked why nobody stopped the match. “I told him for 10 minutes to stop the match and fix the rope,” Hart fired back, only to learn the show was taped, not live.
Why Bret Hart Says Shawn Michaels’ Remark Was a Cheap Shot
Despite the chaos, The Rockers still went over as planned and briefly left as champions. Hart told Vince McMahon afterward the match was so bad WWE shouldn’t even air it — but insisted his anger had nothing to do with losing the belts.
What stung was Michaels later floating the idea that the disaster might have been deliberate. For Hart, who prided himself on never having meltdowns in his matches, the suggestion turned one of the worst nights of his career into a shot at his professionalism. “I don’t have these kinds of meltdowns or failures in my matches,” he said, making clear the broken rope — not a backstage agenda — killed what should have been a five-star classic.
Also Read: Bret Hart Threatened to Quit WWE Over Vince McMahon’s Booking: ‘I’m Done, I’m Going Home’ | Rohan Raja: Bret Hart Is Such a Sweetheart, ‘I Don’t Think Many People See That Side of Him’
Source: Ringside News — read the full story there.
