Original subtitles

Brett was amazing.

By any standard, Brett may go down as one of the top technicians in the

industry.

Brett took the business seriously.

I think sometimes to his detriment, he took himself a little too seriously.

Brett believed he was the WWF champion.

On November the 9th, 1997, professional wrestler Brett Hart had fought and

clawed his way to the top as world champion.

But in a matter of seconds, he would realize that those who make you...

And just as easily destroy you.

Here's the problem.

Brett didn't want to lose the championship.

It's your last night in the company.

We need to crown a new champion.

You know what? We'll just take it from him.

It's like I remember when I was a kid exactly where I was standing when John

Kennedy had been assassinated. And I remember just as precisely where I was

I found out about the Montreal Screwjob.

Screwing a Canadian hero in Canada?

How much more evil can one get?

I still feel to this day like I have a neon sign on my head. I f*** you, Brent.

Never told you about it, but I f*** you.

I was so mad. I was like, I'm just ready to explode.

The Screwjob changed so many things in the business.

The innocence of wrestling changed.

This was one of the worst things in the world that happened to me in this

business. Say what you want about wrestling.

That was real. He really screwed that guy.

The incident known as the Montreal Screwjob.

marks a turning point in the history of wrestling.

Never before had the curtain been pulled back to fully reveal the behind -the

-scenes drama.

A dark plot of betrayal was exposed, legacies were redefined, and fans would

never see wrestling the same again.

You know, it's one thing I always say about the Screwjob is that if you go

and you look at all the facts, my story has never changed.

It's always been the same story right from day one because I tell the truth.

I'm Brett the Hitman Hart. The best there is, the best there was, and the

there ever will be.

I always said I was a real world champion because I really traveled all

the world and defended my belt.

This is my history and my life here, all these guys.

Despite everything that's happened with the Screwjobs and all that kind of

stuff, for me, it's mostly happy memories.

My name's Jim Cornette. For the past 35 years, I've worked for every major

professional wrestling promotion in the United States as a manager, announcer,

trainer, matchmaker, pretty much done it all.

I was actually there. I actually lived it. To give you my perspective, just

because my perspective happens to be entertaining, then some people take

exception to that.

I was the executive vice president of talent relations.

I've been a writer, producer, director.

Brother Love is an alter ego of mine. You name it, worn a lot of hats in the

WWF, WWE.

The patriarch of the Hart family was Stu Hart.

And Stu was an age -old veteran, double tough.

The dungeon was the basement in the Hart family house.

Well, the dungeon is hard to explain.

My dad, 60 or 70 -year -old man, would go down there and torture a bunch of

football players and bodybuilders. I don't feel my arms, sir.

Let me show you a hold here. You just take your arm like this.

The Hart family is one of the most famous families in the history of our

business. The sons were all wrestlers. The daughters all married wrestlers.

They had a wrestling bear that lived under their porch. It was like the

Munster's house for the people in Calgary. Stu would invite everybody over

and... And make breakfast. They had a bunch of cats. And he'd take the thing

where he's flipping the eggs. And he'd flip the cat shit over there. And he'd

back to flipping the eggs, you know.

Made them tough is what it did.

And Stu began the Stampede Wrestling promotion in Alberta.

And had a very successful company there for a long time.

Hello, hello, hello.

And welcome to this another edition. And Bret Hart was kind of a pale, skinny,

you know, maybe 21 -year -old kid or whatever.

But you could tell he kind of knew what he was doing. I'm more confident right

now than I've ever been.

There's no reason right now that him and me shouldn't have those belts right

now. The Harts were very integral to professional wrestling around the world.

In 1984, Stu Hart is trying to keep his struggling territory afloat. The rapidly

expanding WWF strikes a deal to acquire the entire promotion, along with Stu's

main star, his son Brett.

When Vince bought...

Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling in 1984, he took Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart, who

was son -in -law, as a team. The Hart Foundation, they were managed by Jimmy

Hart, no relation.

They were a tremendous tag team. And Bret Hart had a perfect foil in Shawn

Michaels. When you have two guys like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels that are as

talented as they are at what they do to begin with, and then sometimes there's

just chemistry. You find a duet between two singers that have never worked

together before, but suddenly it's a hit.

Look at this.

360 at midair.

Internationally, we're getting reports back that we've got Megastar on our

in the form of Bret Hart.

His work had made him this Megastar. That was all they wanted to see. That's

they wanted to talk about. At the same time, Ric Flair was the champion, and

was having some health issues.

We needed to make a change.

So Vince was looking at it going, why not, Bret?

That's the kind of guy you want to reward.

Vince McMahon's one of the most unique individuals on the planet. If you could

cross a genius with P .T. Barnum and Donald Trump, you would get the love

that would be Vince McMahon.

Vince, honestly, is a third -generation wrestling promoter. Vince controls

creative. Vince controls talent choices.

They run the lunch schedule past Vince McMahon to this day.

Over the years, Vince had a good relationship with Brad.

I don't know. You know, I think that once Brett became champion in Saskatoon,

there was a change that was taking place.

The criteria for a world champion in those days, there wasn't a set

physical list of maneuvers or whatever that you had to perform. It was whoever

Vince thought could be the guy.

Vince McMahon decides who the champion is going to be.

It's not actually won by anybody.

So Brett didn't beat Ric Flair. He won the championship in a scripted contest,

okay, in a storyline.

Brett deserved, you know, to have that accolade. But at the same time, remember

that someone made you champion.

You didn't really beat anybody.

I think Brett looked at the WWF championship like guys.

years ago used to. Maybe it was because of his father and his lineage, but when

you were chosen to be a champion of a major company, it meant that the

thought that you were the best talent, that you were the best draw, that you

would make him the most money, that you were the guy.

While Bret's star is rising in the WWF, a fledgling promotion suddenly starts

edging out Vince McMahon in the television ratings.

WCW in the early 90s was a secondary competitor to the WWF.

I happened to be Eric Bishop. You know, as the executive producer, at least I

had a voice within WCW.

WWF is up here.

WCW is way down here.

There's no way I can be better than the WWF, but I've got to be different. Their

tape, I'm live.

They target their content towards kids.

I decided I wanted my characters to be more reality -based. I would use their

real names.

WCW came after our talent. The perception was they offered them a lot

money. You know, when Hulk Hogan left the WWF, I think it hurt Vince

It stung a little bit.

And the first big names to go were Scott Hall, Kevin Nash in the very beginning.

Ted DiBiase left.

Roddy Piper shortly thereafter.

The curtain call, as it came to be known, happened because Nash and Hall

leaving to go to WCW for their big contracts.

It is my last appearance for the WWE, and it's also Kevin Nash's last

appearance. It was at Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the

After the last match, Hall and Nash and Michaels and Hemsley, two of them good

guys, two of them bad guys.

All went out to the ring and had a big hug and a big kiss and waved bye to the

fans who had no idea what was going on with Sean and those guys. They broke

kayfabe in front of the fans in Madison Square Garden. The word kayfabe is like

a lot of wrestling terminology. It comes from the days of the carnivals. When

you break kayfabe in wrestling, you let the fans and the general public in the

inside world and ruin the illusion.

It wasn't like that.

It all just happened organically because the fans were going crazy. I mean, it

was like a magical moment. Here we are 25 years later talking about it. You had

been chosen and selected to be in a secret brotherhood.

And you kept those illusions private and to yourself because it was a code.

It was the code of kayfabe.

Now as competition between the two biggest promotions heats up.

wrestling's fourth wall starts to crumble, exposing its secrets.

And while Bret enters the biggest rivalry of his career, he never could

imagined that it would end up leading to his ultimate destruction.

Before their off -screen feud would boil over into one of wrestling's most

controversial moments, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels' contrasting in -ring

led to some of the greatest matches of all time.

As far as wrestling styles between Brett and Shawn, Brett was more basic, more

grounded, more hard -hitting, more technical.

Michaels, he's an incredible performer, but also a lot of his stuff

is more pretty and a little bit more gymnastic.

I think Shawn Michaels is probably the greatest performer all around.

Plus, he was different. He wasn't a big giant.

My contract was going to expire.

Aaron Bischoff has sent fuelers out to me.

There were two separate occasions when I began to talk to Brett about coming

over. And I heard the initial offer was $2 million, and then it was $2 million

something, and it got up to like $3 million. And I'm sure they were rounding

off, but at that point, what's the difference, right?

Vince heard about them giving me an offer.

And I remember Vince said, he goes, I'll make you an offer.

And we worked out a contract. It was $1 .5 million for...

20 years, I think.

Brett favors loyalty over money and accepts the counteroffer from Vince

But then a mutual animosity between Brett and Shawn begins to take hold.

Shawn was starting to get overwhelmed with the negative.

Doing a Chip and Dale kind of gimmick is not a heroic thing to do.

Shawn Michaels saw an opportunity to be more and more of a top guy and also to

be more and more of a prick.

Nobody breaks into this wrestling business to work their way to the

I mean, if you don't want to be on top, you're in the wrong business.

I don't really care if you want to have dinner with me. Do you want to wrestle

me? Oh, you do?

Okay. I don't think that they were really that different, which is probably

where the real -life rivalry came into play.

First day, when I walked out and I ended up trashing Shawn Michaels on the

interview about his Playgirl magazine center full. Before I went out, I said,

Shawn, I'm going to...

It's okay if I bring up that Playgirl magazine and take a jab at that and say

something about it. He goes, no, go ahead, say whatever you want.

Royal Wrestling Federation needs a hero. They need a role model. They need

somebody they can look up to. Not somebody that poses for girly magazines.

And I came back, and Sean was just crushed.

He almost looked like he was about to burst into tears.

Now we're doing live TV, and these guys are saying things on live TV about each

other. Sean made reference to sunny days.

Sonny, Tammy Fitz, she was one of the valets. She was the first real, you

big pinup girl of the WWF. And Shawn was making the inference that Bret was

having some kind of an affair or some kind of relationship with Sonny.

Even though lately you've had some Sonny days, my friend, you still can't get

the job done in any situation.

Oh, boy. Now, from a fan's point of view, it's getting exciting.

But if you're the other guy, you're hating the dude who's talking about you.

Because now you've got to call home and explain that to your wife.

You don't mess with a guy's wife or his family, or else you'd find yourself

laying in a ditch somewhere.

So we're in Hartford, Connecticut one night at the Hartford Civic Center. And

all of a sudden, the door busts open, and in comes the Brooklyn Brawler. And

says, hey, Vince, Sean and Brett have just gotten a fight in the bathroom.

Sean finally comes into my dressing room. We haven't talked for about a

months. I just remember I was just trying to be nice. I almost, like,

that we ever had issues. I said, hey, Sean, I was brushing my hair, and he

you think I'm going to talk to you? And whatever it was, Brett just leg -dived

him and took him down right there. So I grabbed him by the hair and swung him

around the dressing room. I think his feet rotted off the ground a couple of

times. If anything, it was like two prostitutes fighting in downtown or

something. Here comes Sean, and he's hot. And he has got in his hand a

of his hair. It looked like...

A small possum. And I'll never forget this. He said, this is an unsafe working

environment. As far as I know, I think if anybody was sleeping with Sonny, it

probably was Sean.

As the backstage friction between Brett and Sean intensifies, Vince begins to

lose the TV ratings war and is forced to cut costs.

Vince comes back and looks at the commitment that he had made to Bret

it was a drain. It was a drain on the company for what we were bringing in at

the time. Vince told me that basically he couldn't afford to pay me the

that he'd given me. It kind of broke my heart. I was like, okay, I get it. I

remember I got off the phone with him and I said, I guess I'm done. I hung up

Vince and I signed my WCW contract.

I can't remember exactly what day or when I heard that Brett had made the

and was going to WCW, but Vince told us Brett was going to finish up at Survivor

Series. He dropped the belt, and then he'd be free.

It didn't turn out that way.

With Brett leaving the company, Brett wasn't just leaving the company. He was

leaving the company and going to our competitor that was beating us in the

ratings. To have our champion leave the company is bad enough. To have them

leave the company with the championship?

It's a kick in the nuts. The time -honored tradition is when you're

territory or a promotion, you lose on the way out. I got to tell you, in the

beginning, there wasn't a whole lot of worry about it because it was Brett. And

we thought that there would not be any issue with Brett dropping the

championship to whoever we asked him to drop the championship to. When I first

heard that I was wrestling Sean was maybe about three or four weeks before

Survivor Series.

Anyway, so Vince pulled me. He goes, he's all excited. He goes, we're going

drop the belt to Sean.

So when I saw Sean, I thought this is your chance to open the door for sort of

dialogue. So I remember when we shook hands, I said, Sean, I just heard that

we're wrestling at Survivor Series.

I said, I want you to know that you'll always be safe with me in the ring, that

I'll wait through professional.

I would never do anything to hurt you or injure you or anything like that.

And he looked at me and he said, he goes, I appreciate that.

But I just want you to know that I am not willing to do the same thing for

And he turned around and walked out of the dressing room and slammed the door.

Vince, even though he knew that Sean and Brett hated each other.

Somehow he thought this match was magically going to go into ring and

was going to work out like he wanted. And the closer that we got to the match,

the more obvious it was that it was not. One of the things he'd given Bret in

that brand new contract with all the bells and whistles was reasonable

control of his character and the way he was presented.

I'm the boss of my last 60 days.

Why would I lose the shot?

He's disrespected me.

I'm not wrestling Sean, or I'm not putting Sean over under any

until he proves to me that he's got enough respect for me to put me over

And I was on Brett's side, because Sean was the prick, not Brett, but we had to

get the belt back.

The news of Vince's current champion signing with his main competitor would

spell his defeat in the ratings war.

With his back to the wall, Vince must get his belt off Brett, and what he's

about to do will echo far beyond the wrestling world.

With his last match in the WWF less than 24 hours away, Bret Hart is refusing

any scenario which has him losing the belt to his real -life nemesis, Shawn

Michaels. Bret is growing suspicious of what his boss, Vince McMahon, might do.

Showed up that day, and I was ready for my match.

But I did have suspicions about the referee.

I remember thinking, the only way they can screw me, if Shawn will ever pin me

or make me tap out. So I wasn't worried about that. I said, but the way it'll

work. is they'll get the referee.

Hello, I'm Earl Hebner.

I'm a referee.

My relationship with Brett was great.

Most of the time, he always wanted me to ref his matches.

People think, oh, I can count to three and it's over.

That's not the ballgame.

We're sort of a coach.

You're thinking for three people. It's very, very hard.

Okay, so let's get into the Montreal story.

Do we have to?

Just kidding.

The day before that show, I got on a plane, got in my seat. The stewardess

back and said, Mr. Hebner. I said, yes, ma 'am. She said, you have a first

-class seat.

I said, my ticket don't say first -class.

She said, Mr. Hart bought you a first -class seat.

So I went on up there and sat beside Brett.

And we talked, and Brett said, Will you promise me one thing? I said, what's

that? He said, you won't count me out? I said, nope, I will not count you out. I

said, you know they're going to ask you to screw me tomorrow.

But he got the tears in his eyes, and he got his lip quivering, and he was like,

the hell with that ice boy. I swear to God on my kids, I would never, you know,

and he was so adamant. And I shook his hand, and I said, just tell me if

something like that's going to happen.

complicating matters a film crew producing a documentary called wrestling

shadows is following brett to capture his last wwf match from the second i

i've got the entire uh high roads production film crew they're filming and

got the boom mics and the whole thing and they follow me where i went it was

like a lot of people that i didn't even know all around the building the idea

was that vince would get with brett i think that vince felt that once he got

front of brett face to face that they would work something out but i remember

the whole camera crew come in like they wanted to mic me up and everyone yeah i

kind of don't it's not how i operate he goes just in case my name is harry

zafrani i was the sound recordist on wrestling with shadows

The director told us, look, we got to be very low profile about this. You know,

nobody should know that Bret Hart is wired.

It was a private meeting and Bret went in wired.

Didn't let Vince know that he was recording it.

I never ever wanted to leave here with any kind of bad feeling.

But this week has been a bad week for me. I feel kind of betrayed a little

The way this whole thing has been depicted, it's really hard for me as a

here to come up short.

I was determined to stick to my guns and that I was not backing down.

And right away Vince goes, well, what are we going to do?

I think what I'd like to do is get through today.

I think tomorrow I should just go in and do my speech and forfeit the title. I

think it allows me a chance to leave with my head up and leave in a nice way.

I would think it'd be a run -in type thing. Yeah. But I'm open anyway.

I'm open anyway.

Going into this match, you knew what was going to happen?

I knew that there was a point in the match where Bulldog and Owen would run

Referee would lose control of the match.

Ring the bell, there would be no winner, and we would go off with a lot of chaos

going on in the ring.

So the match would end in, like, a disqualification?

Yeah, like, basically a no contest.

Like, I remember walking out to the ring, and I knew, like, okay, be leery

submission on a match like this. But I already talked to Earl, and I thought

about it, and it's like, I said, okay. I trusted Earl, and so I put my guard

down. That was my fatal mistake.

I'm walking down to go to the ring, and I'm getting pulled aside.

And Jerry Briscoe says, Vince McMahon wants you to ring the bell when he puts

Bret in the sharpshooter. I said, what?

He said, well, are you going to do it? I said, I don't know.

Jerry Briscoe is a producer agent, one of the toughest sumbitches on the face

the earth.

He grabs me by the arm. He says, is Bret Hart going to pay you? This is what

Vince wants. Do you want a job or not?

I said, I don't have an idea of what I'm going to do right now. Y 'all messed my

mind up.

And this is the truth. I'm thinking he had opportunity to drop the bill.

I know this is not right, but I got to have a job.

I told my brother to put all my shit in the car, just ain't going to look good,

get all my shit out the dressing room, put it in the car. So I'm walking to the

ring. God, I promised Brett I wouldn't count him out.

That was the longest walk of my life.

We had a great match planned out, and Sean was a great wrestler.

We're going to start fighting before the bell starts.

I don't think... this match has officially even started.

Finally, after about 10 minutes of brawling out and fighting out in the

and stuff, I eventually fight Shawn back to the ring, throw him in the ring, and

now the match starts.

I get in the ring, I ring the bell to start, and I'm going, God, don't put the

sharpshooter on.

The match lasts 10, 15 minutes.

Oh, putting Brett in the sharpshooter. Oh, my gosh. How humiliating. He's going

to beat him with his own finish. Sean actually didn't know how to put the

sharpshooter on. He steps through the wrong way, folds my legs the wrong way.

And I moved my legs and switched them the right way.

I remember when he put it on, I flipped over.

I could see Vince McMahon.

And I could see he's got this cold look on his chest. And he's yelling at it to

ring the bell. Ring the bell. And I kept saying it to the guy. Ring the bell.

As the match was going on, I'm going, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I hated it.

And I remember in that moment of looking at the timekeeper, and Vince Staffs had

to ring the bell. Oh, they're screwing me right now. And I remember reaching

back and showing that I wasn't submitting, and I grabbed Sean's thing

started to reverse, and you could hear the bell ping.

If I hadn't rung the bell,

Vince McMahon was going to ring that bell.

And at first I was like, I want to just... kill Vince. I would just jump

the ropes and just punch him out. I couldn't believe he did it to me. After

the years that I gave him, all the matches and all the hard work, and he

disrespect me like that. He was a son of a bitch.

I jumped out of the ring, ran across the floor, jumped the hockey fence, and

could still hear the bell ringing, jumped in the car, and we drove off. I

enough sense to paint WCW backwards so that you could read it on TV.

Brett did the WCW for the fans there in Montreal.

But it was, you know, it was what it was.

I remember I had a nice good gobber spit, and I remember I just leaned over

top rope.

Hollywood couldn't recreate something better than that.

I wrecked a bunch of monitors and threw $100 ,000 headphones out into the crowd

and stuff.

Because of a couple of guys who couldn't get along, they hit on the most talked

-about match ending in the history of professional wrestling since the dawn of

time. Widely viewed by fans as wrestling's most treacherous act, the

Screwjob would tear the lid off of wrestling's sacred brotherhood.

But its true architect has yet to be revealed.

This is where I've told a couple of these things. I've never gone this far,

I figure, like I said, I'm not going to talk about this on TV any time in the

rest of my life, so I guess at this point I don't care who gets mad at me.

So it was me and Vince Russo at Vince McMahon's house.

My name is Vince Russo. I was the head writer at the WWE during the infamous

Montreal Screwjob. And quite honestly, I wasn't even originally slated for

this documentary.

And then I wanted to be a part of it because I was there. Like, I knew what

would happen.

So I'm sitting there that day.

First, Vince gets up and he takes a phone call from Brett.

What I could tell you about that phone call is, you know, Vince pitched many

different scenarios for Shawn Michaels to take the belt off of Bret Hart. And

Bret soured on every single one of them. Vince told Bret we'd go back to the

drawing board, and that's exactly what we did.

Well, this finish won't work and that finish won't work. And Brett just wants

come out and hand the belt over on TV the following night without getting

I'm sure he does.

So then he goes and he calls Sean.

Every time Vince goes in there, then I have to sit in a room twiddling my

with the guy that I hate worse than anybody in the world, Vince Russo. We'd

in these creative meetings and the three of us would argue. And it wasn't the

three of us. It was Jim and me. We could not be farther apart.

physically, philosophically, mentally, morally, if one of us was an African

-American lesbian nun and the other was a Nazi skinhead Martian from outer

space, we could not be more different. The problem is he's still living in

1970s. I'll never forget he made the comment, oh, when a guy comes out of a

he's instantly over. Like, bro, this is like 1996.

Like, who's coming out of boxes, bro?

Vince Russo's never had any respect for professional wrestling. He booked the

wrestling program to pattern after Jerry Springer. Our style completely crashed.

Finally, Vince comes out, and I'm about lost my religion with the whole creative

team thing anyway because it's not my style of wrestling. I'm living in

Connecticut. I'm miserable. I weigh 280 pounds because I'm aggravation eating.

I'm just, I'm not in my element here. I said, Vince, I said, there's got to be

something we can do. I said, it's your company and it's your belt.

And Vince looks at me and says, well, then how would you do it, pal?

Well, now it's a challenge.

Once again, I'm going through every finish I can think of or every situation

ever think of where nobody wanted to do a job. I said, goddamn, double

-crossing.

You can learn more about modern wrestling from these classic books and

magazines than you can by talking to people today because history always

itself. In 1931, there was another double -cross in Montreal, the Battle of

Bite.

Strangler Lewis controlled the championship and nobody could get it

him because it was worth so much money.

Lewis has a title match in Montreal against Henri de Glan, Henry de Glan.

lock up and immediately de Glan grabs Lewis's own hold on Lewis, the headlock,

and takes him down and they go down on the mat because Lewis is working with

and probably they're going to do some kind of reversal.

De Glan starts screaming, bloody murder, top of his lungs. The referee checks de

Glan. Huge bite mark on the guy's chest.

Apparently, when DeGlaine got the headlock on Lewis, Lewis had bitten him.

Here's the thing.

It was actually Dan Koloff, DeGlaine's corner man, had bitten him in the locker

room and then did this. And then when they locked up, boom, headlock. Nobody

see what happened.

Referee disqualifies Strangler Lewis and awards the title to Henri DeGlaine.

That's a double cross.

And it's as old as the hills in wrestling.

So when Vince says, well, how would you do it then?

Brett's hold is the sharpshooter.

But let Sean get Brett's hold on him.

If the referee just calls for the bell as a submission, nobody can tell

was wrong because that's what it's supposed to look like anyway.

And to tell anybody anything was wrong, I said, Bret Hart, of all people, would

have to expose the business. I said, what's he going to do? Call the

But then Vince, and he gave that hump like he does whenever you would be

discussing tomfoolery. And he would say, all right, let's get back to reality.

And we went on. Do you recall during that meeting with Vince and Cornette,

Cornette ever told a history lesson about double crosses that had happened

the past?

Unless I was in the bathroom during that scenario, that scenario did not take

place in front of me when I was sitting at the table.

I'm not going to call Jim Cornette a liar.

And when I was sitting at the table and Cornette was sitting at the same table,

I pitched that exact scenario to Vince.

So basically, out of pure frustration, I said, Vince, I said, screw it, Vince.

Have Sean put the sharpshooter on Brett and have the referee call for the bell.

Do that.

Vince Russo didn't know what a double cross was. He was sitting there with his

eyes open.

People tell me all the time, oh, Vince, you take credit for the Montreal

Screwjob. I wish I didn't pitch the idea.

That was a miserable night. It was one of the worst experiences in my life in

the wrestling business.

I swear on my mother's grave, my father's grave, my wife's life, and my

life, the story I just told you is true. Vince Russo is the biggest liar in

professional wrestling, and imagine the territory that takes in.

When I was sitting there at the monitor, I saw him going to the spot.

That's when I shit myself.

Holy, he's actually going to do this. And look right now.

Close up on the goosebumps.

Now I'm thinking, I don't know who else knows about this.

I just know that there is a high probability that somebody in this

going to want to beat the shit out of me in the next 10 minutes. And I'm going

to get out of here.

When I'm starting my car up and starting to pull out, I heard a car rev the

motor and saw the headlights pop up behind me.

That had to be Hebner.

I beat him out of the building.

Just as Bret Hart was double -crossed on live television by his boss, Vince

McMahon, WWF executive Bruce Prichard is blindsided himself by the sudden change

in plans.

So it's chaos. I'm not even realizing what's happening in front of me. How did

you feel about not being involved in? Oh, God, I was pissed off that I wasn't

smart enough as to what they were doing. And I was pissed off because I was left

in the back alone in a position where everyone thought they knew that I was

involved. And I wasn't. I felt very alone. I felt betrayed.

The people shift locked himself in his office.

Cameras are off.

The show's over.

I got screwed.

And I was so mad.

And there's Sean suddenly in my dressing room. He's swearing to God that he had

nothing to do with it.

Sean, you weren't in on it?

My hands are clean. That's why I swear to God.

He was a bad actor.

But one of the two was in on it that I think.

Sean had to be in on it. You know, at that time, I had no idea.

Well, now we know Sean was just putting on an act.

I was like this hush in the dressing room. Everyone was kind of stunned.

I remember Undertaker got so mad that he kicked over one of those big steel

barrels. He just slammed the door and said something about he was going down

Vince's office to get a straight answer on why they did that to me. You know,

Vince, you've got to go over and talk to him. Explain why you did what you did.

You've got to give him one.

And by giving him one, if he's going to hit you, you've got to take one.

Brett came out of the shower and told Vince to get out of his...

dressing room and then he said he goes he says you're still here when i get out

i'm gonna get dressed i'm gonna punch you out brett finished the shower i mean

he went back and took his sweet ass time to finish his shower and then stood

right in the middle of the room waiting for him to finish so i finished shower

and i come out and it's funny because i walk out of the shower sopping wet naked

vince did something to me along the lines of this is the first time i ever

to lie to one of my talent which is such a lie

I remember tying my shoes.

And I remember when I got time, my last shoelace, I started to tie it. And I go,

this is it. I'm going to punch out Vince McMahon.

I can't believe I'm doing this.

And we walked towards each other, end up tying up just like a pro wrestling

match. And I remember just sinking down and kind of just turning my whole body

and thinking 14 years and coming up right between our arms. And I hit Vince

McMahon with the most beautiful Mike Tyson uppercut.

I popped him literally right off the ground.

He went straight down, out cold.

Everybody was stunned.

No one could believe it. He was dead silent for a while, and nobody said

anything. And then Brett said, get out of my dressing room. I mean, I have to

say that I remember Shawn Michaels.

He was bawling his eyes out like a baby. And I remember thinking, I know you

were in on it. And he knew it. He was, like, waiting for me to make my way over

to him and finish him off.

I just tapped him on the shoulder, and I said, Shawn, thanks for the match.

He couldn't believe that I thanked him for the match.

And then he looked up at me and he just burst into tears, like really

blubbering. I had never to that point heard of that much drama and backstage

just bullshit.

Sometimes I lost sleep over what I should have done that day.

Brett, you're not going to understand this now, but Vince was trying to

his business. It was never about not trusting you. He didn't trust Eric.

I went to Vince's office and said, I need to talk to you. He said, okay. I

I'm... He said, I got a meeting with everybody today. We'll take care of it.

everybody down and said, what I did last night was my call.

It's not Earl's fault and anybody don't like it can come to my office and I'll

release your ass right now.

Screw you, I was already in the makings. They had to find somebody that would do

it.

The conversation I had with Vince where we really had the big heart -to -heart

was the following Wednesday in Stanford.

And I told him what I thought.

Vince's reaction was, if you had known, then you would have known.

You would never be able to say that you didn't know. Shawn Michaels risked

everything for you and for this company.

So before you condemn Shawn Michaels, understand what he did for you and your

family. There were a lot of what -if scenarios discussed the night before.

And I think that everybody believed that at the end of the day, Vince was going

to be able to convince Brett to drop the championship.

That didn't happen.

So Vince asked Jerry Briscoe to let Sean know there was a spot in the match that

Sean, when you get him in the sharpshooter, ring the bell.

Of all people, Bret Hart, who was raised in the wrestling business, whose father

was a wrestler, who went through the code, he's the one that exposed the

business. We're talking with Bret Hart, the hitman today. How are you? It was

very important to me after 14 years of probably the most dedicated, loyal,

hardworking service that you could ever get out of a professional wrestler.

I'd given this man everything you could ever ask for, and I made it very, very

clear that my character was not in any way, shape, or form going to be

humiliated. Bret was telling any and everybody that he could. He didn't lose.

was screwed. And it was something that Vince felt it was important to address

Monday Night Raw. Did you or did you not screw Bret Hart? There's a time

-honored tradition in the wrestling business that when someone is leaving,

Did they show the right amount of respect?

The people are like, no, we don't want to like the rich billionaire boss.

We liked Bret Hart. He was our hero.

Bret Hart didn't want to honor that tradition.

Vince was really giving Bret Hart all kinds of shit for not honoring the time

-honored tradition of doing the right thing on the way out. On TV, this didn't

happen ever before.

Vince, in this interview, just came across very cold, calculated.

and very, very heelish. I truly believe that Bret Hart screwed Bret Hart,

and he can look in the mirror and know that.

Rather than sweep this incident under the rug, Vince capitalizes on it by

transforming this real -life incident into a storyline where he reinvents

himself as an evil, conniving mastermind.

When I debuted, the fans didn't know that Vince was the owner. He was an

announcer.

And then once the word got out that he actually owns the company, he's the

behind the throne, this and that, Vince ran with it. Mr. McMahon is one of the

greatest heel characters of all time, yes.

I mean, you've heard arenas full of people chant, asshole, asshole.

If they had done it right, everybody prospered. Shawn Michaels became the WWF

champion off a big win. Vince McMahon became...

the catalyst to the evil empire of Mr. McMahon, and they handed the hottest

wrestler in the world, Bret Hart, to WCW, and they dropped that ball.

In the aftermath of the Montreal Screwjob, wrestling changed forever.

The fourth wall had fallen, and Vince McMahon's villainous character would

propel his company into the stratosphere while Bret Hart would make his

lackluster debut.

In WCW.

You know, if you look at how Bret Hart even came to WCW and how they launched

the very first day. Why don't we bring the man out that's going to referee this

match? I remember like, referee?

It's so lame.

Like, such a lame way to bring me in.

Is that what you want?

Referee. Eric Bischoff was an imbecile trying to run wrestling. He didn't have

any idea about how to run wrestling.

I have to take some responsibility in the fact that there may have been better

ways to bring Brett in.

I would be honored to be the referee.

But at the same time, we'll never know that because the plans that we did have

for Brett were executed so piss poorly because of his just detachment from it

all. He didn't get over in WCW with zero impact.

Hey, Bishop!

At the WCW, I quit.

I think the legacy of the Montreal Screwjob is that nobody knows if it was

really a screwjob or not. I happen to believe it was the real deal.

To me, I feel the same way now seeing him back as I did the first time I saw

It's a total work.

Everybody was in on it, and they all did it together.

Now look at Brett's face.

He doesn't look too shocked to me.

You're going to spit on Vince and then the truck is going to go tight on Vince,

go tight on Vince, get Vince wiping the loogie out of his eye.

Vince has been in the TV business his whole life.

Nothing's going to happen without his consent.

Everybody knows you're leaving.

You're going to stand in what's now your opposition's ring on a global broadcast

and you're going to motion the call signs of your competitor.

If that's not okayed by a big boss, in my mind, they're going to cut away from

that. I mean, I've never discussed it with Sean. You know, I wasn't there, and

didn't ask guys who were there.

Watching it as an educated fan, I would say it was a complete collaboration by

all parties.

That's all I got to say about that.

People do say it was a work, and Brett was in on it. No, man, this is the way

this piece of history went down.

Conspiracy theorists will always be conspiracy theorists.

But unfortunately, sometimes when people want more of a story to be there that

just isn't there, they try to create it. When we did an interview with Scott

Hall, he believes that the Montreal Screwjob is this very scripted sort of

thing. He's not one of them too, is he?

I'm sorry, it's ludicrous that Scott Hall would say that he didn't talk to

Michaels about this. I know they all talk to each other about everything, but

especially about this. Why wouldn't they?

I will tell anybody to their face that thinks that this was a work.

You are a dumb, stupid.

These are death threats. I've gotten a bunch of them.

But these were some of the most creative and some of the most picturesque. So I

framed these.

Get by the ring one more time. You make a target under those lights. You won't

know where it comes from. Bye bye.

They pulled it all off because I trusted the referee.

Poor Earl.

He's just a little.

I feel so bad for him. To put that on him was such a rotten thing to do.

For the last 15 years, it's been the shit.

There's always a chance in any arena that you screw Brett.

We never talked for a long, long time, many years.

Even though Brett and I are friends now, this is still upsetting.

I guess you can tell I'm kind of breaking down a little bit, but it's

that will be with me forever.

A lot of people will say, hey, it was their idea, all the way from Vince Russo

to Jim Cornette to Triple H to Shawn to me.

You know, we all said it.

The Montreal Screwjob is remembered all kinds of different ways by all kinds of

different people. For the fans, it was like one of the first big behind -the

-scenes things that exploded, and they heard about and they realized that there

was more intrigue in the locker room and in the boardroom than there sometimes

was in the ring.

As soon as you start doing that, as soon as you don't believe it's real anymore,

it's not really worth watching.

That's the way that people feel when they lose faith in their hero.

That's when you lose people in wrestling because they believed in the people

involved. Even if they didn't always believe all the action, they believed in

the people.

I take a lot of pride, almost ridiculous pride in being the wrestler that I was.

I believe that I was the guy that reinforced.

wrestling aspect of of the wrestling show and that's what i'd like to be

remembered for the reality of the situation is is that if two guys

just could have you know could have got over themselves well

we wouldn't be sitting here today any final thoughts on like jim i've ignored

him for years and it's on and on It's my personal enjoyment at this

advanced age to remind everybody at every opportunity that he's a liar. It's

freaking wrestling.

It means nothing.

I will live to piss on his grave. Even if I'm in a walker, my wife already has

instructions, she's out of the will. If she doesn't get me there, if I'm not

ambulatory, I'll find Vince Russo's grave and I will piss on it and there

be a picture of that hanging on my wall when I pass away. And hate is a hell of

a motivator.