Andrew Lutzke
Presented by Highspots
Recorded at the Charlotte Fanfest
Hosted by Mark Nulty
Taped in 2005
Runtime: 1 hour and 13 minutes
Bret gets salty right away and says this room full of fans may prove that Charlotte is not “Ric Flair country.”
Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan rip on Hart because they are insecure and need to build themselves up by tearing Hart down.
“The Hitman” name came from Thomas “Hitman” Hearns, a boxer from the 80’s.
Michaels and Scott Hall stole the ladder match idea from him and used it to steal the show at Mania 10.
Bret was suppose to work a ladder match with Shawn at Summerslam ’92 before the PPV was switched to overseas, which turned the match into Bret vs. Bulldog.
Vince McMahon promised Hart that the ladder match gimmick would be his and no one would use it until Bret could establish it. It was the first major lie Vince ever told Hart.
Bret and Owen went out and had a fantastic match on the same show as Shawn/Razor, and they didn’t need a bunch of props to have a blow away bout.
Hart is a big fan of Rey Jr., Benoit, Kurt Angle and a few others. AJ Styles is not in the WWF(E) but he has major talents. Brock quitting the business is a real shame.
The modern product is lacking having big strong men who can perform well. A lot of the top talent is undersized.
Bruce Hart retires and unretires quite a bit up in Canada. He has Terry Funk syndrome.
It took Hart about a year to get any respect when he first went to the WWF in 1984. He worked with a lot of slugs at first, and once the bookers let him work with some talented guys, then the office suddenly told him he was a good worker.
Working in Japan taught Hart a different style of wrestling. Japan also meant that you had to work really hard in order to keep up with the Japanese workers.
Dory Funk Jr. influenced the business in the 70’s and caused everyone to wrestle with less rest holds and put in a greater effort.
The modern product has taken the sport to an extreme where there is tons of high spots and little substance to matches.
Had the WWF not screwed over Hart, he’d have been a trainer and booker through the 2000’s. A whole generation of workers missed out on having Hart upgrade their performance.
Hart told Vince that screwing him was very personal and Bret has no intentions of letting it go. The WWE likes to do mock Montreal finishes and mess with the fans about Bret.
“HHH is just a phony, lying, piece of shit”
HHH was in on the Montreal screw job. Hart would never have done to another worker what they did to him that night.
The fans remind Vince, Shawn, etc that Hart was a great worker and it annoys them, thus they have to mock Bret on TV.
WCW never used Bret well. The vultures in the backstage told others that Hart had lost his passion for the business and thus they used it as an excuse to bury Hart.
Hulk Hogan told WWE cameras that Hart was not “one of the boys” and could not be trusted, and thus he was not pushed.
Had WCW given him a good angle to work with, Hart’s WCW legacy would have been much different.
Ric Flair and the others were nice to his face, but everyone must have been shitting on him behind his back.
HHH and Shawn are the culprits behind Montreal. The boys are suppose to be supportive of the boys. Vince screwing Bret was not as devious as what DX did because as the promoter, McMahon had the potential to be slimy.
The WWF lied after the fact to cover up why they messed with Hart at Montreal. The WWF and WCW had enough lawsuits back and forth that Bret would have never been able to carry the WWF title on WCW TV.
Hart had a bum knee when he and Shawn got into a real brawl backstage in the summer of ’97. Because of that, the fight was mostly hair pulling and not a real street fight. Shawn disrespected Hart, triggering the brawl. Bret ripped out a chunk of Shawn’s hair.
Michaels told Bret he would not job to him, anytime, ever. This is why Hart refused to put over Shawn in return.
In a Canadian poll, Hart was named the 39th greatest Canadian of all time.
The Hart Dungeon was a small room with mats on the floor. Bret watched his dad stretch guys down there from the time he was in diapers and on.
When Hart was a little kid, the midgets would come to Stampede to work. Hart saw this as a chance to tangle with a real pro who happened to be the same size as him. The midgets hated kids because they’d get hung on and tugged on by the little ones and really could not defend themselves because they couldn’t hurt children.
Bischoff treated Hart very well personally, and paid him a ton of money, but never supported Hart when it came to booking matters.
Hogan used his stroke to make sure Hart never found any momentum in WCW.
Hart really wanted to work with Hogan because he knew he could carry him to a great match.
Bret also wished he could have worked some major matches with Tatsumi Fujinami. The one time they worked in Japan, Fujinami did not want to work hard because the crowd was small.
Buddy Rogers was a great worker, but came before Hart’s time. Bret would have loved to give him a go.
Ricky Steamboat, Rick Rude and Jake Roberts were contemporaries that Hart wishes he had worked with more.
Any of the NWA world champions of the past would have been intriguing to wrestle with. Jack Brisco especially interests Hart.
Mr. Perfect always brought the best out of Hart. Curt is probably Hart’s favorite opponent. The British Bulldogs had a bunch of great matches with Bret both in singles and tag matches.
Dynamite Kid was one of the few men Bret would consider listing as “The best there is, was or ever will be.”
Wrestling with Shawn at Wrestlemania 12 was not pleasant. The two men were working so hard to outshine one another that the guys weren’t having any fun.
The WWF tried to mess with Hart prior to Wrestlemania 12 by putting him in a bunch of short main events leading up to the show, which did not allow him to build up endurance. They also had him on a crazy public relations schedule. Meanwhile, Shawn was given several months off to sell an injury and was allowed to get in great shape. Hart thinks the plan was for Shawn to obviously outshine Hart by making Hart look old and tired in the bout. Bret held up his end extremely well despite the setbacks.
Ric Flair worked the same matches over and over. He and Hart never clicked in the ring.
“We could spend a whole hour talking about all my great matches.”
– Bret Hart (Humble as ever.)
Bob Backlund gave Hart his worst PPV match at Mania 11. The stipulations making it a submission match tied their hands and the thing was a disaster.
Hogan, Shawn and Flair could never have the quality matches across the spectrum that Hart did with a large variety of opponents.
Vince Russo was a wrestling fan, and while his booking was not too bad when Hart was around, Bret still doesn’t understand how he became such an influence backstage.
In WCW, Bret took instructions from Terry Taylor.
“What does the Red Rooster know about wrestling?”
Dusty Rhodes was the smartest wrestling mind in WCW, but he had no power by the late 90’s in order to make the business work.
Hart never wants to collect a check from the WWE again. The Hall of Fame and his DVD collections are different because that pertains to his legacy.
Bret shits on Hogan again. Hulk was a political monster, only worried about his own push.
The WWF finally pushed Hart on top in 1992 because he was clean cut and the rest of the company was embroiled in steroid scandals, ring boy sex scandals, statutory rape scandals (Lawler) and so on.
“The fans here hate Ric Flair more than I do”
Final thoughts: I personally love Bret to death, but this filmed at a time where he had a lot of anger, so he came across as a bitter old man, despite promising he was in fact not so. This DVD serves as a nice time stamp of Hart’s rage that has since been quelled some.
