20 Years Later... 10 Reasons Vince McMahon Was STILL RIGHT To Screw Bret Hart
The Sharpest Shooter
20 years.
This week marks 20 years since an infamous incident wrestling will never ever shake off, and nor should it. The Montreal Screwjob was wrestling's Moon Landing and Watergate wrapped up in one astonishing scene. It was captured on cameras both in-house and independent, playing out in front of audiences as tense in the arena as they were in locker rooms before and after the clash. Armed with flawed heroes and broken villains, it contained all the emotional push and pull of a complex HBO masterpiece. And very much in the spirit of The Wire and The Sopranos, a blockbuster ending that wasn't really an ending at all.
This article won't be another laboured assessment of Vince McMahon's frankly absurd rationale for screwing Bret Hart. Its not about belts appearing on Nitro or McMahon himself looking small-time in comparison to Ted Turner, because the Chairman will know those particular defences to be as weak now as they were two decades ago.
Amidst the turmoil and tumult , Vince had a raft of reasons for reaching into the chest of one of his loyalest performers and ripping his heart clean out. He was mindful of the ramifications despite feigned naiveté, and prepared to face any and all rightful wrath that came his way.
No matter how much he espoused it internally and externally, even McMahon didn't believe 'Bret Screwed Bret'. He screwed Bret, and there were lots more actual motivations for his machiavellian move.
10. Youthful Exuberance
The eight years that separated Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart in 1997 might as well have been a lifetime. At 32, 'HBK' was mentally unravelling but keeping his demons from the door with some of his career's best works. Only a month earlier, he'd reinvented the wheel with a Hell In A Cell match against The Undertaker that remains one of only two matches in the last two decades awarded five stars by Wrestling Observer supremo Dave Meltzer.
40 and feeling it, Hart was reaching the wrong age at the right time. He'd stamped more holes in his bump card during tumultuous times for the industry he loved, riding out a financially barren spell for WWE as a spiritual leader, loyal soldier and reliable Champion. His age dictated his attitude towards the company's direction at large which again flew in the face of freewheeling rebellious Michaels.
As it turned out, Shawn only had six more months on his own clock, but in a company not big enough for both, McMahon chose with both his heart and head.