One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY WWE WrestleMania

33. WrestleMania 9 | Bret Hart Was At It MUCH Earlier Than You’d Think

Bret Hart is one of the funniest guys to ever be involved in wrestling, even if you can never be entirely sure how much he means to be. You could talk to the man on the subject of anything at all, and he’d still find a way to change the subject to Goldberg. 

The fateful thrust kick is something that Bret brings up an awful lot, but he has other favourite topics. He likes to tell you that Triple H was an idealess bore, a “four out of ten” wrestler. Bret has made a hobby of finding different synonyms and phrasing with which to call Eric Bischoff stupid. Bret also likes to downplay the in-ring skills possessed by Ric Flair. Did you know that every match Flair had followed the same pattern? And that Flair never really “got” the art of wrestling, because all he did was spam chops that actually hurt? 

People put this down to bitterness, which seems cruel. What happened to Bret Hart was awful. Humiliated by the company he broke his body for and mismanaged by the company he was pressured into joining, Hart’s career ended prematurely, and he was plagued by serious health issues when he was trying to rebuild his personal life. 

Also: Bret’s gleeful shooting is not an embittered reaction to his experience in the wrestling business. He is a hater for the love of the game. 

Case in point: at the pre-WrestleMania 9 press conference, Bret opined that Flair was overrated as a worker. Bear in mind this was years before the shoot interview was invented as a medium. This was years before wrestling itself became self-referential as a medium. Also, there was no company-wide campaign to smear Flair like there later was against Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage: Flair left on amicable terms having done a stellar, selfless job. 

Hart did it just to do it. In 1993!