10 Meanest Backstage Wrestling Feuds
6. Ric Flair Vs. Bret Hart
Few wrestlers have had more professional contempt for one another than Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart and ‘the Nature Boy’ Ric Flair.
Hart makes no bones about his feelings over Flair’s work in his autobiography, stating that Flair was incredibly overrated and had no grasp of ring psychology. Further, he claimed that Flair had developed his reputation by working the same match over and over, to the extent that he could have wrestled it in his sleep - and frequently did.
Hart asserted that whenever Flair went blank in the ring about what to do next, he’d fall back on the same match structure, regardless of whether it made sense to do so. He had nothing good to say about his experience of wrestling him personally, either:
“Ric always worked hard but nothing he did in the ring ever made sense. Just when he’d masterfully worked my leg he’d suddenly grab a headlock and call a long series of running high spots! Just when we had the crowd ready to burst he’d call some lame spot that would kill all the heat we’d built up and I forever found myself shaking my head at how we’d have to build it up all over again…”
“I’d like to punch Ric Flair right in the nose – but I’d probably have to kick somebody in the *ss to do it! In the infamous words of Dick Cheney, go f*ck yourself Ric – and be glad that someone like me doesn’t shove your head squarely up your *ss someday.”
Few people are capable of the kind of withering condescension that Hart regularly dishes out, and Flair took great exception to it:
“I feel sorry for Bret Hart. He is a legend in his own mind. He lives in his own little world. He has the nerve to compare himself to me. Let’s get realistic. If you put Bret Hart in your left hand and me in your right hand… compare the career. Who is Bret Hart?...In my world he is a nobody. He is a p*ssant in the history of wrestling.”
The feud between the two appears to have fizzled out in recent years, and Hart and Flair seem on good terms these days: odd, considering that to my knowledge neither man has withdrawn or apologised for any of the insults they’ve dished out to one another over the last decade or so.