10 More Wrestling Facts You Probably Didn't Know
3. The Montreal Screwjob Was Over Nothing At All
As everybody knows, the Montreal Screwjob occurred because Vince McMahon was terrified that Bret Hart wouldn’t drop the title before his contract was up, and would appear on WCW television with his company’s most important championship.
Alundra Blayze had done exactly that in December 1993, only four years earlier. The WWF had treated their Women’s Champion with such indifference that they’d let her go without having her drop the title first. She debuted - as Madusa - on WCW’s Monday Nitro with her WWF championship belt, dumping it in the trash on live TV.
That’s not the entire story, however. Vince McMahon was paranoid about his top guy taking his top title to the competition... because that’s what he’d encouraged NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair to do to WCW back in July 1991.
McMahon wasn’t paranoid because he couldn’t trust Bret Hart - he was paranoid because his chickens were coming home to roost.
Of course, had he had a conversation with Eric Bischoff he’d have realised he had nothing to worry about. In his book Controversy Creates Cash, Bischoff detailed the extent to which the WWF and WCW were embroiled in vicious litigation over copyrights and trademarks at that time. Had Bret Hart turned up on Nitro with the WWF World Heavyweight Championship, it could well have cost Bischoff his job - and probably Hart, too.