10 Reasons 1997 Was The Weirdest Year In Wrestling History

It’s unavoidable to discuss 1997 without Montreal.

However, rather than go over the incident itself (which, if you’ve been a fan of wrestling for any significant amount of time, you’re familiar with), what’s bizarre about the event is the aftermath. After fans became aware of just what had went down, Vince McMahon opted to do damage control. He had a series of sit down interviews with Jim Ross on RAW in which explained his side of the story, but to do this... well, for lack of a better phrase, he exposed the business to his TV audience.

The infamous “Bret Screwed Bret” interviews outed Vince as the owner and man in charge of the World Wrestling Federation, and admitted that wrestling matches have predetermined outcomes, winners, and losers.

Obviously, by 1997, any given wrestling fan knew it wasn’t on the level, but such breaking of kayfabe on WWF television was simply unprecedented. In addition, fans saw a side of Vince McMahon they had never seen before. Until this point, they had mostly known him as a whacky announcer who shouted “What a manoeuvre!” in lieu of actually calling moves. They had never seen him as this sullen, stone-faced, somewhat cold owner of a company. And while there had been passing mention on obscure shows like Livewire that Vince owned the WWF, for most of 80s and 90s, the product presented authority figures in fictional roles to give off the illusion that someone else was running the show.

With Montreal and the fallout, that illusion went completely by the wayside. Here was Vince McMahon, on his own programming, telling the viewers “Wrestling is fake, and I’m the one who makes it fake.” Surely, he couldn’t outdo himself.

And then, he outdid himself...