10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Bret Hart

3. Doing A Ladder Match In WWE Was His Idea

When WWE fans think of the first ladder match in company history they immediately bring up Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 10 in 1994. It's one of the best matches ever and is still talked about 20 years later. However, that wasn't the first ladder match in WWE history. It was Bret Hart against Shawn Michaels on July 21, 1992 for the Intercontinental Title held by Hart. It was on a VHS tape in the mid 1990s called "Smack 'Em Whack 'Em" and on Prime Time Wrestling although it wasn't promoted heavily. It was released on DVD years later too. What bothers Hart is that since he's the one that brought the match to WWE (he did a ladder match in Stampede Wrestling in 1983), he felt he should have been the one to have the first ladder match on a PPV. Instead, Michaels basically stole the idea from him and presented it to Vince McMahon for his feud with Razor Ramon. Here's how Hart explained it on 30 Years of WrestleMania podcast that WWE did back in March of this year: "I felt totally ripped off. I had told Vince the idea since the very first day that I got there that I€™ve got this idea about a ladder match that we had been doing up in Calgary. Every time I sat down with Vince I would always say, I€™ve got this idea for a match but you€™ve got to promise me you won€™t do it with anybody else. One day he did ask me to show him the watch so that he could have an idea, so I went and found Shawn, and it€™s one of those matches that€™s on a video. We kinda just went out there and did a dry run just to show Vince what the match was. It wasn€™t the greatest ladder match, nor was it intended to be. But it was a match to show the bare bones of it to Vince. I remember when it was over I knocked on Vince€™s door and said did you see it, and he said he missed it. Scott Hall, not Scott Hall but Razor Ramon saw the match, of course Shawn was in the match so he kinda got to think hey this is a great idea, and so they went to Vince without my permission and stole my idea for the match. They had a great match at WrestleMania X, but it wasn€™t the wrestlers that were great, it was the match that was great." It's been over 20 years. He's still angry about it. When WWE talks about ladder matches and the innovators of it, they never mention Hart's name. They should, but they don't. They must really want us to forget it.