Bruno Sammartino is a legend. There's no disputing that. The man sold out Madison Square Garden more times than anybody else for Vince McMahon Sr.'s WWWF in the 1960's and 70's. Sammartino sued Vince Sr. after he found out that an office worker was severely short-changed during Bruno's second title run. The suit was settled by Vince Jr. after the older Vince passed away. Bruno, as per the outcome of the settlement, was to do colour commentary for Vince Jr. Coming out of retirement to help his son David's wrestling career, Bruno wrestled for the WWF in the mid-1980's while he was in his fifties and plagued by injuries. He had a decent programme with Randy Savage but he refers to this period as the least favourite of his career. When David was released for hitting a fan (whom the Sammartino's suspected was a plant), Bruno left the company and became an outspoken critic of the direction that Vince was taking the WWF. Bruno hated the cartoonish nature of the wrestling and was particularly critical of wrestler's steroid use. He opposed the WWF on several big time talk shows. Naturally, this annoyed McMahon and the WWF and Bruno went on the black list. He was backstage at a Raw show in 2004 to discuss doing commentary for WWE 24/7 classics on demand but he refused to be seen as endorsing the current product and left before the show. In a slightly funny twist, he told Triple H that he would stay if Kurt Angle versus Chris Benoit was the main event. The main event for that night's show? Triple H versus Chris Benoit. He also had something of a non-confronataion with Ric Flair, who had derided Bruno's wrestling ability in his bridge-burning autobiography. But, whether Bruno knew him or not, Triple H was successful in getting Sammartino inducted into the 2013 Hall of Fame. The Living Legend accepted, content that the WWE product had changed and was now more wrestling oriented. It took a while to happen and many people had a 'I'll believe it when I see it' attitude but, Bruno shook hands with Vince McMahon on the Madison Square Garden stage that night.
