The Hitman's story is, by now, well-documented. Hell, Bret himself told it in explicit detail in his excellent autobiography Hitman: My Real Life In The Cartoon World Of Wrestling. We all know what happened to Bret, the hard-working fan favourite and Canadian legend: the evil Vince McMahon screwed him out of his WWF Championship in his last match with the company at the 1997 Survivor Series. The event pretty much destroyed Bret, who was loyal to a fault. Bret showed up in WCW a shadow of his former self in 1998 and began phoning in performances. He clearly wasn't interested and WCW rarely gave him a reason to get excited. Things got worse in May 1999 when Bret's younger brother Owen fell to his death when a stunt went wrong at the WWF Over The Edge pay-per-view. Bret was distraught. Not only had he been betrayed by a company that he had given so much for but now that same company had killed his little brother. Lawsuits followed. Bret was unabashed in his criticism of the WWF in interviews and in his commentary for the Calgary Sun newspaper. Bret's in-ring career was ended in 2000 after an errant Goldberg kicked caused him to have recurring concussions and neck problems. There were more problems ahead for Bret, who suffered a stroke in 2002 while riding his bike in the park. It temporarily paralysed the Hitman and confined him to a wheelchair. Vince McMahon was the first person to call Bret in the hospital. The gesture deeply moved The Excellence of Execution and it looked like fences were being mended. Slowly but surely, Hart was worked back into the WWE fold with the company producing an in-depth DVD on him and inducting him into the Hall of Fame in 2006. Bret made his first WWE TV appearance in over twelve years on the January 4th 2010 Raw, where he and Shawn Michaels buried the hatchet over Montreal. It was a sight that even the most hopeful fan probably never thought that they would see. After Montreal and the death of Owen and everything else, nobody thought Bret would come back to WWE. But he did and his fans thanked him for it.
