Bret Hart Vs. Shawn Michaels Complete History | Wrestling Timelines
June 2, 1997 - Trouble
Vince tells Bret that he needs to restructure Bret’s contract; he doesn’t know if his company will see out the year. Bret sits with this, considering his legal avenues.
June 9, 1997 - The Fight
Bret wants to beat the ever-living sh*t out of Shawn Michaels, who has never explicitly apologised for the “Sunny days” comment, and crossing the “no family business” line agreed to by the pro wrestling brotherhood.
Enough is enough. Shawn has crossed every single line there is as quickly as he bumps wildly across the ring. The backstage fight is on.
At the Hartford, Connecticut Raw, Bret is cooled down by Jim Neidhart. Bret’s brother-in-law is worried. Great as he was as the heavyweight component of the original Hart Foundation, he’s unreliable, and nowhere near big enough a star for Vince to put up with him for too long. He is a favour to Bret, in effect, and a tool with which to manipulate him. Jim worries that he’ll be made a scapegoat for Bret, if Bret upsets Shawn.
Bret does cool off, and even tentatively offers a friendly “Hello” when he sees Shawn. Any notion of a second reconciliation attempt evaporates when Shawn tells Bret to go f*ck himself. Shawn doesn’t want to engage with Bret on a personal level. He’s very aggressive, rude, and forthright about this before he storms away.
The red mist descends once again. Bret hunts Shawn down in the dressing room. He pushes Shawn to his feet, asks him if he has a problem. Shawn, who it is rumoured told Vince he’d do this back in May, aims a punch at Bret’s face. It’s weak, and easily dodged. Bret smashes Shawn in the face, throws him to the ground by his hair, and rips a clump of it out. Bret is only prevented from pounding Shawn’s face in when Pat Patterson and Jerry Lawler, who hasn’t even had time to wipe his ass, break it up.
Shawn escapes and quits on the spot, but is convinced to return in July because, with Nitro hammering Raw week after week, there’s no chance that Vince will allow a prized asset to leave.
The tension has exploded, but the idea of a full-scale war is complicated.