Top 10 Wrestlers With Amateur Backgrounds In WWE History
3. Bret Hart
Bret Hart profits from his outstanding professional wrestling career more than anyone else on this list. A seven-time world champion, The Hitman has held championships in five decades from the 1970s to 2010s, with his last reign coming as WWE United States Champion in 2010. He’s one of the most important sports entertainers of all-time, a key figure for WWE throughout the 1990s, and one half of the most controversial moment in the sport’s history: The Montréal Screwjob.
There’s an argument to be made that Hart is the greatest professional wrestler of all-time, and it isn’t without merit. The Excellence of Execution was a second-to-none in-ring technician, and while WWE fans are more than aware of his early days in the famous Hart Family Dungeon, Bret was also an outstanding amateur wrestler in his own right.
His high-school wrestling career was peppered with glory, and his 1974 Calgary City Championship win confirmed him as one of his country’s top prospects. Hart continued his record of excellence at Mount Royal College, where his coaches were so impressed that they felt he had the ability to represent his country at the 1978 Commonwealth Games.
Though encouraged to train for the event, Hart had grown dissatisfied with amateur wrestling. Finding the sport unrewarding and frustrated by constant injuries, Bret gave-up amateur wrestling to go professional, and as his college career waned, he signed-up to train with his father Stu’s Stampede Wrestling promotion. While his pro-wrestling career grew to greatly overshadow his collegiate contributions, Hart has spoken openly on the positive impact that amateur wrestling had on his pro career, and it’s unlikely that he’d have ever gone this far without those forays.