Black Widow
05-23-2008, 05:50 PM
First of all, I’d like to thank you, also on behalf of the entire team of Genickbruch.com, for granting us this interview. It’s a great honor for me to speak with you.
Thank you. I’ll never forget my German fans. I used to have a lot of great fans over there.
Probably not all of our readers know about it, so I’ve got to say it: You suffered a stroke in 2002 and your recovery was very cumbersome. So the most important thing I’ve got to ask you is: How are you today?
I’m OK. You know, it’s been a long year, and a lot of big things came out of that year. My book was a big breakthrough for me, it was something I put 7 years into, writing my autobiography. I tried to be as honest and interesting as possible, and that was a big thing for me. It was a lot of work that went into, the publicity and all that. And I think it was hard for me this year because I lost some good friends. I lost Crush, who was a really good friend of mine, and I lost Chris Benoit and his family in that horrible tragedy, and I went through my divorce, which was another blow for me, but all in all I’m… just like in my wrestling matches... I pulled myself back up and I kept marching on. Now I’m working on a second book, which I think will be a novel.
A novel?
Yeah, I’ll try to write a novel. I want to try something different.
That’s great to hear! I just wanted to tell you my sincere congratulations on your autobiography.
It’s still not available in Europe, unfortunately, but I ordered it from Canada and it’s amazing. I could hardly put it down.
I’m sure it will be on sale in Germany probably next fall. Maybe, that’s what I’m thinking. I hope that all my fans in Germany I used to have will get a chance to read my book and maybe understand my life a little better.
That’s just what I wanted to ask you – how was it, writing your very own autobiography? I mean, you had a long and illustrious career and, for me, reading it was extremely interesting.
Yeah, it was really… I think it was good for my soul. I kind of emptied everything out, this “spill my heart” kind of thing. I had a lot of things that I… A lot of great memories, a lot of regrets, a lot of great moments, all mixed together. The book is… A lot of people take it as a sad book but I don’t think of it as a sad book, there’s just a lot of sad things that happened. For the most part I’m pretty grateful about what I got out of my career. I always loved being Bret Hart, the Hitman wrestling character, because I thought he was the most realistic wrestling character of them all. He was the only one that really… It wasn’t a character, I don’t know, it was kind of a real person. I don’t know. Some people say that I believed all the stuff that I was doing, but it’s not that I believed it, I just… Maybe I wanted to believe it. I wanted to make it believable.
Actually, I think that was always the strength of the Hitman character, that it was not one of these exchangeable cartoony things. You know, you have these gimmick names, and then you turn or change to another promotion and then you have another character. But you’ve always been Bret Hart, the genuine thing. My impression was that you were always extremely popular especially in the European market, so I was wondering, what do you think were the reasons behind it?
I think it was all these different ingredients, all sort of coming together at the right time. European wrestling fans were just starting to get really familiar with American wrestling. I think they really liked the spit ‘n polish of the WWF kind of, back from the old wrestling that they had in Germany and even in England, there were a lot of older wrestlers, and wrestling was almost like carnival kind of wrestling. And I think when WWF put their key focus on all the lights and the music, it just made a whole new world for wrestling fans in Europe. I think Hulk Hogan was the first guy, but he wasn’t around long enough to quite win the hearts of all the fans. I think the fans in Germany and England of course loved Hulk Hogan, when he was at the top of the heat in those days but he kind of stepped away from the game about that time, and that allowed the opportunity for me to surface not long after the Warrior was… like after Wembley, England. The timing was right for wrestling fans in Europe looking for a champion, a wrestler that they could identify with, and I think because of my style of wrestling and because of my look… I had a kind of a sexy but aggressive look, almost like Michael Jackson with the leather jacket, I don’t know. It all complemented my style, and I think it was just the right thing at the right time.
The thing I had always loved about the fans that I had in Europe, in Germany and in England was that once they loved me they never stopped loving me, they always loved me just the way I was, and they never forgot me. They always wanted me just to be exactly the way I was.
You said that you got a lot from your heart with your autobiography, and you said that people think it’s a sad book, but actually when I finished reading it I had the feeling that you’ve kind of “made peace with the past”, that you’ve kind of spilled it all out. I was wondering if there were any reactions from your former peers, given the fact that you praised certain people and criticized others quite candidly…
You know, I haven’t heard from any of them. Mick Foley for example just called me a few weeks ago and told me that he loved the book, and he had some really flattering things to say about it. But other than that I don’t think I’ve heard from… There were a few wrestlers that I’ve sent the book to, like Steve Austin, Roddy Piper, King Kong Bundy, Jim Neidhart, but I haven’t really heard back from any of them yet. I don’t know that I will, I think. Some of them might not be too upset whereas others would be. But I really don’t think I said too much about people’s characters, I just told about real situations, things that happened, and you can judge the rest as you see fit, I think. I know that I had a lot of thoughts with family members and friends of mine and things like that where I had to think really hard whether it was OK for me to say this or OK for me to say that, but I think in the end I don’t have any regrets about one word in that book, because any wrestlers that have any problem with the book, they can kiss my ass. I really don’t care what they think of it.
I mean I hope that they like it. Hopefully there are wrestlers like some of the older wrestlers like Bundy and Jim Neidhart, that they can read that book and enjoy the trip down memory lane and remember all the memories, and remember their own memories that will come out of reading my book. I think it’s a stimulant, a way to remember things and to appreciate how hard we all worked, as I wasn’t the only one wrestling hard in those days. There are lots of wrestlers working really hard and doing that hard schedule, and I think it’s important to document the truth, you know. And I think wrestling too often erases the truth to prop up a storyline around it that’s all faked, and pretend that no one ever knows what really goes on in wrestling. And I think when you read my book you get the truth, finally get the truth about wrestling. And I think that’s sorely been missing in every book that I’ve read about wrestling. In the last ten years all these books came out… Like Hulk Hogan’s book was… It had to be the worst book ever written by a pro wrestler. Diamond Dallas Page and all these guys that come up with autobiographies, but they never tell any truth in there. Just, you know, just drop a lot of names and make up a lot of stories about their childhood and things like that, but I don’t think anyone cares. People want to know the story about the wrestler.
Yes, I especially enjoyed all the details you wrote in your book, and all these little stories from life backstage and from your travels. I was wondering if you could tell us about the most enjoyable memory that spontaneously comes to your mind? Maybe something that made you smile while you were writing it down...?
Oh, there’s just quite a few. I always loved the story about the little midget that we glued the fur to his head, little wolf-man, but we called him Wolfie. But that was in Stampede wrestling, and it was one of that stories about him and how emotional he was. It was just a funny little wrestling moment. There are a lot of funny little moments. I like the story about Jim Neidhart and King Kong Bundy and me driving around Madison Square Garden, trying to get away from the fans, and then turning around and driving right back into the same mob and going through the whole thing twice. And the fans trying to tip our car over and pounding on the windows. It was just kind of funny, the life being a bad guy sometimes was…
But you know, the truth is, my manuscript was twice as long as the actual published book. I had well over 1100 pages of finished manuscript and they had to cut that down to 553 pages. They really did a good job in editing my book down but there’s still a lot of stories. I don’t know if they’ll be used for anything else but… yeah, there’s still a whole 500 pages of stories and more details and more stuff of countries and places and things like that.
I would not have been averse to further one or two thousand pages.
[laughs] Well, you never know. Maybe they’ll one day release a bigger version. I know I got lots of stories and lots of things that could be somehow worked into a second or third book. I find it’s a good outlet for me to speak my mind. Maybe, The Rock can be a movie star and I can be an author.
Yes, well, Mick Foley went that way, so… Of course I wish you good luck with your novel! What are you going to write about?
I’d like to write a book about… Maybe a historical fiction book that might be in Italy of some of my memories of being there. But that’s just an idea. I don’t really have a fixed plan yet. I think in a couple of months I’ll have a fixed plan and an outline so that I’ll know what my book will be about, a topic, and I might have to go back to Europe to do my research, which might be fun. I could end up in Germany. I would love to go to Germany.
Or Austria. Or Switzerland…
Yeah, I really miss all those places. I would love to go back to all of them. Sometimes these fan wrestling shows, they sometimes bring me out and I get a chance to see fans again for a little bit. I always loved those kinds of things and I still believed the best fans I ever had in the world were in Germany and specifically in Europe. They were more passionate and they really loved me over there. And I never forgot that, and always tried to get back and stay in touch with the audience there. Even though I long since faded out of memory I’ll never forget the audience that I had.
Let’s get back to the things you wrote in your book. Even though it’s obvious that you still carry around some grudges against certain people, I had the impression that Vince McMahon doesn’t seem to be among those any longer. Is that true? How would you describe your rather complex relationship with Vince McMahon today?
Well, that sad truth of it all is that I wouldn’t be talking to you on the phone now wasn’t it for Vince McMahon. So no matter what I think of him or about what he did to me in the end I have to always remember what he did for me and how grateful I am for the opportunities that he did give me. You know, I had a very good relationship with Vince. When I look back at my time and life, I can be fair enough and understand that he was under a lot of pressure at that time, too. I don’t forgive him for what he did but I also understand… You have to understand that from the first day that I had worked with Vince McMahon I knew that he was a very ruthless, cold-hearted businessman, and that he makes some really calculating decisions. I knew Vince was a bit of a snake, all those years. When you’re dealing with a snake, you know, like that Crocodile Guy down in Australia, when you’re playing with a stingray you know what you’re dealing with. And when something bad happens… Well, you just understand the risks involved. It’s a little bit like that with Vince. For him it really was a business decision. Not a wise one, maybe, but still. But Shawn and Hunter is a different thing.
Yes, I was wondering… When you got inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2006, did you meet Shawn Michaels? Or Triple H?
No. I didn’t see him. And I didn’t see Hunter either. In fact, I asked Vince McMahon to specifically ask them to stay away from me. I don’t have any interest of seeing any of them and I don’t want to hear their phony apologies and handshakes, stuff like that. As far as that goes I told the same to Hulk Hogan. I didn’t want him to come up with phony handshakes and trying to be my friend and then stab me in the back as many times as he did. The wrestlers in the dressing room, like I said in my book, it’s a little bit like a platoon of soldiers. We’re all together, we all worked together. And when you get betrayed by one of your own guys, like whether it’s Shawn or Hunter, to be that unprofessional and a liar, and to be just cowards in the dressing room. And after I worked so hard I think to me it’s unforgivable. I would never forgive either one of them.
Now that I have the chance to speak to a really experienced wrestler, I’d have a question on the wrestling business in general. You stated in an earlier interview, and it’s also very obvious from the stories in your book, that the gruesome schedule and the constant competition and pressure to get to or stay at the top, is the sad key to many of the problems the business had and probably still has – I’m thinking of steroids, drugs, alcohol abuse etc. Do you think the situation has changed over the years, and what do you think about recent measures like the “WWE Wellness Policy”?
I think it’s overdue. I still believe strongly that the wrestlers need a union. But I think that it’s a step in the right direction for sure. And WWE is trying now to reach out for some of the older wrestlers that have got drug problems and trying to… I think they’re really doing everything they can to try to prevent another wrestler from unnecessarily dying from an addiction to prescription pills, which is epidemic in wrestling, and I still know several wrestlers who have serious issues with this kind of stuff. I think too many wrestlers have died and the wrestlers themselves are tired of it. There’s no excuse now for any more wrestlers to die from these drug problems, there are enough wrestlers that are aware of it and we know each other and care about each other, and I think you’re going to see a lot more intervention where people are stepping in and being brother to their brothers, you know. They can’t keep letting these guys die. So many of them have underestimated their problems, and I think that it’s good and I think that a lot of them, that the Wellness Policy… Hopefully it’s not a double standard where some guys get to take steroids because they are married to Vince’s daughter or something like that.
The truth is that when wrestling was really “clean” it was when I was champion in WWF in the 90s. That was the only time that I know of that pro wrestling was steroid-free, when it was about the wrestling and not about the bodies. And not long later they shifted all that. WWF dropped their drug testing policy within a week of my Survivor Series match with Shawn in Montreal. One week later they discarded their drug policy and pretty much ever since have wrestlers been back on steroids.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that helped anybody. I don’t know if steroids are the big evil as everyone says they are, but the one thing I do know is that you don’t need steroids in wrestling. If they want to stamp steroids and drugs… They’ve got to use a firm hand and they’ve got to start to put a strong drug testing policy in place. But in doing that… The simple truth is that the only reason that wrestlers take drugs most of the time is, like you said, because the schedule is so tough and it’s so grueling and it’s weight training and wrestling every day and tough days on the road, long trips. It’s a hard life. But I know that the schedule the wrestlers have today isn’t nearly as hard as the schedule I had about 10 years ago, 12 years ago. That really was working 300 days a year, every year.
It’s unbelievable, actually.
Yeah, I don’t know how I did it. I’m sitting here talking to you today and I just had both my knees operated on two days ago. And I’ve got bandages and wraps all around my knee, I have to walk around my house on crutches. Well, you still carry around all your wounds… That’s one of the problems of wrestling today, that so many of these wrestlers, they beat themselves up so badly that they can barely walk and their knees are gone, their hips are gone and some of the wrestlers have bad necks and bad shoulders and all these different injuries. And then they start taking pills to deal with the pain of all these injuries and that’s after they get fired from wrestling and their careers are on the down swing and they’re not going anywhere, and then they get depressed and they start taking more pills and some of them get alcohol problems and when you mix all these things together, these wrestlers, they’ve got nowhere to go, they’re not working anymore, big men, they’re heavy, all kinds of cardio-vascular conditions become a problem. And they’ve got nowhere to go. You know you have all these books of lost and lonely wrestlers that have no place to work anymore, and I think it’s a sad statement when the business doesn’t look after their own. They hire all kinds of outside people but they would never hire a wrestler – they’re starting to do that now like to hire wrestlers especially to do corporate jobs and work maybe in Connecticut and stuff like that, but I think it’s important to use the wrestlers as part of the game, keep them working as much as possible, let them be part again. And hopefully that will change soon.
You said that you would be in favor of a possible wrestler’s union. Do you think that the formation of a union could happen somewhere in the future?
I don’t see it happening. There’s nobody important enough or powerful enough to pull a union off. The only one I’ve ever seen that could’ve made a union happen was Hulk Hogan. Steve Austin and The Rock were never that high in their standing. If Steve Austin or The Rock had said, “Look, I’m not wrestling anymore, I’m gonna go on strike with the wrestlers and we’re gonna have a union,” I think Vince would’ve said, “OK. Steve Austin, you can go. Rock, you can go.” He would’ve let them go and Vince would’ve struggled all without them, and they would have ended up in WCW or wherever. But Hulk Hogan back in the 80s, there was nobody that could’ve replaced him. If Hulk Hogan would’ve said, “Look, I want a union for all the wrestlers,” we would’ve got a union. It was that simple. He was the only one who had that kind of power but he was too greedy and selfish to understand his position at that time. He ended up telling on everybody that was trying to get a union together and ratted everybody out, and the guys that were trying to do a union all got fired, like Jesse Ventura. Hulk Hogan sort of let the cat out of the bag about talks in the dressing room about a union. But I think John Cena or Batista, these kind of guys today, they don’t have that kind of power to make a stand for a union. And a lot of them are programmed. Like I saw John Cena when he was at… I like John Cena, but he was on Larry King and he said that having a union wouldn’t solve the problems. But I think he’s wrong about that. Having a union would solve a lot of the problems that the wrestlers have today. Even rodeo clowns or stuntmen or lacrosse or football or… Every sport has a union, the players have protection and have benefits, and things are set in place to protect their players. It’s just a natural thing that they have everywhere. But wrestlers are unfortunately too stupid to get a union together… Too stupid and too gutless to form a union.
But, as you said, when they get fired they have nowhere to go. So they don’t really have a choice, right?
I think somebody smart, like a Jesse Ventura type of wrestler in the dressing room today might be able to start formulating plans on how to get a union together. I don’t know how, I think personally that the WWF should allow the wrestlers a union or give them a union. But there’s a lot of controversy right now in wrestling because of the steroids and drugs and all the problems. I think the tragedy of Chris Benoit murdering his family deeply hurt everybody in wrestling.
It might have been a wake-up call, too.
Yeah well, I hope so. But like I said, there are a lot of wrestlers that are looking to be the next statistic in this horrible dilemma with wrestlers and their drug problems.
Now that you tell me all these sad stories I remember a quote from your book where you said that despite everything you always felt the urge to “defend wrestling like a religion”. Given the fact that you were kind of “born into” the wrestling business I was wondering if, looking back now, was there any point in your career or even today when you thought that you rather not had this “natural path” laid out before you, and that you rather had chosen something else as your career?
No. I think wrestling gave me a great life. You know, if you just look at the bad things that happened, like the thing that happened with Owen Hart, some of the horrible things that happened, that kind of ruined it for me. But I think of the good memories that I did have with my brother in wrestling, and even wrestling with him together, wrestling in Germany and wrestling in Madison Square Garden for Wrestlemania X and some of those great memories, I cherish them forever. And I think what happened with Owen and so many of my wrestling friends that died like Curt Hennig and Davey Boy Smith and… Unfortunately it goes on and on… But I had so many great memories with all these people, and I’m grateful for what wrestling gave to me and them. Unfortunately, the sad thing is that so many of them are not here today to remember those things with me. You know, I always thought that my brother Owen would sit on my back deck at my house here in Calgary and drink coffee and look out at the mountains and reminisce about jokes that he pulled and matches that we had and people that we met. I always thought that Curt Hennig would drive up from Minnesota some day with his kids and his wife and be there. My heart aches for all the guys that I lost along the way.
But I still got a lot of good friends like Roddy Piper and Steve Austin and Jim Neidhart, people that I can still connect with on all these memories. You’ve got to pick up and move on, you can’t let life get you down too much, especially if you’re one of the lucky ones. I think in my case with my stroke I can’t help but feel sometimes that death has come calling for so many wrestlers over the years and I think in my case it seems like death came looking for me in 2002 and came to take me away like everyone else. For whatever reason I was lucky that I didn’t die and I struggled back from my concussion and I’m pretty close to 100% these days. I feel blessed that I’ve got a second chance. So everything I do today is… I love life and every day is a blessing now. I just want to have a great life every day and whatever happens tomorrow I just get back to pull myself up, just keep going all the time. I value every moment that I have left.
I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad that you are well and… You sound almost happy. Are you happy?
Well, I’m getting there. My divorce this last year was quite hard on me. Other than that I have lots of things that I look forward to in the next five years. I think there’s a good possibility that my book can be incorporated into a movie. I have some very strong interests from people that are interested in the film rights to my book. And so maybe someday my book will come to the big screen and that’ll be a thrill for me.
That would be great! I would really look forward to it.
I don’t know what will happen to my book as far as film goes, but I would love to see it be a TV series, maybe a 3, 4 or 5 year TV series. I’d like to see them do my book in four parts, just like the chapters. Like that whole part on Stampede Wrestling and the early days, when I wrestled in Germany and in England, before the WWF became the big thing that it was. I think there’s a lot of history there that people find really interesting. I’d like to see all that brought out like a really good TV series that captures the real flavor what pro wrestling was for me before WWF. Then I think I’d like to see the Tag Team years with Jim Neidhart, those chapters incorporated into the same kind of film. And I think that the tragedy with my brother Owen and the things that happened to me after would make for a great TV series too, to put all that into film.
It may be wishful thinking on the fans’ part, but could you imagine returning to the wrestling business in any way? Not as an active wrestler, of course, but maybe in connection with the next generation of Hart wrestlers? Because Nattie Neidhart recently gave her debut at WWE Smackdown…
I never rule anything out but I don’t think so. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, it’s just that I don’t see any things for me there to do. I’m limited to a few options, like I could be a referee, a commissioner…
Or a manager..?
Or I could be a manager. I could be… You know, something along those lines. But to me that doesn’t sound like very much fun. I don’t really want to be remembered for being a manager like Bobby Heenan, it wouldn’t mean much to me. But at the same time as far as something seemed like the right thing to do.. You know, I would like to help Nattie, Harry Smith, something that was worthwhile. I never rule anything out and they can always keep me in mind, and they can always ask me about any idea.
Like the WWE, they call me all the time for different things. They asked me a few weeks ago if I would do their 15 year anniversary RAW. I said that unfortunately I was doing the publicity for my book at that time and that I couldn’t do it, but the fact that they asked me... I like the fact that they can come to me and ask me. When Vince McMahon called me and asked me about the DVD we had a good talk and he ended up letting me do the DVD the way I wanted to, and I appreciate that. It meant a lot to me burying the hatchet with Vince McMahon and that he did such a nice job with my DVD with me and let me be part of it again. I was very grateful for that and in a lot of ways that was the peace between us that he in essence gave me access to my films and to my archives and allowed me to keep my memory alive. I know that some people saw my DVD as an example of a sell-out, to admit that I worked with Vince McMahon again. In fact, my wife in Italy, she never saw me in the same light, because she didn’t agree. She didn’t want me to do anything with WWF again. But I think she was wrong and it was my decision. I think it’s important for me to make sure that people can remember me. I think it was critical for me to do that DVD and allow another generation of kids and younger people to see some of my matches and understand that I was the wrestler that I was.
For me it is indifferent… If they know that I won’t do anything with the WWF and they can just go to hell but… well… fine, but nobody’s going to remember me ten years from now when nobody’s got any pictures of me or a video of me except for maybe on Youtube or something like that. I really wanted to be remembered when I finished wrestling every night or I when came back after PPVs where I wrestled Roddy Piper or Steve Austin or Shawn Michaels or whoever it was that I worked with, I was like “That was a really great match and I hope someday people could see all that, and that it would be on a Best of Bret Hart video or something.” When I had that big fallout with Vince McMahon I thought that everything I ever did was going to be locked up and sealed up somewhere in a basement, and that watching a Bret Hart match would be like something a collector would have, you know. And I’m grateful for that fact that the WWE has allowed my memory and my character to sort of stay alive. You know, I think for years they tried to kill my character off. After I left the company they really did erase me completely, and I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that they erased Chris Benoit the way the have, or even my brother Owen. I hope that in the next few years they’ll induct Owen into the Hall of Fame and maybe do a DVD on Owen, because I think that he had some great wrestling matches and I don’t want to see that he’d be forgotten either.
I was thinking about this the other day, as it’s 10 years ago next year that your brother passed away. Are there any talks about inducting him into the Hall of Fame?
Yeah, there’s a possibility on that. I don’t know, they haven’t talked to me about it but they did talk to me a few years ago about inducting my father and Owen, and I let them know that I would be interested and that I would have no problem inducting either one of them or both of them, and that I feel that they have a right to be there, and that they would want me to come.
I hope that the next time that I have a chance to speak at the Hall of Fame that I’ll.. I’m sure I’d be better than the last time. Not that I did bad the last time but the next time I do a Hall of Fame speech I hope that I’ll be a bit more relaxed, that I can be more myself. That I can have more fun with it than at the last time. I think the last time I was pretty stressed out.
You seemed tense…
Yeah, I was more nervous than I wanted to be.
Let’s get back to your book for a last time. I really liked the cartoon from your book. It was so funny! You also write about your “blackboard drawings” quite often, and how much they amused the other wrestlers. Have you ever thought of publishing cartoons?
Well, I have a bunch of cartoons that I could publish. But they’re not very ..erm.. politically correct. And they’re quite ..erm… dirty. So I’d have to think about how I could put them out. I think that’s something that I’ll do in the next years. I’ve been doing cartoons for years, I have lots of cartoons. I always tell myself that if you can make someone laugh that’s all that matters, make someone smile with a cartoon that’s a good thing. I’d like to try to do something like that in the next few years.
Yes, that would be great because you really got the characters down perfectly. It’s amazing!
Well, thank you. Hopefully my German fans would, if I do come out with a book like that, maybe would buy them. European people are so much more open minded than over here sometimes. They have much more of a free spirit over there. So, are you in Austria or in Germany?
I’m in Austria.
Yeah, I remember Austria. I remember going to the gym and stuff like that, and the girls would always be showering with the guys. It was really casual, and I was always amazed by that. You could get into a Jacuzzi like that. Some girls were working out with you and then everybody just climbed into the Jacuzzi naked and they were not even paying attention to it, whereas in North America nobody does stuff like that. You’d get arrested.
Yeah, probably.
I always loved Germany and Austria and all those places. Even in Italy, I have a lot of great memories from there. Part of my heart is in Europe all the time. I’m thinking of a book that I could write that would allow me to be in Europe. I’d like to do a lot of research. I think I love the history of Europe and, you know, just stay connected with things over there.
I’m sure your fans over here would welcome you with open arms.
I hope so. I don’t know when I’ll get back over there, I hope when my book comes out I can do some book signings or something like that over in Austria, Germany… I would love to get back to all those places, and I think maybe next year I’m going to rent a car somewhere, and then I’ll drive all down Europe for maybe six months to just visit.
We’ll be waiting for you!
I hope I’ll see you there.
So, let’s go to the final question. How do you see yourself in the history of wrestling? What do you think you will be remembered for, or what would you personally like to be remembered for?
Well, I hope that I could be remembered as one of the great artists of all time in wrestling. Vince McMahon said in my DVD that I was perhaps the greatest storyteller in wrestling. I appreciate that and I like that. I like to be remembered for that, so if that’s how people would summarize what I contributed to wrestling, to be a storyteller, I don’t take that as an insult at all but as a compliment. I think I really was a good storyteller in wrestling and I take great pride in the fact that I wrestled for as many years that I did and never hurt anybody. You know, I was a very physical wrestler and if you watch my matches they were very intense, and very real. But nobody ever got hurt wrestling me. And that’s an amazing statement to make because everybody gets hurt in wrestling.
And I think I want to be remembered to be a hard worker and for having a lot of integrity. With the things that happened with me and Vince McMahon and the WWF, with the fallout at the end, I think that in the end you can look back on all that and say that Bret Hart never lost his integrity. I kept my integrity all way through it, I told Vince McMahon the truth and relied on him to be honest with me, and he wasn’t. I like that every day I can look at myself in the mirror and I’m very happy with who I am, whereas I don’t think that Vince McMahon cares much about whether he was honest or not. But I do. When he looks in the mirror I’m sure he must see a lot of things that he… He probably cut a lot of throats to make it to the top, maybe that’s the way he is. I never had to cut a lot of throats to get to the top, I’m happy that I was always a straight shooter in a business where there were very few straight shooters.
That’s also the impression I got from your book.
Yeah, but there’s a lot of good guys too. You can’t judge them all by one or two situations. Vince McMahon… Well, there’s one hot place waiting for Vince McMahon, with flames licking the walls.
Well, I hope you still keep remembering me over there and I get a chance to come over there somewhere in the next year. I’d love to go back to Germany, and hopefully when I do I see you.
Bret, thank you very much for this interview. Again, it was a great honour for me to speak with you.
Thank you, and thank you for buying the book and taking the time to read it.
Oh, the pleasure was all mine! It’s great.
I hope it will be a success in Germany like it was a success in Canada. That would be a big thing for me because I did this book my way, I didn’t do it with WWF, and I didn’t do it with a ghost-writer. I really did it all by myself and I spent 7 years writing that book and I gave everything I had in that book. And I really put a lot of emotion in it, and even now it’s still hard to look back and read it. But I wouldn’t change one word of it and I really hope that when I look back 10 years from now that I can say that maybe the greatest achievement I ever had was writing that book.
I actually could see it that way. The book is amazing. I was torn between laughing and crying all the time. It was quite an emotional ride.
Well, that means a lot to me... That’s music to my ears. You know, I have had a lot of people, especially women to say this, like you, that they laughed and cried… They’re much more forgiving for me for being the bad boy that I was sometimes. For some reason the men… There are a lot of men, especially older men, who don’t like my behavior, whereas the women are much more understanding. Women are a little more compassionate to the ailings of the heart and being lonely, you know, sometimes that people make mistakes and doing things that aren’t necessarily the right thing to do. Like I said that women in general are much more accepting of my behavior in my book and are saying, “OK, he’s honest…”, and I’m happy with that. I’m glad I told the truth in my book, and I think I told a story where I didn’t try to paint myself as too much of a hero. You know, I didn’t want to write it myself like, well, I did everything perfect and never did anything wrong. Like so many of these wrestlers do in their books, they’re all so flawless. Like Shawn Michaels, if you read his book. He was so perfect and never did anything wrong, but at the same time he admits in his own book that he basically had a problem with the fact that I was being paid more than him. If you look at all the sports, like even the soccer team of Germany, you don’t have the players sabotaging each other because somebody’s being paid more. But in wrestling, that’s exactly what Shawn did. That’s what all our problems stemmed from. It was the fact that I was being paid more than him, even though I certainly earned the right to. I negotiated that payment, and it had nothing to do with money coming out of his pockets. So you can see that there’s some really bad people in wrestling like Shawn, and how they try to paint themselves up to be super-good Christian, but in fact they’re just as slimy and creepy as they get.
Well… Actually, I don’t know what to say now. Because that’s a kind of a weird ending to the interview.
[laughs] Well…
So, I’m searching for a… Well, actually, no. It’s – honest. I was about to say that that’s the great thing about you and your book, that everything you say now and today is so honest. We should appreciate that.
I appreciate you’re saying that. And… I’ll never change.
Please, don’t!
No, I can only stay the way I am.
Yeah, please don’t change. We like you the way you are.
Thank you.
So… again, thank you very much for the interview!
genickbruch.com
Thank you. I’ll never forget my German fans. I used to have a lot of great fans over there.
Probably not all of our readers know about it, so I’ve got to say it: You suffered a stroke in 2002 and your recovery was very cumbersome. So the most important thing I’ve got to ask you is: How are you today?
I’m OK. You know, it’s been a long year, and a lot of big things came out of that year. My book was a big breakthrough for me, it was something I put 7 years into, writing my autobiography. I tried to be as honest and interesting as possible, and that was a big thing for me. It was a lot of work that went into, the publicity and all that. And I think it was hard for me this year because I lost some good friends. I lost Crush, who was a really good friend of mine, and I lost Chris Benoit and his family in that horrible tragedy, and I went through my divorce, which was another blow for me, but all in all I’m… just like in my wrestling matches... I pulled myself back up and I kept marching on. Now I’m working on a second book, which I think will be a novel.
A novel?
Yeah, I’ll try to write a novel. I want to try something different.
That’s great to hear! I just wanted to tell you my sincere congratulations on your autobiography.
It’s still not available in Europe, unfortunately, but I ordered it from Canada and it’s amazing. I could hardly put it down.
I’m sure it will be on sale in Germany probably next fall. Maybe, that’s what I’m thinking. I hope that all my fans in Germany I used to have will get a chance to read my book and maybe understand my life a little better.
That’s just what I wanted to ask you – how was it, writing your very own autobiography? I mean, you had a long and illustrious career and, for me, reading it was extremely interesting.
Yeah, it was really… I think it was good for my soul. I kind of emptied everything out, this “spill my heart” kind of thing. I had a lot of things that I… A lot of great memories, a lot of regrets, a lot of great moments, all mixed together. The book is… A lot of people take it as a sad book but I don’t think of it as a sad book, there’s just a lot of sad things that happened. For the most part I’m pretty grateful about what I got out of my career. I always loved being Bret Hart, the Hitman wrestling character, because I thought he was the most realistic wrestling character of them all. He was the only one that really… It wasn’t a character, I don’t know, it was kind of a real person. I don’t know. Some people say that I believed all the stuff that I was doing, but it’s not that I believed it, I just… Maybe I wanted to believe it. I wanted to make it believable.
Actually, I think that was always the strength of the Hitman character, that it was not one of these exchangeable cartoony things. You know, you have these gimmick names, and then you turn or change to another promotion and then you have another character. But you’ve always been Bret Hart, the genuine thing. My impression was that you were always extremely popular especially in the European market, so I was wondering, what do you think were the reasons behind it?
I think it was all these different ingredients, all sort of coming together at the right time. European wrestling fans were just starting to get really familiar with American wrestling. I think they really liked the spit ‘n polish of the WWF kind of, back from the old wrestling that they had in Germany and even in England, there were a lot of older wrestlers, and wrestling was almost like carnival kind of wrestling. And I think when WWF put their key focus on all the lights and the music, it just made a whole new world for wrestling fans in Europe. I think Hulk Hogan was the first guy, but he wasn’t around long enough to quite win the hearts of all the fans. I think the fans in Germany and England of course loved Hulk Hogan, when he was at the top of the heat in those days but he kind of stepped away from the game about that time, and that allowed the opportunity for me to surface not long after the Warrior was… like after Wembley, England. The timing was right for wrestling fans in Europe looking for a champion, a wrestler that they could identify with, and I think because of my style of wrestling and because of my look… I had a kind of a sexy but aggressive look, almost like Michael Jackson with the leather jacket, I don’t know. It all complemented my style, and I think it was just the right thing at the right time.
The thing I had always loved about the fans that I had in Europe, in Germany and in England was that once they loved me they never stopped loving me, they always loved me just the way I was, and they never forgot me. They always wanted me just to be exactly the way I was.
You said that you got a lot from your heart with your autobiography, and you said that people think it’s a sad book, but actually when I finished reading it I had the feeling that you’ve kind of “made peace with the past”, that you’ve kind of spilled it all out. I was wondering if there were any reactions from your former peers, given the fact that you praised certain people and criticized others quite candidly…
You know, I haven’t heard from any of them. Mick Foley for example just called me a few weeks ago and told me that he loved the book, and he had some really flattering things to say about it. But other than that I don’t think I’ve heard from… There were a few wrestlers that I’ve sent the book to, like Steve Austin, Roddy Piper, King Kong Bundy, Jim Neidhart, but I haven’t really heard back from any of them yet. I don’t know that I will, I think. Some of them might not be too upset whereas others would be. But I really don’t think I said too much about people’s characters, I just told about real situations, things that happened, and you can judge the rest as you see fit, I think. I know that I had a lot of thoughts with family members and friends of mine and things like that where I had to think really hard whether it was OK for me to say this or OK for me to say that, but I think in the end I don’t have any regrets about one word in that book, because any wrestlers that have any problem with the book, they can kiss my ass. I really don’t care what they think of it.
I mean I hope that they like it. Hopefully there are wrestlers like some of the older wrestlers like Bundy and Jim Neidhart, that they can read that book and enjoy the trip down memory lane and remember all the memories, and remember their own memories that will come out of reading my book. I think it’s a stimulant, a way to remember things and to appreciate how hard we all worked, as I wasn’t the only one wrestling hard in those days. There are lots of wrestlers working really hard and doing that hard schedule, and I think it’s important to document the truth, you know. And I think wrestling too often erases the truth to prop up a storyline around it that’s all faked, and pretend that no one ever knows what really goes on in wrestling. And I think when you read my book you get the truth, finally get the truth about wrestling. And I think that’s sorely been missing in every book that I’ve read about wrestling. In the last ten years all these books came out… Like Hulk Hogan’s book was… It had to be the worst book ever written by a pro wrestler. Diamond Dallas Page and all these guys that come up with autobiographies, but they never tell any truth in there. Just, you know, just drop a lot of names and make up a lot of stories about their childhood and things like that, but I don’t think anyone cares. People want to know the story about the wrestler.
Yes, I especially enjoyed all the details you wrote in your book, and all these little stories from life backstage and from your travels. I was wondering if you could tell us about the most enjoyable memory that spontaneously comes to your mind? Maybe something that made you smile while you were writing it down...?
Oh, there’s just quite a few. I always loved the story about the little midget that we glued the fur to his head, little wolf-man, but we called him Wolfie. But that was in Stampede wrestling, and it was one of that stories about him and how emotional he was. It was just a funny little wrestling moment. There are a lot of funny little moments. I like the story about Jim Neidhart and King Kong Bundy and me driving around Madison Square Garden, trying to get away from the fans, and then turning around and driving right back into the same mob and going through the whole thing twice. And the fans trying to tip our car over and pounding on the windows. It was just kind of funny, the life being a bad guy sometimes was…
But you know, the truth is, my manuscript was twice as long as the actual published book. I had well over 1100 pages of finished manuscript and they had to cut that down to 553 pages. They really did a good job in editing my book down but there’s still a lot of stories. I don’t know if they’ll be used for anything else but… yeah, there’s still a whole 500 pages of stories and more details and more stuff of countries and places and things like that.
I would not have been averse to further one or two thousand pages.
[laughs] Well, you never know. Maybe they’ll one day release a bigger version. I know I got lots of stories and lots of things that could be somehow worked into a second or third book. I find it’s a good outlet for me to speak my mind. Maybe, The Rock can be a movie star and I can be an author.
Yes, well, Mick Foley went that way, so… Of course I wish you good luck with your novel! What are you going to write about?
I’d like to write a book about… Maybe a historical fiction book that might be in Italy of some of my memories of being there. But that’s just an idea. I don’t really have a fixed plan yet. I think in a couple of months I’ll have a fixed plan and an outline so that I’ll know what my book will be about, a topic, and I might have to go back to Europe to do my research, which might be fun. I could end up in Germany. I would love to go to Germany.
Or Austria. Or Switzerland…
Yeah, I really miss all those places. I would love to go back to all of them. Sometimes these fan wrestling shows, they sometimes bring me out and I get a chance to see fans again for a little bit. I always loved those kinds of things and I still believed the best fans I ever had in the world were in Germany and specifically in Europe. They were more passionate and they really loved me over there. And I never forgot that, and always tried to get back and stay in touch with the audience there. Even though I long since faded out of memory I’ll never forget the audience that I had.
Let’s get back to the things you wrote in your book. Even though it’s obvious that you still carry around some grudges against certain people, I had the impression that Vince McMahon doesn’t seem to be among those any longer. Is that true? How would you describe your rather complex relationship with Vince McMahon today?
Well, that sad truth of it all is that I wouldn’t be talking to you on the phone now wasn’t it for Vince McMahon. So no matter what I think of him or about what he did to me in the end I have to always remember what he did for me and how grateful I am for the opportunities that he did give me. You know, I had a very good relationship with Vince. When I look back at my time and life, I can be fair enough and understand that he was under a lot of pressure at that time, too. I don’t forgive him for what he did but I also understand… You have to understand that from the first day that I had worked with Vince McMahon I knew that he was a very ruthless, cold-hearted businessman, and that he makes some really calculating decisions. I knew Vince was a bit of a snake, all those years. When you’re dealing with a snake, you know, like that Crocodile Guy down in Australia, when you’re playing with a stingray you know what you’re dealing with. And when something bad happens… Well, you just understand the risks involved. It’s a little bit like that with Vince. For him it really was a business decision. Not a wise one, maybe, but still. But Shawn and Hunter is a different thing.
Yes, I was wondering… When you got inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2006, did you meet Shawn Michaels? Or Triple H?
No. I didn’t see him. And I didn’t see Hunter either. In fact, I asked Vince McMahon to specifically ask them to stay away from me. I don’t have any interest of seeing any of them and I don’t want to hear their phony apologies and handshakes, stuff like that. As far as that goes I told the same to Hulk Hogan. I didn’t want him to come up with phony handshakes and trying to be my friend and then stab me in the back as many times as he did. The wrestlers in the dressing room, like I said in my book, it’s a little bit like a platoon of soldiers. We’re all together, we all worked together. And when you get betrayed by one of your own guys, like whether it’s Shawn or Hunter, to be that unprofessional and a liar, and to be just cowards in the dressing room. And after I worked so hard I think to me it’s unforgivable. I would never forgive either one of them.
Now that I have the chance to speak to a really experienced wrestler, I’d have a question on the wrestling business in general. You stated in an earlier interview, and it’s also very obvious from the stories in your book, that the gruesome schedule and the constant competition and pressure to get to or stay at the top, is the sad key to many of the problems the business had and probably still has – I’m thinking of steroids, drugs, alcohol abuse etc. Do you think the situation has changed over the years, and what do you think about recent measures like the “WWE Wellness Policy”?
I think it’s overdue. I still believe strongly that the wrestlers need a union. But I think that it’s a step in the right direction for sure. And WWE is trying now to reach out for some of the older wrestlers that have got drug problems and trying to… I think they’re really doing everything they can to try to prevent another wrestler from unnecessarily dying from an addiction to prescription pills, which is epidemic in wrestling, and I still know several wrestlers who have serious issues with this kind of stuff. I think too many wrestlers have died and the wrestlers themselves are tired of it. There’s no excuse now for any more wrestlers to die from these drug problems, there are enough wrestlers that are aware of it and we know each other and care about each other, and I think you’re going to see a lot more intervention where people are stepping in and being brother to their brothers, you know. They can’t keep letting these guys die. So many of them have underestimated their problems, and I think that it’s good and I think that a lot of them, that the Wellness Policy… Hopefully it’s not a double standard where some guys get to take steroids because they are married to Vince’s daughter or something like that.
The truth is that when wrestling was really “clean” it was when I was champion in WWF in the 90s. That was the only time that I know of that pro wrestling was steroid-free, when it was about the wrestling and not about the bodies. And not long later they shifted all that. WWF dropped their drug testing policy within a week of my Survivor Series match with Shawn in Montreal. One week later they discarded their drug policy and pretty much ever since have wrestlers been back on steroids.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that helped anybody. I don’t know if steroids are the big evil as everyone says they are, but the one thing I do know is that you don’t need steroids in wrestling. If they want to stamp steroids and drugs… They’ve got to use a firm hand and they’ve got to start to put a strong drug testing policy in place. But in doing that… The simple truth is that the only reason that wrestlers take drugs most of the time is, like you said, because the schedule is so tough and it’s so grueling and it’s weight training and wrestling every day and tough days on the road, long trips. It’s a hard life. But I know that the schedule the wrestlers have today isn’t nearly as hard as the schedule I had about 10 years ago, 12 years ago. That really was working 300 days a year, every year.
It’s unbelievable, actually.
Yeah, I don’t know how I did it. I’m sitting here talking to you today and I just had both my knees operated on two days ago. And I’ve got bandages and wraps all around my knee, I have to walk around my house on crutches. Well, you still carry around all your wounds… That’s one of the problems of wrestling today, that so many of these wrestlers, they beat themselves up so badly that they can barely walk and their knees are gone, their hips are gone and some of the wrestlers have bad necks and bad shoulders and all these different injuries. And then they start taking pills to deal with the pain of all these injuries and that’s after they get fired from wrestling and their careers are on the down swing and they’re not going anywhere, and then they get depressed and they start taking more pills and some of them get alcohol problems and when you mix all these things together, these wrestlers, they’ve got nowhere to go, they’re not working anymore, big men, they’re heavy, all kinds of cardio-vascular conditions become a problem. And they’ve got nowhere to go. You know you have all these books of lost and lonely wrestlers that have no place to work anymore, and I think it’s a sad statement when the business doesn’t look after their own. They hire all kinds of outside people but they would never hire a wrestler – they’re starting to do that now like to hire wrestlers especially to do corporate jobs and work maybe in Connecticut and stuff like that, but I think it’s important to use the wrestlers as part of the game, keep them working as much as possible, let them be part again. And hopefully that will change soon.
You said that you would be in favor of a possible wrestler’s union. Do you think that the formation of a union could happen somewhere in the future?
I don’t see it happening. There’s nobody important enough or powerful enough to pull a union off. The only one I’ve ever seen that could’ve made a union happen was Hulk Hogan. Steve Austin and The Rock were never that high in their standing. If Steve Austin or The Rock had said, “Look, I’m not wrestling anymore, I’m gonna go on strike with the wrestlers and we’re gonna have a union,” I think Vince would’ve said, “OK. Steve Austin, you can go. Rock, you can go.” He would’ve let them go and Vince would’ve struggled all without them, and they would have ended up in WCW or wherever. But Hulk Hogan back in the 80s, there was nobody that could’ve replaced him. If Hulk Hogan would’ve said, “Look, I want a union for all the wrestlers,” we would’ve got a union. It was that simple. He was the only one who had that kind of power but he was too greedy and selfish to understand his position at that time. He ended up telling on everybody that was trying to get a union together and ratted everybody out, and the guys that were trying to do a union all got fired, like Jesse Ventura. Hulk Hogan sort of let the cat out of the bag about talks in the dressing room about a union. But I think John Cena or Batista, these kind of guys today, they don’t have that kind of power to make a stand for a union. And a lot of them are programmed. Like I saw John Cena when he was at… I like John Cena, but he was on Larry King and he said that having a union wouldn’t solve the problems. But I think he’s wrong about that. Having a union would solve a lot of the problems that the wrestlers have today. Even rodeo clowns or stuntmen or lacrosse or football or… Every sport has a union, the players have protection and have benefits, and things are set in place to protect their players. It’s just a natural thing that they have everywhere. But wrestlers are unfortunately too stupid to get a union together… Too stupid and too gutless to form a union.
But, as you said, when they get fired they have nowhere to go. So they don’t really have a choice, right?
I think somebody smart, like a Jesse Ventura type of wrestler in the dressing room today might be able to start formulating plans on how to get a union together. I don’t know how, I think personally that the WWF should allow the wrestlers a union or give them a union. But there’s a lot of controversy right now in wrestling because of the steroids and drugs and all the problems. I think the tragedy of Chris Benoit murdering his family deeply hurt everybody in wrestling.
It might have been a wake-up call, too.
Yeah well, I hope so. But like I said, there are a lot of wrestlers that are looking to be the next statistic in this horrible dilemma with wrestlers and their drug problems.
Now that you tell me all these sad stories I remember a quote from your book where you said that despite everything you always felt the urge to “defend wrestling like a religion”. Given the fact that you were kind of “born into” the wrestling business I was wondering if, looking back now, was there any point in your career or even today when you thought that you rather not had this “natural path” laid out before you, and that you rather had chosen something else as your career?
No. I think wrestling gave me a great life. You know, if you just look at the bad things that happened, like the thing that happened with Owen Hart, some of the horrible things that happened, that kind of ruined it for me. But I think of the good memories that I did have with my brother in wrestling, and even wrestling with him together, wrestling in Germany and wrestling in Madison Square Garden for Wrestlemania X and some of those great memories, I cherish them forever. And I think what happened with Owen and so many of my wrestling friends that died like Curt Hennig and Davey Boy Smith and… Unfortunately it goes on and on… But I had so many great memories with all these people, and I’m grateful for what wrestling gave to me and them. Unfortunately, the sad thing is that so many of them are not here today to remember those things with me. You know, I always thought that my brother Owen would sit on my back deck at my house here in Calgary and drink coffee and look out at the mountains and reminisce about jokes that he pulled and matches that we had and people that we met. I always thought that Curt Hennig would drive up from Minnesota some day with his kids and his wife and be there. My heart aches for all the guys that I lost along the way.
But I still got a lot of good friends like Roddy Piper and Steve Austin and Jim Neidhart, people that I can still connect with on all these memories. You’ve got to pick up and move on, you can’t let life get you down too much, especially if you’re one of the lucky ones. I think in my case with my stroke I can’t help but feel sometimes that death has come calling for so many wrestlers over the years and I think in my case it seems like death came looking for me in 2002 and came to take me away like everyone else. For whatever reason I was lucky that I didn’t die and I struggled back from my concussion and I’m pretty close to 100% these days. I feel blessed that I’ve got a second chance. So everything I do today is… I love life and every day is a blessing now. I just want to have a great life every day and whatever happens tomorrow I just get back to pull myself up, just keep going all the time. I value every moment that I have left.
I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad that you are well and… You sound almost happy. Are you happy?
Well, I’m getting there. My divorce this last year was quite hard on me. Other than that I have lots of things that I look forward to in the next five years. I think there’s a good possibility that my book can be incorporated into a movie. I have some very strong interests from people that are interested in the film rights to my book. And so maybe someday my book will come to the big screen and that’ll be a thrill for me.
That would be great! I would really look forward to it.
I don’t know what will happen to my book as far as film goes, but I would love to see it be a TV series, maybe a 3, 4 or 5 year TV series. I’d like to see them do my book in four parts, just like the chapters. Like that whole part on Stampede Wrestling and the early days, when I wrestled in Germany and in England, before the WWF became the big thing that it was. I think there’s a lot of history there that people find really interesting. I’d like to see all that brought out like a really good TV series that captures the real flavor what pro wrestling was for me before WWF. Then I think I’d like to see the Tag Team years with Jim Neidhart, those chapters incorporated into the same kind of film. And I think that the tragedy with my brother Owen and the things that happened to me after would make for a great TV series too, to put all that into film.
It may be wishful thinking on the fans’ part, but could you imagine returning to the wrestling business in any way? Not as an active wrestler, of course, but maybe in connection with the next generation of Hart wrestlers? Because Nattie Neidhart recently gave her debut at WWE Smackdown…
I never rule anything out but I don’t think so. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, it’s just that I don’t see any things for me there to do. I’m limited to a few options, like I could be a referee, a commissioner…
Or a manager..?
Or I could be a manager. I could be… You know, something along those lines. But to me that doesn’t sound like very much fun. I don’t really want to be remembered for being a manager like Bobby Heenan, it wouldn’t mean much to me. But at the same time as far as something seemed like the right thing to do.. You know, I would like to help Nattie, Harry Smith, something that was worthwhile. I never rule anything out and they can always keep me in mind, and they can always ask me about any idea.
Like the WWE, they call me all the time for different things. They asked me a few weeks ago if I would do their 15 year anniversary RAW. I said that unfortunately I was doing the publicity for my book at that time and that I couldn’t do it, but the fact that they asked me... I like the fact that they can come to me and ask me. When Vince McMahon called me and asked me about the DVD we had a good talk and he ended up letting me do the DVD the way I wanted to, and I appreciate that. It meant a lot to me burying the hatchet with Vince McMahon and that he did such a nice job with my DVD with me and let me be part of it again. I was very grateful for that and in a lot of ways that was the peace between us that he in essence gave me access to my films and to my archives and allowed me to keep my memory alive. I know that some people saw my DVD as an example of a sell-out, to admit that I worked with Vince McMahon again. In fact, my wife in Italy, she never saw me in the same light, because she didn’t agree. She didn’t want me to do anything with WWF again. But I think she was wrong and it was my decision. I think it’s important for me to make sure that people can remember me. I think it was critical for me to do that DVD and allow another generation of kids and younger people to see some of my matches and understand that I was the wrestler that I was.
For me it is indifferent… If they know that I won’t do anything with the WWF and they can just go to hell but… well… fine, but nobody’s going to remember me ten years from now when nobody’s got any pictures of me or a video of me except for maybe on Youtube or something like that. I really wanted to be remembered when I finished wrestling every night or I when came back after PPVs where I wrestled Roddy Piper or Steve Austin or Shawn Michaels or whoever it was that I worked with, I was like “That was a really great match and I hope someday people could see all that, and that it would be on a Best of Bret Hart video or something.” When I had that big fallout with Vince McMahon I thought that everything I ever did was going to be locked up and sealed up somewhere in a basement, and that watching a Bret Hart match would be like something a collector would have, you know. And I’m grateful for that fact that the WWE has allowed my memory and my character to sort of stay alive. You know, I think for years they tried to kill my character off. After I left the company they really did erase me completely, and I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that they erased Chris Benoit the way the have, or even my brother Owen. I hope that in the next few years they’ll induct Owen into the Hall of Fame and maybe do a DVD on Owen, because I think that he had some great wrestling matches and I don’t want to see that he’d be forgotten either.
I was thinking about this the other day, as it’s 10 years ago next year that your brother passed away. Are there any talks about inducting him into the Hall of Fame?
Yeah, there’s a possibility on that. I don’t know, they haven’t talked to me about it but they did talk to me a few years ago about inducting my father and Owen, and I let them know that I would be interested and that I would have no problem inducting either one of them or both of them, and that I feel that they have a right to be there, and that they would want me to come.
I hope that the next time that I have a chance to speak at the Hall of Fame that I’ll.. I’m sure I’d be better than the last time. Not that I did bad the last time but the next time I do a Hall of Fame speech I hope that I’ll be a bit more relaxed, that I can be more myself. That I can have more fun with it than at the last time. I think the last time I was pretty stressed out.
You seemed tense…
Yeah, I was more nervous than I wanted to be.
Let’s get back to your book for a last time. I really liked the cartoon from your book. It was so funny! You also write about your “blackboard drawings” quite often, and how much they amused the other wrestlers. Have you ever thought of publishing cartoons?
Well, I have a bunch of cartoons that I could publish. But they’re not very ..erm.. politically correct. And they’re quite ..erm… dirty. So I’d have to think about how I could put them out. I think that’s something that I’ll do in the next years. I’ve been doing cartoons for years, I have lots of cartoons. I always tell myself that if you can make someone laugh that’s all that matters, make someone smile with a cartoon that’s a good thing. I’d like to try to do something like that in the next few years.
Yes, that would be great because you really got the characters down perfectly. It’s amazing!
Well, thank you. Hopefully my German fans would, if I do come out with a book like that, maybe would buy them. European people are so much more open minded than over here sometimes. They have much more of a free spirit over there. So, are you in Austria or in Germany?
I’m in Austria.
Yeah, I remember Austria. I remember going to the gym and stuff like that, and the girls would always be showering with the guys. It was really casual, and I was always amazed by that. You could get into a Jacuzzi like that. Some girls were working out with you and then everybody just climbed into the Jacuzzi naked and they were not even paying attention to it, whereas in North America nobody does stuff like that. You’d get arrested.
Yeah, probably.
I always loved Germany and Austria and all those places. Even in Italy, I have a lot of great memories from there. Part of my heart is in Europe all the time. I’m thinking of a book that I could write that would allow me to be in Europe. I’d like to do a lot of research. I think I love the history of Europe and, you know, just stay connected with things over there.
I’m sure your fans over here would welcome you with open arms.
I hope so. I don’t know when I’ll get back over there, I hope when my book comes out I can do some book signings or something like that over in Austria, Germany… I would love to get back to all those places, and I think maybe next year I’m going to rent a car somewhere, and then I’ll drive all down Europe for maybe six months to just visit.
We’ll be waiting for you!
I hope I’ll see you there.
So, let’s go to the final question. How do you see yourself in the history of wrestling? What do you think you will be remembered for, or what would you personally like to be remembered for?
Well, I hope that I could be remembered as one of the great artists of all time in wrestling. Vince McMahon said in my DVD that I was perhaps the greatest storyteller in wrestling. I appreciate that and I like that. I like to be remembered for that, so if that’s how people would summarize what I contributed to wrestling, to be a storyteller, I don’t take that as an insult at all but as a compliment. I think I really was a good storyteller in wrestling and I take great pride in the fact that I wrestled for as many years that I did and never hurt anybody. You know, I was a very physical wrestler and if you watch my matches they were very intense, and very real. But nobody ever got hurt wrestling me. And that’s an amazing statement to make because everybody gets hurt in wrestling.
And I think I want to be remembered to be a hard worker and for having a lot of integrity. With the things that happened with me and Vince McMahon and the WWF, with the fallout at the end, I think that in the end you can look back on all that and say that Bret Hart never lost his integrity. I kept my integrity all way through it, I told Vince McMahon the truth and relied on him to be honest with me, and he wasn’t. I like that every day I can look at myself in the mirror and I’m very happy with who I am, whereas I don’t think that Vince McMahon cares much about whether he was honest or not. But I do. When he looks in the mirror I’m sure he must see a lot of things that he… He probably cut a lot of throats to make it to the top, maybe that’s the way he is. I never had to cut a lot of throats to get to the top, I’m happy that I was always a straight shooter in a business where there were very few straight shooters.
That’s also the impression I got from your book.
Yeah, but there’s a lot of good guys too. You can’t judge them all by one or two situations. Vince McMahon… Well, there’s one hot place waiting for Vince McMahon, with flames licking the walls.
Well, I hope you still keep remembering me over there and I get a chance to come over there somewhere in the next year. I’d love to go back to Germany, and hopefully when I do I see you.
Bret, thank you very much for this interview. Again, it was a great honour for me to speak with you.
Thank you, and thank you for buying the book and taking the time to read it.
Oh, the pleasure was all mine! It’s great.
I hope it will be a success in Germany like it was a success in Canada. That would be a big thing for me because I did this book my way, I didn’t do it with WWF, and I didn’t do it with a ghost-writer. I really did it all by myself and I spent 7 years writing that book and I gave everything I had in that book. And I really put a lot of emotion in it, and even now it’s still hard to look back and read it. But I wouldn’t change one word of it and I really hope that when I look back 10 years from now that I can say that maybe the greatest achievement I ever had was writing that book.
I actually could see it that way. The book is amazing. I was torn between laughing and crying all the time. It was quite an emotional ride.
Well, that means a lot to me... That’s music to my ears. You know, I have had a lot of people, especially women to say this, like you, that they laughed and cried… They’re much more forgiving for me for being the bad boy that I was sometimes. For some reason the men… There are a lot of men, especially older men, who don’t like my behavior, whereas the women are much more understanding. Women are a little more compassionate to the ailings of the heart and being lonely, you know, sometimes that people make mistakes and doing things that aren’t necessarily the right thing to do. Like I said that women in general are much more accepting of my behavior in my book and are saying, “OK, he’s honest…”, and I’m happy with that. I’m glad I told the truth in my book, and I think I told a story where I didn’t try to paint myself as too much of a hero. You know, I didn’t want to write it myself like, well, I did everything perfect and never did anything wrong. Like so many of these wrestlers do in their books, they’re all so flawless. Like Shawn Michaels, if you read his book. He was so perfect and never did anything wrong, but at the same time he admits in his own book that he basically had a problem with the fact that I was being paid more than him. If you look at all the sports, like even the soccer team of Germany, you don’t have the players sabotaging each other because somebody’s being paid more. But in wrestling, that’s exactly what Shawn did. That’s what all our problems stemmed from. It was the fact that I was being paid more than him, even though I certainly earned the right to. I negotiated that payment, and it had nothing to do with money coming out of his pockets. So you can see that there’s some really bad people in wrestling like Shawn, and how they try to paint themselves up to be super-good Christian, but in fact they’re just as slimy and creepy as they get.
Well… Actually, I don’t know what to say now. Because that’s a kind of a weird ending to the interview.
[laughs] Well…
So, I’m searching for a… Well, actually, no. It’s – honest. I was about to say that that’s the great thing about you and your book, that everything you say now and today is so honest. We should appreciate that.
I appreciate you’re saying that. And… I’ll never change.
Please, don’t!
No, I can only stay the way I am.
Yeah, please don’t change. We like you the way you are.
Thank you.
So… again, thank you very much for the interview!
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