Biography: Bret "Hitman" Hart | Full Documentary | Biography

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[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - Ever since I was a little kid, I loved drawing cartoons. ♪ ♪ If I couldn't have the toys I wanted, I'd draw them instead. I sketched Snoopy and the Red Baron, werewolves and Frankenstein. But what I drew the most were the wrestlers that I loved. ♪ ♪ Guys like Killer Kowalski, Waldo Von Erich, Dr. Death, Mr. X, and my favorite, the Zebra Kid. ♪ ♪ I loved wrestling so much that I even drew myself. ♪ ♪ And I dreamed that one day, I'd be the champion of the world. ♪ ♪ [distant cheering] ♪ ♪ - Dad, look, it's Bret "The Hitman" Hart. Bret. ♪ ♪ - We're not looking at a character. We are looking at a guy. His name is Bret Hart. - Go get them, champ. - It wasn't comic book writing. It wasn't storytelling. It wasn't fables. It wasn't make believe. ♪ ♪ - Wow. - Bret was the first superstar that you actually saw a human being in. announcer: Bret Hart! Quite a tremendous ovation for the Hitman. - We all wanted to be the kid that got the glasses. announcer: Yes, a nice gift for a youngster by the ring side announcer: High fiver. A Hitman Bret Hart fan if there ever was. [laughs] - He had the it factor all along. He was like magic. They just were drawn to him like a magnet. ♪ ♪ - As a kid, I would sit down in front of the TV and pay attention to Bret's matches more than anything else, the same way I would do if I was watching Disney or my favorite film because his matches were so captivating, they were so realistic. - He just had a cool factor. You know, he had the shades, the leather jacket. He made pink and black cool. ♪ ♪ - If I got pulled over for speeding and name dropped that Bret Hart was my uncle, I'd get out of the speeding ticket. It definitely helped make me a cooler kid in school. And he was just kind of the it thing. - And I'm sure a pro wrestler such as yourself will appreciate all the closet space, Hitman. - Ew, this place has got old man stink. - He took every aspect of being champion to heart. - Straightforward, honest, charismatic, that was a real champion. - The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. The excellence of execution. I've lived for wrestling. ♪ ♪ And my family has lived for wrestling. ♪ ♪ And we've died for wrestling. ♪ ♪ - We both collapsed in each other's arms, just hugging each other, just crying. We still grieve. We still miss him. ♪ ♪ - It's not a sad story. ♪ ♪ He faced adversity in real life, and he battled through it. ♪ ♪ And he came out on the other side with his head held high, with his pride, his respect, still intact. ♪ ♪ - I'm not getting into it to be an average wrestler or make a living. I wanna be the best wrestler that ever put on a pair of boots. I want everyone to go, "He's the best." ♪ ♪ - The whole mechanisms of a family of 12 kids is hard for anyone to understand. ♪ ♪ And we've always been really grateful for how my dad raised all of us. He was a very hardworking guy. Every single day, he got up in the morning and made breakfast for everybody. He'd make 12 dishes. Six dishes would be for the big ones, and then he'd make six slightly smaller ones. And you were not allowed to leave the table till you ate everything 'cause my dad had grew up in such a tough life growing up. ♪ ♪ He was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 1915. He was dirt poor. His father got swindled in some kind of a land deal. ♪ ♪ He took up squatter's rights on the property until they got thrown off the property, and they end up with his father and his two sisters and his mom living in a tent in the freezing Saskatchewan prairie for two or three winters... ♪ ♪ Living off whatever he could hunt, rabbits and whatever birds and stuff he could shoot with a slingshot. I sometimes wonder how he made it through those days. ♪ ♪ - My grandfather's salvation, his refuge, his shelter, was the YMCA, where he ended up taking up amateur wrestling really as just a way to stay warm. - And he takes beating after beating after beating, but he's getting better and better and better. And he had came from such a low place that this was his way of asserting himself in the world. He winds up in New York, and it's in New York that he meets the famous wrestling promoter Toots Mondt. He takes a look at Stu, at that time, this chiseled Greek statue of a man. - My grandfather was, as we say, jacked. ♪ ♪ - My dad and a bunch of wrestlers all went to Long Beach, Long Island. They were all on the beach, and they were all flirting with my mom, and my mom was pretty hot stuff back in those days. My dad somehow caught my mom's eye, and my mom took a shine to him. - My mother and father got married December 31st, 1947, in one of the worst snowstorms in New York history. And my mother used to say, "I've been snowed under ever since." - Stu was working as a wrestler, but he wanted to go home, he wanted to go back to Alberta, and he had dreams of being a promoter himself. There was a Calgary promotion at the time, He bought their territory for $50,000. He's got some grand ideas, Stu, at the time. - When we were growing up, it's hard to imagine, but we lived in this 22-room mansion. ♪ ♪ - It was kind of like a cross between a hotel where maybe all the staff quit and a little bit like an orphanage. ♪ ♪ We were right on the edge of the city limits back in those days. - It was, at one time, a hospital for the Red Cross. ♪ ♪ Although it was very stately, it was clearly a well lived-in house, you know, as a lot of houses when you have that number of children. - Smith, Bruce, Keith, then came Wayne, Dean, then we got our first girl, Ellie, and then there was Georgia, and then I came along and then my sister Alison came along. And then my brother Ross came along, my sister Diana came along, and finally the last, my youngest brother Owen. ♪ ♪ I had a really vivid imagination. I loved cowboys and Indians. I loved the Wild West. Davy Crockett was a big hero. It was always an adventure. It was a guy that handled the wrestling bear, terrible Ted, up in Calgary and work in the territory. And my dad had let him live on the property. He lived under the back porch of the house, and it was in a little mesh cage. My dad would always have fudgesicles in the freezer, and you could take the fudgesicles and you could drip the ice cream on your toes, and that bear would lick your feet clean. I remember, my feet were like black on the bottom. I mean, they were so dirty. My mom going "Oh, you took a bath?" It's like, "Yeah, I took a bath. You know, the bear cleaned my feet." ♪ ♪ I never even thought much about it. It's like I thought, I kind of assumed everybody had a bear under their porch. - Dad did a lot of the cooking, the big stuff, you know, maybe two or three huge turkeys. Stu had all of these connections with the grocers where he would get the distressed food and stuff. - They would give him all the fruit that they were unable to sell. So he would sometimes come home with, like, 50 pounds of bananas. - And we'd be having bananas and milk for breakfast for several months. ♪ ♪ - I spent every Friday night from the time I was 4 1/2 or 5 years old around wrestlers. Gene Kiniski and Killer Kowalski and Pat O'Connor and Lou Fez. I can even remember Bruno Sammartino coming up from my father, and I earned my first money in pro wrestling, selling programs, and I made pretty good money for a five-year-old. I'd make 2 or 3 bucks a weekend and buy stuff for myself. And my dad had a feud going with a guy named Archie the Stomper. I can remember Archie the Stomper going on TV and talking about he was gonna tear up the Hart house down brick by brick. - Of everybody with the last name of H-A-R-T. Every single one of them. - Until he found my mom, and my dad, he was gonna pile drive my mom on the interstate, basically scared the hell out of me with his promo. And then I watched him pull into the yard in a yellow Corvette, knocked on the door, and my mom came running down, but she opened the door a crack and "Oh, Archie," and she had the New York accent and all that. She gave him a hug, gave him his check. They talked for about 20, 30 seconds, and he walked off and got in his car and drove off. ♪ ♪ What's going on here? Why is my mom being nice to Archie the Stomper, especially after last night, he was biting my dad's head? I started to understand how wrestling really works. At the same time, defending wrestling at school all the time. Growing up in a wrestling family the way we did, six months, you might be doing really good, and then it's six months where it drops off horribly, and I always remember as a kid it always reflected in my clothes, my shoes and my shoelaces, your knees are all torn out, and kids would make fun of you for the clothes that you wore. ♪ ♪ - When your dad's not a policeman or a doctor or a lawyer, when your dad's a professional wrestler, and there's 12 of you and you're wearing hand-me-downs, it had its challenges. They called us Hart fart, and we hated that. - I was always pretty defensive about that stuff, I think more so defensive of the wrestling. When somebody came up and told me that wrestling was all bullshit and none of it was real and your dad wasn't really a tough guy and "my dad can beat your dad up," that was time to throw down, where I would beat a kid with a full Nelson or a sleeper hold or a Boston crab on them right on the grass. It was a big deal to me to go out there and defend the Hart name, and I never lost a fight at school ever. ♪ ♪ - It didn't matter if we dressed funny or if we were different. We were the Hart family. Or my dad would say, "The Hart boys are coming. The Hart boys are coming." - I slept most of my life in this room here with four of my brothers. There's five of us in the room there most of the time, if not more. That's where a lot of hijinks and wrestling took place in. In the middle, between the two bedrooms, is my mom's office, where all the calls came in. [phone rings] The phones never stopped ringing at the Hart house ever. - Making... Hello. ♪ ♪ - It was a grassroots business that my mother and father started, and it's like the little promotion that could. - I have $1,000 here where the winner of it, each boy has contributed $100, and they're going to have a wrestle royal in Great Falls next Sunday. - You'd go upstairs, and my mother would be in the office, booking plane flights, managing the bank account and signing checks. And then, in the basement, my dad would be training people. So you would hear people often screaming. [men yelling] ♪ ♪ - In the basement, this is, of course, the dungeon where Stu trains, you know, wannabe wrestlers, trains people that wanna break into the business. ♪ ♪ - [muted cry] - My grandfather had this deep passion for submission wrestling, where you basically put somebody in a real hold. It's meant to induce so much pain in them that they scream or they tap out. - He'd stretch you, and he'd twist you into a pretzel. - [groaning] - - Many of these fellas were looking at parts of their body they have never seen before. And to see guys actually vomit. - Guys defecating and crying and begging him, and blood vessels popping in their eyes, passing out in his arms. - Upstairs, you'd be in the kitchen, sipping Red Rose tea, and downstairs, somebody's screaming their lights out and, like, begging for mercy, and my grandfather's just having the time of his life. - My brothers would go down in the basement, and they would wrestle with my dad, and they would wrestle each other. He taught his sons how to make a living. announcer: That's Dan and Nick coming in, and hit Hard Knocks dynamite out of there. - If that's the way they wanna play it, they're gonna get double dose of their medicine next. - My brothers were doing it. Bruce and Keith were wrestling full time. - ...half as crazy as he makes out to be. - My brother Wayne was a referee. announcer: Wayne Hart, the referee. - When I was in high school, if you'd asked me, "What are you gonna be when you grow up? You're gonna be a pro wrestler?" I would have told you never, there's not a chance in the hell. ♪ ♪ You know, when I went out for the wrestling team, and I had the long hair, I remember coaches always saying, "You got to get a haircut," and I was like, "I'm not cutting my hair." And then I would win. My last year of high school wrestling, I was city and provincial champion. Ah, that's really funny. Of course, things change when you get your first girlfriend and drinking beer and loving life and having a good time. ♪ ♪ Last thing I wanted to do was wrestle. - Grab him, Dan! - I was a huge Beatles fan. I was a big Doors fan. I loved rock and roll music. I always loved Jim Morrison and the Doors because I like the way his hair was kind of like-- I like to think that my hair was like that. ♪ ♪ I went to the movie "Papillon" with Steve McQueen. It's one of my favorite movies as a kid. And I remember going, "That's what I wanna do. I wanna make movies." [projector whirring] I did enroll in film school, with no real guidance or plan. Here's our star. He's already behind my dad's house, and he couldn't drive. Me and a friend of mine bought an eight-millimeter movie camera. Damn lizard, destroying the whole City of Calgary. Our movie was gonna be called "The Lizard." I went to a pet store, and I bought an iguana that we were gonna make the monster in our movie. They looked so vicious and scary looking. We bought a bunch of model cars that looked like the cars we were driving around in those days. We had some of our friends pulling them on a string, and we had them crash and blow up and burst into flames. - [screaming] - Look at how bad his acting is. - [screams melodramatically] - We didn't really know what we were doing. We were actually so excited about buying a movie camera and just making movies that we started making the movie without a script and without any plans. And the big blow to us as a production company was that our lizard died. He croaked on us, and it was like, he's the star of the movie, It's like King Kong dying. So there went our movie. Okay, cut. We'll try something else. Iguana. I quit college and film school and everything. I just dropped out. I remember telling my friends, like, "I'm gonna try the wrestling thing," and it was like, "Really?" Like, they couldn't believe it. ♪ ♪ And I knew I was a good amateur wrestler, so I'm not getting into it to be a promoter's kid wrestler. I'm getting into wrestling to someday be the biggest star of my dad's territory. I'm gonna make this wrestling game work. announcer: This is the fourth of the Hart clan. Bret Hart, again with a big slam. He's got the abdominal stretch. And that's it. And there's your winner, young Bret Hart. - My dad's been working out with me a little this week. - He knows a little bit about the game. - Yeah, a little bit. - Okay, Bret, good to see you. Bret Hart. - The only reservation I ever had was, I didn't think he was big enough, and then, all of a sudden, his physique emerged. He got bigger, he got stronger. announcer: There's Bret Hart. - He was believable. He was likable. The fans took to him. announcer: Oh. Oh, look at that. Oh, did he he hit him. ♪ ♪ They got him, one, two, three. It goes to Bret Hart. This place has gone wild. - Like a lot of kids who grew up in Calgary in the 1970s, Stampede wrestling was a ritual, and it was something that you looked forward to on Saturday afternoons, and I do remember the boys in my elementary and junior high school, a lot of the times, at recess, would emulate the Hart boys. - I'm sure that me and Bruce and Keith are ready to fight it any way they want and give them any kind of match they want. - It was quite funny because I was like this kid that had been picked on, and all of a sudden, girls were telling me that my brother Bret is so cute, and I'd be like, "Okay, sure." ♪ ♪ - The fans loved the Harts so much. I mean, all the Harts, all of the eight boys, had some sort of dealings with the wrestling world. ♪ ♪ And then the four girls all wind up marrying wrestlers as well. - My mom, Ellie, is the oldest of the Hart girls. She ended up marrying Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart. He was my dad. - I'm gonna drop-kick you 60 feet all the way to the ceiling. - My aunt Georgia, she ended up following in my mom's footsteps. His name was B.J. Annis. My aunt Allison was also married to a wrestler named Ben Bassarab, and then the baby, my aunt Diana, she married Davey Boy Smith, the British Bulldog. Davey came over to wrestle for my grandfather. - Davey proposed to me outside on my dad's balcony. He said, "I've asked your dad and he gave me his blessing. I asked your mom, and she almost fainted." - It makes me laugh, thinking about my grandmother Helen. She started off not really liking wrestling, and her whole entire family ends up becoming a part of it, including her daughters. ♪ ♪ She was in over her head. ♪ ♪ - The posters. We need to... - In August of that year, of '84, my dad was quietly negotiating the sale of Stampede Wrestling and its TV rights to Vince McMahon and WWE. ♪ ♪ - My mom was always pressing my dad to get out of the business. He was hesitant, and he decided that he was gonna sell. - Vince bought the company for the TV network, and, as part of the deal, Stu was like, "I want you to give jobs to four of my guys," which were Bret, his son, Davey Boy Smith, his son-in-law, Dynamite Kid, and Jim Neidhart, who is another son-in-law. - Stu wanted to make sure that they were taken care of and had a place to go. Vince looked at all four and thought, "We definitely could use them." - He told me that I was gonna be a big star and they had big plans for me. And I was like, "That's bullshit. That'll never happen." Basically, Vince McMahon had no plans for Bret Hart. ♪ ♪ - There were people that believed in him, but Vince just wasn't totally sold on him, and Bret was struggling to find himself because there are only gonna be so many failed characters in WWE until Vince ended up just cutting them. - I was a bit more into Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones and Bret was Cat Stevens, the Bee Gees, Harry Chapin, Bob Dylan kind of stuff. And I loved Van Morrison. And he couldn't believe it. He's going, "Wow." He was, "I never thought you'd be a Van Morrison fan." And I'm like, "Oh, I love Van Morrison." ♪ ♪ - It was getting to that point with Julie where, you know, I hinted to my parents or my dad, especially, that I want to get married. Why don't you marry a doctor? You know, and I'm thinking, "I don't know any doctors are gonna be interested in me. That's wishful thinking on your part, not mine." ♪ ♪ - We eloped. We took Bret's best friend and this other friend of ours who was working at the restaurant that we would always go to on Friday night, 'cause we needed two witnesses. So Bret ran into the restaurant. "He's like, "George come on." He goes, "You gotta come with us, Julie and I are getting married." And so he came with us to City Hall, and after a judge basically told us that we were married, we went outside. He was, "Oh yeah, I got you a ring." Went and had a quick meal, and he had to go wrestle. - The night I got married, I wrestled Nick Bockwinkel for the AWA World Championship in Calgary at the Pavilion. And that was my honeymoon. I was convinced, absolutely totally convinced, that I was gonna have the first son, the first Hart boy. The baby's name is gonna be Stu. I'm gonna carry the legacy, and... But when they came and told me, like, "You've got a baby girl," it just floored me. It's like, "Wow, I got a girl." She was a really beautiful baby, and it was a very happy time for me and Julie. It wasn't long that Dallas was coming next, like, the next baby. So I kind of prepared myself and was like, "I am not gonna overthink this this time." And I didn't have a name. One of my brothers end up naming his kid Stuart. So the Stu Hart thing was gone. That wasn't gonna happen anymore. And the Dallas Cowboys were on TV. They were my favorite football team at that time. And I named him after the Dallas Cowboys. And he remind me a little bit a miniature version of King Kong Bundy. So he was immediately nicknamed Bundy back in those days. - He was a great dad. Bret was really hands on with our kids. 'Cause he was gone so much, like, that's all he did. He just stayed home. He didn't wanna go on anywhere. ♪ ♪ - And I can remember playing with my daughter. She was pushing a shopping cart, her toy one, around, and she was so excited she was gonna get me groceries, and we did stuff all afternoon. And I had to hide my suitcase. I had to bring it down the stairs and sneak out of the house because she would get so upset if she thought I was leaving again. ♪ ♪ - But it was always on the nights that my dad would have to sneak out and, you know, get on a plane to leave. I wish that he could have been there more, but I also, I think, felt so bad for my mom. ♪ ♪ - I would love to have stayed home, especially at that time, with two very young babies. - Welcome to the World Wrestling Entertainment, and welcome to the good old US of A. - Yeah, it's great to be here. Now I'm down in United States, I wanna really earn myself a niche here. I pretty much walked out the door, and, in a lot of ways, never came back, and I was gone at least 300 days a year every year. announcer: Bret Hart, from Calgary, Canada, following in his father's footsteps into the ranks of professional wrestling. - Bret had been used to being a top star in Calgary. He was the promoter's son, and incredible talent. announcer: Body slam by Hart and, whoa, tremendous stomp in there as well. announcer: Back at rope and coming off. Whoa. - But when Bret came into the WWE, he didn't really fit into the upper echelon as far as size, drawing power, personality. - He didn't have the confidence. The company wasn't totally sold on him. At one point, they wanted him to be a cowboy. ♪ ♪ - We're gonna call you, cowboy, Bret Hart. You're gonna ride a different horse out to the ring every night. I'm not a cowboy. You know, where I come from in Calgary, you gotta be a real cowboy to call yourself a cowboy. I can't even ride a horse. - He had to come up with a suggestion. ♪ ♪ Bret decided that he and my dad could be a tag team. announcer: Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart and Bret Hart teaming up. In the air, and what's gonna happen here? Oh, wow, what a clothesline. - Here are your winners, Bret Hart and Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart. - When we first teamed up, we didn't even have matching outfits. I didn't think we were gonna last. - [laughs] - We had a Saturday night main event match coming up. I called the lady out of Ohio that used to make all the wrestling gear. I remember, I was in the hotel room with Jim Neidhart. I said, "She's got a hot pink." He liked it. He gave me the nod like, "Go for it, go for the pink." And I remember thinking, "Pink? Like, are you serious?" - All of a sudden, everyone's wearing pink. Why is this? - I haven't-- - Because they're jealous! - The Hart Foundation! - I didn't like it. Jim loved it, and I've always said pink is not my favorite color. But it was my lucky color. We're the best team in professional wrestling, and we got this manager right here, the greatest manager in professional wrestling. - How do you feel, baby? How do you feel? - We feel good. - The original formation of the Hart Foundation were kind of three guys that were kind of put together. But I think, with all of us having the name Hart somewhere in it, Neidhart, Jimmy Hart, Bret Hart, it was just something that really meshed, you know. It's like the three amigos. Everybody was different. Number one, baby. I was running around the ring, like, 90 miles an hour with a high squeaky voice. [high-pitched laugh] [high] "Hey baby, hey baby, it's so beautiful. Come on Bret, come on Jim." [normally] Kind of stirring up everything. You got him right where you want him, baby. What about... announcer: We'd love to see the day when somebody takes his megaphone and shoves it down his throat. - He would just absolutely drive you insane. Never stopping was where he got his name, mouth of the South. - And my dad was always the scene stealer. - They want what we got. [laughs] But they aren't gonna get it. - [laughs] - He was always the one that just had an over-the-top charisma about him. - Whoa, are we scared? - And he loved to laugh like a lunatic. - [laughing] - Even though we were the bad guys, the girls love Bret. Oh my gosh, did they love Bret. - We've got skill, we've got looks, we've got everything. And we've got money. - His talk and everything else was so smooth. He was like smooth operator. - Not only am I possibly the greatest looking wrestler, but I'm also the greatest technical wrestler. announcer: Whoa, what a drop kick by Bret Hart. announcer: Oh, clothesline. - You get Bret to come in with this crisp, slick, but yet rough, rugged, technical wrestling. And then here comes the Anvil. announcer: Oh my, look at the power and the strength of the Anvil, yeah. - Slingshot it over the top like a hairy zeppelin. Big forms and the goatee and the "yeah, baby" and Bret just calm, cool, holding it down. announcer: Oh, watch this. Watch this. - All of the things that, as a teenager, that I loved in a tag team, they brought it all to the table. announcer: There's the champions, World Heavyweight.... - One of the most important parts to our success as a team was that we all really liked each other. Every day was an adventure with Jim Neidhart. ♪ ♪ I wish I could just go back and live those days just for a few minutes. announcer: The Hart Foundation! [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ Vince had called me. He was, "I don't know what it is. "For some reason, we got more fan mail for you "than any other wrestler in the company. "We're gonna take you out of tags, "and you're gonna be a single wrestler all by yourself." ♪ ♪ I was kind of skeptical of anything that was gonna happen for me and so I didn't really believe it. announcer: Bret Hitman! - Bret had something. He had the twinkle in his eye that you knew there's something there. For whatever reason, it didn't blast off immediately. - Once he put me in singles, you took away Jimmy Hart, you took away Anvil, and they were my support for promos, and I had to start talking on my own. It wasn't my strongest suit, but I was trying my hardest. You may have come out of Harlem, but I came out of a dungeon. Everything was tied in with my dad, the Hart family, one of 12 kids. He's taught us how to be tough. He's made us fight, and I learned hold after hold after hold, and I learned to never quit. Gorilla Monsoon always talked about my dad on TV and the dungeon. announcer: And he learned that in the dungeon in Calgary, Alberta, from one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, Stu Hart. - These are all things that fans didn't hear about from other wrestlers. Fans started to slowly get opened up to this backstory. And, at the same time, fans had seen me slowly climb up. They understood my struggle. They related to it. - Although he is very technical and very sound, pretty believable, Bret was not all that big compared to the other performers. But Bret stayed and hung in there and hung in there, it's like, and eventually, everyone recognized his skill, and the rest is history. announcer: Stu and Helen Hart, mom and dad of the Hitman. - Bret was put in with Curt Hennig, who was one of the absolute greatest performers in the history of the business. announcer: Perfect flex right now. Oh, building and building. Whoa, that could be the... - No matter how much you beat the crap out of him, he just wouldn't die. He just kept coming back. Kind of like a Rocky type of vibe, you know what I mean? announcer: The Hitman gaining confidence with each second that goes by. Come on Bret, don't stop that rally. - And as the match progressed, you would notice he would focus more on the back areas. Why is he doing that? announcer: Hart going to another portion of the body now, interesting. Bret may be setting up for the Sharpshooter. - His finishing move's the Sharpshooter. He's wearing down his opponent so his finishing move is effective. announcer: The Sharpshooter, he's got him. He's got him! No! We've got a new champion. And he deserves it. This place is going bananas. He's fought for it. - The Intercontinental title was given to the best actual technical wrestler in the company. We'd come that far and had this moment together as a family, and I was so happy to give both my mom and my dad that moment. ♪ ♪ We brought honor to the family and the name and my dad and... everybody. announcer: Bret "the Hitman" Hart defends his coveted Intercontinental title against his brother-in-law, the British Bulldog. - Bret, you are my brother-in-law. But when I step in the ring with you, Bret, I never met you. I don't even know you. - He's the one that wanted to challenge me. He's the one responsible for all the family tension. He's the one that wanted a shot. The beauty of the storyline we presented was this realism. He wanted the big fight, he's got the big fight. - Bret's obsessed with keeping the belt. Davey's consumed with winning it. - This is not a made-up story. She's not an actress. This is my real sister, and she really is married to the Bulldog. - They don't understand what we're going through. It was a legitimate storyline. I had feelings for both of them. I really did. - Take a listen to the comments of your dear mother, Helen. Take a look at the emotion she shows. - I don't want them to fight. I don't want them to hurt each other. They're our blood. I just can't stand it. That's all. Sorry. - She'd pretend to cry or something, 'cause she was so torn up over her family fighting over this, and they even had certain members of my family take Davey's side. - Bret's ego is so damn big that he he can't get a grasp of reality. - All that just came across as layers to the truth of the story. Then it's like "Okay, well can you deliver the match?" ♪ ♪ announcer: The British Bulldog on his way to the [indistinct]. What a matchup this is going to be. - And they sold that out in less than 11 hours. ♪ ♪ Before that, I think Madonna and Michael Jackson had the record for selling out the fastest and over 80,000 tickets were sold. announcer: Two great competitors about to collide here. - This is my husband wrestling my brother. announcer: Bret Hart goes down, stands back up, oh. - It was extraordinarily overwhelming for me. ♪ ♪ My brother's kicking my husband in the face. It's like... announcer: Drop kick. - Then he suplexes Bret off the top rope. announcer: From the top rope! - Bret grabs Davey by the hair. announcer: A shorter part of such a-- Oh no, Anna looking on with great consternation. - Davey slingshots him, and Bret goes into the turnbuckle. announcer: With to the b-- oh, no. - Oh, my God. announcer: Oh did you see that? Well, this family feud is just about over. It's like a civil war It's been an uncivil war. ...a test of the fortitude on the part of both participants. Sunset flip... ♪ ♪ - Thank God that's over and Davey won, like, Davey boy won. I was so happy about that. announcer: The British Bulldog. And he did it in his own backyard, and 80,300 and.-- - The winning and losing, when you're telling a great story, really doesn't matter. announcer: The new Intercontinental champion... - What matters at the end of the day is, what does the audience remember? announcer: Are you seeing Diana between the husband and her brother? - Losing isn't always a bad thing. If it's done in a dramatic way and honest way and an emotional way... announcer: This has been a family affair. - It will make me a bigger star. - I don't know if that was ever in the plans, and that's what makes me respect it even more. He had to prove it, night in, night out. ♪ ♪ announcer: Nice duck underneath by the Hitman. Drop kick! announcer: He's about to slap it on. You're talking about the Sharpshooter. The brawler surrenders! announcer: Sharpshooter. There it is. announcer: Forget about it. - Kids like me showing up, always watching that Bret Hart match because we just knew it was gonna be great. announcer: Talk about confidence. I am on a roll. Whoa. - That eventually springboarded to the World Heavyweight Championship. ♪ ♪ - There was a fair number of people that never imagined me being World Champion, including fans and wrestlers. announcer: He's crushing the champion, Hart in full control. He is so magnificent in this match. announcer: He's perched up there now. Look out. Super flex coming up. Oh, yes. - Jeez, talk about a dark horse. announcer: Now he's going for the Sharpshooter. Oh, he gave up. ♪ ♪ It's pandemonium here in Saskatoon. ♪ ♪ Bret "the Hitman" Hart just gained the World Wrestling Entertainment championship. - How do you express to an audience how happy I was and how much of a dream this was? announcer: Right here in the hometown of his father, all his kin... - You know what? Just tell him the truth. Just tell them the truth. Now Jean, since I was this tall, I've been involved in wrestling. My whole family's been involved in wrestling. I dedicated my whole life to wrestling. I dedicate this moment to all the people that believe that the biggest dreams can still come true. ♪ ♪ - Family is real, and family is something that everyone has. Anybody that has siblings know that siblings fight. - There's nothing, nothing that will ever stop the rocket, brother. - When people look at the Hitman, they see that I don't have 24-inch arms, and maybe I'm not six foot eight. But you know what I am? The greatest technical wrestler in the World Wrestling Entertainment. announcer: And he is a wrestler's wrestler, The Hitman Bret Hart, one of the great technicians in the WWE. - His execution of everything he did in the ring was absolutely flawless. His nickname's the excellence of execution for a reason, every suplex, every backbreaker, every punch, everything just looks so authentic, and it was very important to me that everything I do look as believable and real as Bret. ♪ ♪ If you get a shot of Bret Hart doing a suplex, and put it side by side with mine, it's exactly the same. ♪ ♪ This is somebody that speaks to me. - Bret looked at the ring as an artist canvas. He was going to paint a picture every time he got into the ring. He was an artist in real life. - Everybody's good at something. Sometimes you don't even know yourself what it is, and one day you're just gonna stumble upon it. Like, I really love to draw cartoons. ♪ ♪ Everybody has a gift hidden inside themselves. You just gotta find it. ♪ ♪ These are my old cartoons from years and years ago. WrestleMania, where I fought Roddy Piper for the Intercontinental belt. I went through Piper, and I did go through Flair to get the title. Here's one with me and Davey at Summer Slam, which is kind of funny. It's actually a good cartoon. Goldberg and Hogan, two of my favorites. What has four years done to the Warrior? Which Warrior would laughed really hard at that cartoon. Here's Yoko and Lex Luger. And then the Mountie. And, of course, this is one of my favorites, Owen, Jim, and my dad. I had fun drawing Jim, he was always a fun character. Here's an old one of Steve Austin. And there's Vader and Undertaker, Hogan. I would get the story from somebody what happened the night before, and then I would draw some kind of cartoon about it to make everyone laugh, and Andre used to love them. He used to laugh all the time. This one was pretty special, in a way, 'cause it was about Andre, and it was Andre basically carrying the territory. I was probably about 12 or 13. I don't know what possessed me or what the reasoning behind it was, 'cause I love my brother Owen. He was seven years younger than I am. But it was my job often to put Owen's shoes on or get Owen dressed or make sure Owen ate dinner or given the task of making sure Owen was being taken care of. But I remember Owen loved it when I drew him in this. I remember drawing him in the story. You're gonna be the bad Hart. He had a little stubble on his chin. He was always in a mad mood. ♪ ♪ Years later, when we were wrestling, we enjoyed bringing that storyline we made up as kids to reality. We're gonna be the champions. - Here is two brothers that come from a wrestling family. - We're like a fine-tuned machine. - One had ascended to championship status. ♪ ♪ The younger brother, Owen, was damn good, but had never really had that shot to be in a main event. - They didn't have much going for Owen, and they never had. They'd made promises to him, but they never panned out. I think he got hurt, and different things happened, but Owen got so discouraged that he told me that he was quitting and he was gonna be a fireman. I thought he was such a great wrestler, and I really wanted to get him that chance. - Bret knew that if Owen had this opportunity to have this rivalry with him, it could be what catapulted Owen into stardom. - We're gonna go at each other, and it's gonna be a war between me and you, and we're gonna make this real and try to make people believe that we really hate each other. - Deep down inside, Bret, in your heart, you know I'm better than you. I know. - Owen played his part so well. - You've tried to hold me back. You tried to keep me down. - He was just that bratty little younger brother. - You Bret, you've been a problem for a long time for me. And never getting any recognition. It's always you, Bret. Your ego is too big. You only worry about yourself, Bret. - Bret was just like, "Owen, enough of the foolishness." - I'm gonna ask you one thing: you sit down with me, Mom, Dad, and we're gonna settle this thing, get all worked out. Everything's gonna be fine. This is family. - You know I'm better than you. And come WrestleMania X, Bret, I'm coming at you like a freight train, and I'm not stopping. I'm gonna beat you, Bret. announcer: Welcome to WrestleMania X. This is the moment Bret Hart thought he would never see, that he would actually be facing his brother. announcer: Oh, what a slap. And yes. Putting on the brakes. Nice maneuver. And now the pile driver. Yeah, here comes the Hitman! Clothesline Over the top to the outside. - Damn, those brothers are beating the hell out each other. announcer: Oh. announcer: Uh-oh. announcer: Look at Owen yelling and screaming at his brother. What a matchup this is. Unbelievable. - It's the best opening match of any WrestleMania. It might be the best opening match of any pay per view. Owen shocked the world by winning the match. [announcers exclaiming] - The one opportunity that you had in front of a worldwide stage, you couldn't beat me, Bret. - I am the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. Don't you forget it, brother. Whoo. - This is why it's such brilliant storytelling. WrestleMania X is a very unique WrestleMania in the sense that Bret Hart has two matches. So, after losing to Owen in the opening match of the show, Bret goes to the main event, and he beats Yokozuna, and he becomes the champion. announcer: The Hitman at WrestleMania X. He's done it. - All the good guys come out to the ring, and they hoist Bret up on their shoulders. announcer: Somehow, he's done the impossible. - And Owen is just looking at Bret with such contempt. You did it again. I beat you. This was supposed to be my night. ♪ ♪ - We have forgotten about Owen again, and we're now applauding Bret. - The World Wrestling Entertainment champion, the Hitman. - And it carries from April all the way into the summer. announcer: Oh, watch out, watch out. announcer: No, no, no. Owen! Bret Hart trying to hang on. Ooh! Unbelievable! Unbelievable. - Owen's getting the mom to throw in the towel. I mean, Owen cost Bret his championship. announcer: Owen pleading with his mother to please throw the towel in. Oh, no. announcer: She threw the towel in. She threw the towel in. announcer; Helen Hart, who finally yanked the towel out of Stu's hand and threw it in, and thus she ended the match. A heartbroken Bret Hart. - Mom and Dad... [laughs] You fell right into my trap. You throw the towel in, and Bret, you're not a champion anymore. You're a loser, and I'm a king. ♪ ♪ - When the cameras stopped rolling, and there was nobody around, I don't know if I ever saw a more respectful, loving relationship between two brothers. ♪ ♪ - Owen was so happy. He was on top of the world. He loved the storyline that we had, and working with Owen, we definitely did become closer as we bonded together. ♪ ♪ The love for what we were doing for each other mattered so much to both of us. ♪ ♪ I love that about wrestling. And... ♪ ♪ Especially with Owen, how it was... ♪ ♪ There's this appreciation for one another that supersedes everything. - Put the old ankle, right? Took him down. And then he was all... - Mesmerized, I'm sure. - In a disarray. - Yeah. All right. Let's get serious, all right. Bret, how would you compare yourself to previous World Wrestling Entertainment's champions? - Well, I mean, I'll be honest with you, and I have the utmost respect for all the previous champions, you know, but I'm a completely different breed of cat than all of them. - Bret's an unusual cat. Man, that was a real champion. That was the credibility factor with Bret, I think, will be the highest of anyone we've ever had as champion. ♪ ♪ - He took every aspect of being champion to heart. ♪ ♪ It was a true honor for him. Maybe he's an old school guy, right? I mean, you know, his daddy, all his brothers, were in the business. So it meant a lot for him to be champion. - Bret never looked at his titles as a prop. ♪ ♪ They were something honored, earned, and privileged to have. [onlookers cheering] - Bret liked being a role model. - You've got a new champ, guys. And I would give wrestling fans and little kids all around the world somebody that they can look up to. I didn't yell at my fans. Like, I didn't yell what I was gonna do, "and I'm gonna do this." I'm the first wrestling hero that communicates and talks. - Chill, man. That's the point, man. Can be your manager? - You don't wanna be a manager, you wanna be a wrestler. You wanna go for the big one. - I just wanna be like you when I grow up, Professional wrestler, man. - My main man, Gordon. - There's something that he has tapped into here. - Lift the glasses so he can-- - Stay cool. - He became this different type of hero, but a much more realistic hero. - This is my pride and joy. You wanna hold it? - To see a champion of your own, yes. - Wasn't this over-the-top character. He was still cool. He was the Hitman. But he was Bret, who just happened to be a wrestler. Everyone can relate to that. Everyone can feel like they're a part of that. C-H-A-Z? All right. - Everything was just a natural extension of the real Bret Hart, and the fans, then, will make that all-important emotional investment into your TV persona. - Let me tell you something, boys. I am the World Wrestling Entertainment champion. The excellence of execution is on top. The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. ♪ ♪ When they hit my music and I walked out, that place went crazy. They stampeded me. It was like Beatlemania. ♪ ♪ - Bret had a rock star persona. He really had this kind of grungy vibe that was cool. ♪ ♪ This energy in his presence that was ahead of its time. ♪ ♪ announcer: Some young lady, extremely astounded, clearly happy. - Bret was also a heartthrob. He was so handsome. Women were just very, very drawn to him. He had a huge female audience. ♪ ♪ - That's kind of weird, that I'm, like, giving a poster of my dad to my friend for a birthday present. ♪ ♪ - I was the star, Vince's top guy, with or without the belt. ♪ ♪ I was the top draw. I sold the most T-shirts and merchandise. ♪ ♪ - Bret Hart forever. - All the right things came into place at the right time, and it just made me stand out above and beyond all the other wrestlers. ♪ ♪ - Great. - Hi, there. - Hi. - Long time no see. - Yeah, it's been a while. - A cowboy on a television show, well you could have asked me that when I was five years old. That's what I would have wanted to be. I was lucky they were shooting "Lonesome Dove" up here in Calgary. - Luther Root. Ha ha! - Who is the thirstiest, the hottest, and the hungriest man in the valley? - You if you're buying. - That's right. Carson, three whiskeys, set them up. - I was always throwing somebody out of the bar, or they'd come find me in the whorehouse. It's such a fun role to play. - I heard you were in trouble. - Who says I'm in trouble? There's one scene in there where I have a fight with a big guy. He hauled off and just drilled me as hard as he could. Right smack in the teeth, busted my lip. I've always said I got hurt more in acting than I ever did in pro wrestling. "Lonesome Dove" was the most fun I ever had in my life. ♪ ♪ At that time, my contract completely expired, and I was actually a free agent. - This was in the middle of the most heated National Wrestling war that there's ever been. ♪ ♪ - WCW was a group out of Atlanta owned by Ted Turner, and they had made a concerted effort to compete with WWE and had started to entice our top talent to come. - And so I found myself in a meeting with Eric Bischoff. He said, "Look, what's it gonna take to bring you to WCW?" "Give me the exact same contract as Hulk Hogan, plus one penny." They called me the very next day and said 2.8 plus royalties. To me, it was 3 million a year. They were gonna give it to me for three years. - 2.8 million for a pro wrestler in 1996 is money at the level that they could not have dreamed. Now, all of a sudden, it's like, how can I turn this down? - Geez, I got a guy offering me $3 million a year, three or four times what I'm making for Vince. I got four kids. And I'm in the twilight of my career right now. And I got to think about what's right for my family. - I didn't wanna lose Bret. Hogan was gone, Razor, Ramon, all those guys were gone. They just can't get them all. You know, so I wanted to hang on to Bret. - And he said, I can't match it. And I said, "Well, I don't expect you to match it, then, but I mean, give me the best offer you can." The one I had from WCW was for $9 million for three years. And the one he came up was 10.5 million for 20 years. - I'm fine, thank you. - A lot less than WCW. But we'll give you, over the course of 20 years, a good amount of money, and you'll be part of the WWE family for life. - Basically, I was gonna take whatever offer he gave me 'cause I didn't wanna go to WCW. - Who turns down 2.8 million? I can't imagine even doing that, and he really did do it. ♪ ♪ - I was very loyal to Vince. And I was gonna stay with Vince kind of no matter what. And I shook his hand. I accepted the agreement. ♪ ♪ I was a WWE guy all along. I always was. And I would have jumped in front of a train for Vince McMahon. - Vince called me. He goes, "I wanna turn you heel." I don't want to turn heel. I'm making almost half a million dollars a year on my merchandise. It's not like I'm no good as a good guy anymore. My stuff's selling like crazy, and I'm super popular, and I don't wanna mess with that. And Vince was like, "You're only gonna be a bad guy "in America. "This is gonna be a whole different thing. "We've never done this before. You're gonna be a good guy everywhere else." ♪ ♪ Okay, it's always more fun being a bad guy. ♪ ♪ - Stone Cold Steve Austin shows up. He's just a beer-drinking badass who has no respect for anybody, including the Hitman. - "If you put the letter S in front of Hitman, you have my exact opinion of Bret Hart." That sounded cool, and it worked. If you put the letter S in front of Hitman, you have my exact opinion of Bret Hart. ♪ ♪ - He was always lurking behind a corner or a wall or something to jump me. announcer: Bret Hart and Austin! - It had been building really nicely from a storyline standpoint. announcer: It's a fistfight in the aisleway! - I remember walking out to the ring in WrestleMania XIII, and there's kids holding signs for me, and I'm high fiving, and everyone loves me. announcer: And all hell is breaking loose here. - It's gonna have to be a bare-knuckle brawl. I'm just gonna go to kick his ass big time. - We've got them hooked right from the get-go. And so we took them on a ride, we brawled up, came back, I got busted open. announcer: Austin's been busted open. - Blood just started flowing out of my head and ran down my cheek in between my teeth. And I'm thinking to myself, "God, hey, this feels good," 'cause I'm listening to the crowd. announcer: His people are standing. Can you imagine the pain? - He's agonizing, he's screaming in pain, and he won't quit. And he passes out. announcer: That's it. Austin is unconscious. Austin never gave up. Austin never gave up, but he passed out from the pain. - That gets you respect. People will just love me because they knew that I would go through thick and thin through anything, and never ever, ever give up. announcer: Come on Bret, enough is enough. I'm a Bret Hart fan, but that's enough. - Now you're going back to do more to a passed out man. And that audience went. Immediately. He went from being the best there is the best there was, to being a asshole. announcer: There's a chorus of boos directed at Bret Hart. - I'm walking back to the dressing room, and people were giving me the finger and flipping me off, and I knew that I was the bad guy. Steve has been the lousiest, rotten-est bad guy. Everyone fell in love with him, It was like falling in love with this shark on "Jaws." ♪ ♪ - He blamed Americans for idolizing people like Steve Austin. He blamed Americans for idolizing antiheroes. - All you have to do is look at O.J. Simpson, and you know, there's no such thing as justice in America. It was fun being a bad guy and pushing all their buttons, going to the American cities and being booed out of the building. announcer: Bret Hart has appalled this capacity crowd. - Canada and Britain and everywhere else where I'm a big name... ♪ ♪ I'm still the hero. I'm still Bret Hart, the good guy. I'm standing up against Americans. The American wrestling fans, coast to coast, can kiss my ass. [cheers and applause] While I was crusading against America, I was also feuding with Shawn Michaels. ♪ ♪ - Unrelenting youth and freedom, a sexuality and that was open. ♪ ♪ - He was absolutely 100% full-on prick as a character and as a personality. ♪ ♪ Things were changing. I didn't think you could still do the same mom and pop storylines. I felt that we could continue to grow, evolve, change. - And that made me wanna puke. You're a guy that has degraded the World Wrestling Entertainment championship belt. - Shawn's cockiness and attitude in general irritated Bret. - I don't like him, I don't trust him, and I don't believe him. I don't believe in anything about the guy. He's a phony little shit. - The storyline dislike for one another became very real very quickly. People can feel real animosity. - Hitman, I've seen you on the road, and bro, you ain't no role model. - I felt like I got pushed to a point, and I just... [makes volcanic noise] You know, on live television, and that ain't good. You couldn't go 10 minutes in any situation. Even though lately you've had some sunny days, my friend... - He made some reference to me having sunny days and I remember thinking, "Sunny days?" - Sunny! - The young lady there who worked for the company, her name was Sunny. She and I used to run around, and all I know is that her and Bret had become friends, and so I made a comment that they were more than friends, so to speak, and that he wasn't happy about, understandably so. - When I got home the next day after that Monday Night Raw, my oldest son asked me if I had something going on with Sunny, and my daughter asked me. I had enough problems with my marriage at that time without Shawn's little comment. We were in Hartford, Connecticut, and that's where I made up my mind that I was gonna straighten Shawn out once and for all about this Sunny thing. And I just beelined straight over to him and pushed the door in. - He takes a swing. Well, I move out of the way. We get into it. So we just... khh. - I grab him by the hair, pulled him down, and dragged him all around the dressing room by his hair. - Big old, you know, chunk of hair comes out of my head. ♪ ♪ - The end of 1997 is a wild time in WWE. It starts in August. Bret Hart becomes the champion. Now, while all this is going on, Vince goes to Bret and says, "You know that lifetime contract we signed? Can't do it." - WCW was pretty far ahead of WWE when it came to popularity at that point. WWE's finances were weak at the time. They were losing money. They were taking out loans at the time to make payroll. But all of a sudden, you've got Bret, who turned down 2.8 million a year, and now, all of a sudden he's being asked to take a pay cut. Went from that to, "Well, maybe you should call WCW and see if you can still get that offer." - I'm sure I'll get you a fatter contract, a lot more money, and we'll work it together. So you can go to WCW and earn far more money than what I was paying you. ♪ ♪ - Bret's flabbergasted. He never wanted to go to WCW. Vince kind of left him with no choice. So the contract gets torn up. And Bret Hart signs with WCW. ♪ ♪ He's the WWE Champion at the time. - Vince wants Bret to lose it to Shawn Michaels in Montreal. - So I went to Shawn. I said, "Hey, Shawn, "I want you to know I have no problem dropping the belt to you." Shawn looked at me and said, "Well, I appreciate that, but I just want you to know that I'm not willing to do the same thing for you." And that really floored me. Why would I do the honors for somebody that has no respect for me? ♪ ♪ Why would you expect me to? The hell with him. ♪ ♪ I can't drop the belt to a guy that can't be professional with me. ♪ ♪ He's been so disrespectful, and for lack of a better word, such a dick. - Because it was me, it was a flat-out no. And look, that just causes a problem. - Bret going into Montreal signed with WCW to start in December, and it's November, and he's the WWE Champion. How did Vince get himself into this predicament? But here it is, he did. - And I didn't want him to go to WCW with our championship. So the request for Bret would be, "Okay, let's drop this championship "back to someone here in WWE, where it belongs," and that didn't happen. So I had to do what I had to do. - I had it in the initial contract that I had creative control for my last 60 days. So I knew I had my rights, I was covered, and I could protect myself. I'll drop the belt to Steve Austin, I'll drop it to Steve Lombardi, I'll lose it to anybody you want, any way you want, but I will not lose to a guy that has no respect for me. I truly believe that I am the best. On top of it, I'm not gonna let you do this to me in my home country. And the last thing I could ever dream of is letting that lousy, rotten, stinking little degenerate take the World Wrestling Entertainment championship belt from me in front of my home people. It's not gonna happen. - After refusing and refusing and refusing to lose to Shawn Michaels, this plan is presented to Bret Hart. ♪ ♪ The entire time, a documentary called "Wrestling with Shadows" was being filmed, independent of WWE, about Bret Hart. Bret Hart has one last meeting with Vince McMahon... - We gotta just talk. - About what the finish of the Survivor Series 97 match is gonna be. And he's still miked by the documentary crew. ♪ ♪ - They're gonna be watching. - We taped the whole conversation. It was made perfectly clear to me there was gonna be a run-in disqualification. In wrestling dressing room jargon, it's a schmoz where it's outside interference from various dressers coming in. Title was not gonna change hands. - Vince goes in there with the suggestion of the finish, which Bret thinks is what the finish is, it's gonna be a DQ finish. Bret's getting his hand raised in Montreal. - It was all done. There was nothing to fight about anymore. I won. - Bret did meet with Vince. Then, when it went down, it was like, "Okay, we didn't do that." - It's no different than an actor in a television series who, at the end of it, refuses to die or refuses to do the job, so to speak. What do you do? - Look, Vince, I want you to know that I'll do whatever it is you need me to do. Never read Sammy the Bull Gravano's book. And especially at that time in my life, there was a sense of validation that he trusted me enough to do the dirty work. We were getting that belt off of Bret tonight. - This is what I have to do. announcer: And Bret Hart fighting back with broad hands. - It goes off the rails right away. I clothesline him over the top roll, and I'm fighting in the crowd, and I'm beating him all over the place. announcer: ...being pummeled by the WWE champion... - We've got all these moves and different things planned to keep telling this great story. announcer: Bret Hart with his finger put a leg lock on Shawn Michaels. For the cost to Hitman. announcer: Shawn Michaels. Oh! - One of the spots called for Shawn to try to put a Sharpshooter on me. announcers: Michaels is gonna try to beat Bret Hart with a Sharpshooter? Yes he is. - Suddenly, I look over, and I see Vince McMahon yelling at the timekeeper to ring the bell. "Ring that F-ing bell!" [bell rings] announcer: Are you kidding me? - And all of a sudden, we hear the bell ringing. - I was just like... - Bret did not tap out. - What the F was that? - We just screwed Bret. - He got screwed. - The bell was ringing. The referee was already signaling that I had supposedly tapped out and gave up. Clearly, I was reversing the hold, and I was not giving up. That was a screw job. ♪ ♪ - We're seeing something that we can't hardly believe, that we didn't know what's going to occur. He got shoved out of the title for real. ♪ ♪ The deed was done. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Real guttural emotion. - When they screwed me, I just was so angry and so disappointed that Vince chose to go that way. - When the, as he calls it, Montreal screwjob occurred, I wanted to make sure that Bret saw me out at ringside and know that what I did was the right thing to do, at least from my standpoint. He's really good at spitting, I am sorry to say. ♪ ♪ I could have hidden. I could have not gone out to the ring at all. You know, I could have left the building. I could have done a lot of things. - Rick Rude and Davey Boy came in the shower, and they go, "Vince is waiting for you, and he wants to talk to you." "As soon as I get dressed, if you're still here," I say, "I'm gonna knock you out." - And he gave me one, right in the temple, left side. - I hit him as hard as I could. I remember going 14 years for this guy, Christmases and birthdays, all the front turnbuckles, all the body slams I ever gave this guy, all the times I worked harder than I needed to, and this is the gratitude that he showed me for all those years of working for him. I was gonna connect, and it was the greatest punch I ever threw. - Don't look at the camera. Try and just look forward. - When it had just first happened backstage, I was kind of confused. Like, what's going on? Like, Dad's mad, and it was more scary, kind of intense. And then, on the flight home, I saw how it really hit him. It's actually the first time I ever saw my dad crying. That broke my heart to see him so upset by that. I don't think people understood how much that really meant to him. - He felt very hurt. And it was like the ultimate betrayal for Bret to have Vince do that to him. Nothing like that had ever happened before in WWE. - That was a part of the biggest shaft, certainly of the wrestling business, ever. I wanted to go down in history in this business. I didn't imagine it being like this, and it was just--you knew you were part of something incredibly big but something that wasn't incredibly positive. - Did you or did you not screw Bret Hart? - Bret screwed Bret. I have no sympathy whatsoever for Bret. ♪ ♪ - What I asked for was to be treated with respect on my way out, and if I had to do the whole thing again tomorrow, I'd do it exactly the same way. I resent people that intimate to me that I overreacted or I didn't do the right thing or I should have just done what I was told or... The hell with all those guys. ♪ ♪ It was a huge insult to me, and it really bothered me for a long time, to the point that it was really tough for me to move on from it. ♪ ♪ Growing up in wrestling, being Stu Hart's kid is all part of that. ♪ ♪ I wasn't just some guy that got into wrestling. Wrestling was my whole life. ♪ ♪ - When Bret joined the WCW, it just was not the same. It was just so hard, and he was disillusioned and disappointed. - The day I got there, I wanted to turn that company around and just stuff it right down Vince's throat. But they were so stupid, they didn't know what they were doing. I spun my tires from the day I got there to the day I left. [crowd jeering] ♪ ♪ - May 23rd, 1999, it was like the worst thing that's ever happened in pro wrestling ever. ♪ ♪ - I got on a plane and headed to Los Angeles to do the Jay Leno show. ♪ ♪ So I just was on the plane, sitting there in a kind of a mostly empty cabin, and I just had the strangest, darkest thought. I knew something bad happened. I could feel it my bones. ♪ ♪ Finally, I checked my voice messages, and I got a message from a friend of mine that worked in WWE... ♪ ♪ That Owen had died doing a stunt in the ring. ♪ ♪ announcer: Tragedy befell the World Wrestling Entertainment and all of us. Owen Hart was set to make an entrance from the ceiling, and something terribly, terribly went wrong. I don't know if the harness broke, or what the malfunction was. - I had to say something from my heart and from my soul. - And he fell from the ceiling. - When someone dies that you love... - And I have the... - It just brings you to your knees. - Unfortunate responsibility to let everyone know that Owen Hart has died. ♪ ♪ Owen Hart has tragically died from an accident here tonight. I had blocked so much of it out of my memory. He was special. He just was one of the most legitimately lovely men that I've ever known. To this day, I never heard anybody ever say one negative word about Owen Hart. - There's never a good time to lose a friend. ♪ ♪ But he was young, and just so much going, it was just really, really hard. ♪ ♪ - The actual funeral procession that went through town, Calgary came out great and strong for--for that. It was really impressive to see how much they cared. ♪ ♪ - It was very sad to see, to lose a child like that, and to a sport that created your family's persona. And now that's the very thing that has taken away your child. I really felt a lot of sympathy for Helen and Stu. ♪ ♪ - He'd left a widow and two beautiful kids behind. Owen missed out on being a husband, a dad to his wonderful kids, and they missed out on on growing up with their dad and the wonderful memories they would have had with him. ♪ ♪ - Owen was the last Hart, this little golden, big-blue-eyed little boy. ♪ ♪ He was so loved and cherished. And he was so funny. ♪ ♪ We will never get over Owen. We will never stop missing him. We'll never stop thinking about him. We will never stop grieving. ♪ ♪ - I had as much reason as anybody to hate wrestling. The more I thought about it, then I realized that Owen loved wrestling just the same way I did. ♪ ♪ I can think of so many funny memories about Owen and the jokes he pulled and the things he did. ♪ ♪ And so many wrestlers loved Owen the same way. ♪ ♪ I wish, a lot of times, that I could talk to him and remember some of the great memories we had. ♪ ♪ We had so much fun being Bret Hart and Owen Hart. ♪ ♪ - My mother and father-- they did not recover. ♪ ♪ It was like a light went out. - It aged my parents considerably. My mom died a few years later, and then my dad was somewhat brokenhearted after she had passed away. ♪ ♪ - He loved wrestling so much. You could wake my dad up at four in the morning and tell him that there's some Chippendale dancer down in the basement that wants to learn how to wrestle, and I'm telling you, he couldn't get his pants on fast enough. ♪ ♪ His whole life was wrestling, and he loved every bit of it. ♪ ♪ - I was in the room when he passed, and it was a very peaceful passing. ♪ ♪ I could feel the power drained from the room. ♪ ♪ I've always felt that it was an honor for me to be there. And I've always been grateful for it and so glad that I was there at the end for him. ♪ ♪ There was a string of years there, like from '99 to 2004, I went through a lot of tough stuff. My career ended, which was really hard for me to accept. Bill Goldberg was a guy that, on a scale of 1 to 10, as a wrestler, he was a zero. He was just so reckless, so dangerous. He didn't know wrestling wasn't real. He kicked me so hard, he would have knocked bricks out of a wall. I finally got home off the road, and my doctor checked me, and he goes, "You are really messed up. "You are so concussed, you need to stop everything right now." You know, you can fix certain things, but you only got one brain. That's it, my career's over. ♪ ♪ I don't know where I had my stroke. announcer: After falling from his mountain bike, the crash triggered an acute stroke. - I was in a wheelchair for three months, and my left side was completely dead. announcer: Essentially, he had been reduced to an infant, learning to talk and walk all over again. - The fact that I survived it and had the recovery that I did, and I count my blessings, and I thank everyone that helped me. My first wife did help me a lot through that time period, which says a lot about her. - Well, he was the father of my children, and we were still kind of going back and forth. Still kind of seeing each other and still, one foot in the door, one out. - My first wife, Julie-- we went through a lot together, and we just grew apart. We got along really well about 50% of the time, and we really got along really badly the other 50% of the time. - Right until we had all the kids, it seemed like he was always gone. So I think I've always been a single parent the whole time we were married. ♪ ♪ He never took a break, never took a break. We were both going through a lot, even myself, you know, pull away, come back, pull away, and eventually, nah, it's not gonna work. We're not even the same people anymore. - Finally, we had reached the point where where there was no turning back, and we got divorced. And I don't wanna sit here and pretend that it was all her. I mean, I failed in a lot of ways as an unfaithful husband. Once I got divorced, I just wanted to be alone. I was just doing nothing. I had a lot of dark thoughts, and I really questioned a lot about myself. - Everywhere I went, the first question I got asked was about the Montreal screwjob. Whether it was real, how it happened, did I really hit Vince McMahon. It just was like a constant downer in my life. ♪ ♪ It changed me a lot of ways, made me a bit of an angry man and bitter about what happened. ♪ ♪ It was kind of like carrying around a big bag of rocks. You pick it up every day, and you put it over your shoulder, and you're carrying it around. And the best way to put it to bed was to drop the rocks, drop the whole bag, and make peace. ♪ ♪ What if I called Vince McMahon up and said, "Hey, let's bury the hatchet so I don't have to worry about it anymore"? ♪ ♪ announcer: It's been 12 long years since anyone's seen Bret Hart. This is amazing. ♪ ♪ - After all these years, he deserved that moment. It's like he had never left. People were dying to see him. They were dying to acknowledge him, to give him a standing ovation. All those things are beautiful. ♪ ♪ - Bret's legacy is timeless. Bret's body of work is timeless. Our WWE universe has never forgotten that. - It's been 12 years since I've been back at the WWE. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for carrying me in your hearts for all these years. And the very first thing I wanna do is, I wanna call back there now Shawn Michaels to come out here and see to me face to face. - Now we both were realizing, "Oh, my God, there's more to life than just the wrestling business." Who knew? - I was good friends with Shawn Michaels when we were younger. You know, I had a hand in all that stuff, too, that happened with Shawn and I and it wasn't just me, the victim. ♪ ♪ You know, we're both guilty. - We're synonymous with each other. We're such a big part of each other's lives and careers. But I do put myself in his shoes, and I have deep regret and deep remorse. You want to end it, you want to end it for him and certainly for yourself. You're not the only one, Bret, that's been carrying this around for 12 years. You're not the only one that wants to bury the hatchet. I think he did understand the real remorse and sorrow that I had about that entire time. - I call for a truce, and I call for you to shake my hand, and if you wanna bury the hatchet, let's bury it right now. ♪ ♪ It's a similar feeling for both of us. It was a release of those rocks, and... ♪ ♪ A good lesson in my life. And I think it was a good lesson for Shawn. - Healing is good for everybody, even in pro wrestling. And it sounds silly, but there are real-life aspects of it that make it serious. ♪ ♪ - With Vince, you know, I never forget what happened, but I also know that Vince did a lot for me, and the man that I am today, I owe so much of it to Vince. - One of the reasons that this whole Montreal thing was so personal between you and me, I was like a father figure to you. And I'd like to thank you for being the best there is. I'd like to thank you for being the best there was. And the best there ever will be. - Of course, there were shenanigans. I mean, you can't have a WWE show without somebody getting kicked in the crotch. [laughs] announcer: The Hitman going for the ultimate revenge. - My match with Vince wasn't the greatest match in my career by any means, but people laughed, and people enjoyed it, and it was a happy ending for me. announcer: Mr. McMahon taps to the Sharpshooter. Bret Hart's signature submission hold brings an end to one of the most volatile rivalries in WWE history. announcer: Bret Hart definitely screwed Mr. McMahon. - Bret was right back where he belonged. ♪ ♪ - His character reminds me a lot of the "Shawshank Redemption" Andy Dufresne. WWE is like the asylum, and Bret, like, survives the asylum, and he's lived to tell his story. And, more than anything, Bret gives people hope. ♪ ♪ And, like Andy Dufresne said in the movie "Shawshank Redemption," hope is a good thing. ♪ ♪ - We met in 2008. ♪ ♪ We have a mutual friend of ours that introduced us. ♪ ♪ I moved up to Canada in 2009, and we got married in 2010. ♪ ♪ I know a lot of people on the outside think "What the heck could they see in each other?" especially when they look at our racial differences and note our age difference. But it's just really hard to explain how well we get along with each other. If anything, I like to joke that I feel like sometimes I'm the 63-year-old and he's the 38-year-old, 'cause he is, he is so young at heart, and I'm an old soul. ♪ ♪ You look great. - It was such a beautiful day. This was magical, just a great little bond that we just take good care of each other and get along really well. You can just tell how happy everyone is. Steph's really hard not to like. I mean, what you see is what you get. She's just a really kind person, and I'm really lucky. - You wanna see the pictures, too? - Steph's birthday is on the same day as my mom's. and Steph kind of reminds me a little bit of my mom in the sense that she was an American girl and there was a big gap between my mom and dad's age, and I feel like my mom and dad were kind of cheering us on. - Like, even in the beginning, I knew his kids were reluctant about me. I had to really earn their love and earn their respect. And I think I did over time, once they saw us and saw how happy he was and saw how happy I was. - My relationship with them has gotten stronger with Steph. I think when they see me with Steph, that they know that we're happy. - Cheeseburgers! - Thought they're like, "One, two, three, jump." - [screams] ♪ ♪ - His house here is kind of like his dad's house. It was like the nucleus for the family. We always come here for dinner. This is where our family meets. - It's a little thing in here, playing... [talking indistinctly] - Family is everything to him. My grandpa's legacy and now my dad's following within the footsteps of that, he's created his own legacy, of course, but when you put it all together, it's actually such a beautiful story. ♪ ♪ I think it's one of a kind, which makes, like, the Hart family as a whole so unique. ♪ ♪ - We shared him with the whole world... ♪ ♪ Which is why I am enjoying his retirement so much is 'cause we kind of have more to ourself. ♪ ♪ With grandkids, my dad is just so happy to be able to spend time with them and kind of make up for the time that he missed with us. - That's not fair! - Resilience, there's-- nothing could stop him. He's just--he's the Hitman. ♪ ♪ - I got to live my dreams, the good and the bad, the sorrow, the tragedy. ♪ ♪ A difficult life makes you a better person. ♪ ♪ I'm very content and very satisfied that I had a good life. I wouldn't change any of it. ♪ ♪ - How do you want the fans around the world to remember Bret "the Hitman" Hart years from now? - I just hope they reflect on me. I think you fade once you're off the TV. And if you're talking about WrestleMania or a big show or a big--you know, it's Madison Square Garden, I'm still the best. You want somebody that stands up for right and wrong and someone that speaks for justice. Someone who's not afraid to come forward and to take on anybody and fight fire with fire and that's me. That's me.

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Channel: Biography

Views: 438,494

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Keywords: bio, biography, life story, documentary, history, historical figure, celebrity, famous, bret hitman hart, bret hart, bret hitman hart interview, bret hitman hart documentary, bret hitman hart biography, bret hitman hart wrestler, bret hitman hart career, bret hitman hart wwe debut, bret hart wwe, bret hitman hart theme, wwe biography bret hitman hart, bret hart a&e biography, wwe interview, wwe documentary, full documentary bret hart, bret hart documentary a&e, WWE legend, WWE

Id: 4AYQv_AXQqY

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 86min 10sec (5170 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023