During a recent appearance on CBC Radio’s Q Podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart commented on what he’s most proud of in his wrestling career, turning heel in WWE in 1997, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On what he’s proud of in his wrestling career: “I take a lot of pride in knowing I was so safe. I mean, I really was so safe, like you could trust me. We don’t get enough credit for being the great athletes that we are. We’re picking up a 200-pound or 300-pound man to bodyslam him in the middle of the ring and walking out, climb on the apron, climb up on the turnbuckle and as you’re climbing up that opponent that you’re wrestling lies there and goes, ‘I can’t move, I have to stay right here until Bret Hart jumps off. He’s gonna land on me with a knee or whatever it is that he’s doing.’ And he has to put all of his trust in me that I’m not gonna hurt him. That I’m not gonna fall on him funny or land on his face or his head or his neck. It’s so much stress involved in two wrestlers working with each other, and for me to climb up on that top turnbuckle for 23 years and jump off and land on that guy halfway across the ring with an elbow or a leg drop or whatever it is that I’m doing and knowing that I can’t land on that guy and hurt him or injure him ever because that would break the code of trust.
“It’s like there’s no backup plan for a wrestler when they get hurt. I’m living proof of that. If you get hurt, your career is over, your income comes to an end, and you’re just a liability after you get hurt. Everything in wrestling is about trusting the guy you’re working with, like don’t hurt me, you have to protect me. When I got taught, when I first started, it was all about protecting the guy I worked with. ‘You can hurt yourself, you can blow your knee out but can’t ever hurt the guy you’re working with because that’s against the code.’ I always took that code really serious because when I worked for my dad, I couldn’t injure any of the top guys because then it would affect his business, then it has a trickle-down effect down to everybody…..that’s the thing I take the most pride in. I wrestled for 23 years and never injured one wrestler.”
On his heel run in WWE in 1997: “I do remember the Flag Match we had in Halifax where we cheated so bad and got cheered at the end by all the Canadian fans. It was such a shock to the American fans because they were watching about ready to throw beer bottles through the TV set. I just remember that it was so much fun being a bad guy and being a good bad guy. We are all bad guys – Owen, Pillman, Davey Boy, and Neidhart. It was just a great memory for me. It was a chance for the Canadians to give it to the Americans, and the Canadians got behind the role. ‘We’re gonna be bad guys with Bret Hart and cheer him on.’ I don’t think Vince McMahon or anybody how big that me being a Canadian bashing America would make me such a bad guy in America. But it also made me loved in Canada. That was part of a very magical time for me. I would never change anything about those days.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
