An Interview with Bret "The Hitman" Hart

Back in November 2014, we had the opportunity to sit down with The Best There Is, The Best There Was and The Best That Ever Will Be… Bret “The Hitman” Hart courtesy of MDA Promotions.

Rory: You’ve always been very open with your fans, what with your book, the WWE DVD sets and the Wrestling with Shadows documentary. What made you want to go one step further and host a string of Q&A fan interaction sessions?

Bret: I just think that for the fans – they enjoy me reliving what was really going on behind the scenes – even though that if they’ve read my book most of the things they’ve already heard. But every night’s a different night and I get to recall different things. It’s a fun experience for me as you get to relive a lot of stuff and sometimes the conversation goes in a different direction and makes me recall something that I wouldn’t have normally thought about so it’s a good experience. Especially when you’ve got such good fans. You know, very knowledgable fans that are very up on my career and some of the details that went with it. It’s fun to explore all the past as there’s a lot of things that have happened – even since I retired – that it’s nice to come back and touch base with all of my fans here. I think England’s clearly got the best fans in the whole of Europe.

Rory: Thank you. During the 1980s both yourself and Anvil were considered the biggest and best tag team in the WWF and then in the beginning of the 1990s you were viewed as the best wrestler in the company. How did it feel to be truly “The Best There Is”?

Bret: Well I think I owe a lot to the guys that enabled me to become the real big superstar that I became and that starts with Roddy Piper and Mr. Perfect who were probably the first two guys to really sort of bow and let me step in, they really helped me. Macho Man was another one of those guys that endorsed me as a World Champion and even Ric Flair, you know, he gave me a chance to be a Champion and a lot of guys helped build me from that big launch and I’ll always be grateful for that.

Rory: Following on from that, you had several highly memorable feuds with the likes of Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, British Bulldog, Roddy Piper, Mr Perfect, your brother Owen, The Undertaker and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Out of all of your feuds, which one was your favourite and why?

Bret: It’s hard to say. I can’t say I really had a feud with The Undertaker but I had some great encounters, like SummerSlam. Steve Austin, I guess would probably have to be one of the best feuds that I had. Shawn, in a way was the best feud because as up and down as our story was, we had some great stories in the ring.

But if I had to name one, I’d have to say Owen. Not necessarily because of the storyline – the storyline was a good storyline – but I really loved the matches we had. I know the one match we had to grade us on is the WrestleMania 10 match – which was a really great match but when you watch that you have to bear in mind that that was the first time we’d really wrestled each other and I’d say that the matches we had on the Hart Attack tour over here in the UK a few days after Mania, were better matches. They were more tight, the timing was better. Owen and I had some absolutely five star matches here right after WrestleMania 10 and then over the next six months. I’m sure over here in the UK and in Germany and places like that, even in my hometown of Calgary, we had some amazing matches that nobody ever filmed so nobody ever captured on video or tape.

Rory: You famously fell out with the WWF in 1997 and finally returned some 13 years later to one of the loudest ovations I’ve heard in the WWE in recent years. What was it like going back there to such a brilliant reaction?

Bret: Well, it was really one of my greatest victories and greatest moments. I always felt that when I came back and did that thing with Vince McMahon a couple years ago that I understood as well as anyone that I was not the excellence of execution, the technical wrestling wizard that I was in the 90s and I know that I probably disappointed people in the fact that it wasn’t a great technical wrestling type of match, but the truth of the matter is that after my stroke the thought of standing on the ramp and walking down that aisle was one of the hugest victories I’ve ever had.

Rory: You’ve held every title currently available in the WWE, back when it was the WWF you held the IC, Tag Team and World titles. Then when you returned you beat The Miz for the U.S. Title. Which title win was the most meaningful and why?

Bret: I’d have to say that the first world title win is always the one that means the most. The fifth one was probably the best actually match as far as winning the title. The Kevin Nash match where I won it the third time was a brilliant match too. With the exception of probably the Yoko match at WrestleMania 10 , all the wins – including the final four – were all great matches. I have great memories of them and wish I could go back and relive them all.