Bret Hart

Bret Hart is a Canadian-American professional wrestler from the WWE and WCW promotions.

Bret was one of the biggest stars of Professional Wrestling in the '90s and is simultaneously one of the most technically gifted performers to ever step into a wrestling ring  and, in the last years of his career, one of the most troubled and tortured personalities in the history of the industry.

Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, Bret was a member of the Hart Wrestling Family and was trained by his father Stu in the famous "Hart Dungeon". Easily the most successful member of the family, he is a double Triple Crown Champion. He is a 5x WWE World Heavyweight Champion, a 2x WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion, a 2x WWE World Tag Team Champion with brother-in-law Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, a 1x WWE United States Heavyweight Champion, a 2x WCW World Heavyweight Champion, a 4x WCW United States Heavyweight Champion and a 1x WCW World Tag Team Champion with Goldberg.

After The Nasty Boys defeated the Hart Foundation for the WWE World Tag Team Titles at  WrestleMania VII  in 1991, Bret launched a successful singles career. At  SummerSlam 91, he defeated Mr. Perfect for the WWE Intercontinental Championship, his first singles title in the WWF. By  Survivor Series 92, he had defeated Ric Flair for his first of five WWE World Heavyweight Championships. His first reign ended at the hands of Yokozuna at  WrestleMania IX,  but in the ensuing craziness that was 1993 WWF, it quickly became apparent that Bret was the most popular wrestler in the company. In 1994, at  WrestleMania X,  he won the title back from Yokozuna and cemented himself as the top Face in the WWF, then spent the rest of the year in a bitter rivalry with his brother, "The Rocket" Owen Hart.

He would be pushed into the background in 1995 due to The Kliq's reign of terror backstage. Even after he ended Diesel (Kevin Nash)'s financially disastrous year-long title reign at  Survivor Series 95, it was already set that he would be dropping the title four months later to Shawn Michaels at  WrestleMania XII. According to a variety of accounts, including their own, the backstage grudge between Bret and Shawn started around that time. After  WMXII, Bret took time off to contemplate his future. He returned in November to kick off the feud that would  make  "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's career, and transform Bret's forever. Bret defeated Austin at  Survivor Series 96, but the feud continued, culminating in a submission match at  WrestleMania XIII , which saw Austin become a huge face, and Bret become a heel, after having been one of the company's top faces since 1988. Bret recruited his brother Owen and brother-in-law the British Bulldog, with brother-in-law Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart and family friend "The Loose Cannon" Brian Pillman joining later, in a new version of the Hart Foundation, as Bret became, for the first and only time in his career, a Foreign Wrestling Heel who denounced America and spoke of Canada being better. He left for World Championship Wrestling (WCW) following the controversial "Montreal Screwjob" in November 1997.

Bret was poorly used in WCW, never again attaining the levels of success of his WWF run and his stint would be marred by the death of his younger brother Owen Hart. His career eventually ended in 2000 due to a severe concussion suffered in a match with Goldberg. A stroke two years later, after a bicycle accident, would ensure he would never wrestle again. In 2006, Bret resurfaced for a WWE Hall of Fame induction prior to  WrestleMania 21. and in 2019, became a two-time Hall of Famer as part of the induction of The Hart Foundation (alongside Jim Neidhart).

Bret would make an official return to what is now WWE in 2010, making sporadic appearances in a (mostly) non-wrestling role at pay-per-views and  Raw ... but not before having one last feud with Vince leading up to  WrestleMania XXVI.

Personality
Bret once wrestled a match against Dino Bravo, which saw Bret get bumped a little too hard to the outside, where he broke his sternum on the steel guard rail. Despite Bret's nonverbal cues that something was wrong (i.e. he couldn't even  breathe ) the match kept going. Bret was supposed to win, but ended up losing by countout.

Bret would always give his glasses to a lucky child sitting in the front row during his entrance.

According to his book, he'd slept with many women during his first marriage and kept finding excuses to justify it even though he knew on some level that it wasn't ideal behavior. His biggest self-justification was that every wrestler needed to find ways to relieve the stress and boredom of spending 300 days a year on the road, and (in his mind) picking up women was far less harmful/destructive than using drugs and/or alcohol to cope with the stress like so many other wrestlers did. Honestly, considering how many wrestlers have died from drug overdoses compared with how many have gone Out with a Bang or died from venereal diseases, he might have at least  something  of a point.

Abilities
He had a few that he used almost every single match: the Russian legsweep and the scoop slam were on top of this list. A fan commentary on Bret's matches from the newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling included this phrase, making Bret sort-of the Trope Namer. Hilariously, no one who has ever tried to mock Bret for this in their books (Ric Flair for instance) has ever gotten them right. They were the inverted atomic drop, Russian legsweep, pendulum backbreaker, pointed driving elbowdrop from the second rope, and Sharpshooter. More importantly, as a fan, generally the second Bret hit the Russian legsweep, you knew EXACTLY where he was headed in an excited Oooooh here we go! moment.

The Sharpshooter became his finisher for the rest of his career once he started using it. Prior to that he would use a piledriver or an abdominal stretch. As part of the Hart Foundation their finisher was the Hart Attack (Anvil would hold the opponent up by the waist while Bret would deliver a neckbreaker clothesline).

Trivia

 * What Bischoff said was probably true, that Hart was a broken man when he came to WCW. He considered WWF his home and Vince a father figure, and he felt betrayed. And truthfully, even if they did have an angle for him (which they didn't), and it was good, he would have still been unhappy. He was never the same after Montreal.
 * After he split from the Hart Foundation, Bret was catapulted to the main event. Ironically, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart was initially considered to be the stronger performer. Bret's singles push came during the WWF's infamous steroid scandal, where McMahon wanted to push someone smaller.
 * Pulled a power play to keep the WWE World Tag Team Titles on Owen and Bulldog at WrestleMania 13, which they had originally been scheduled to drop to Mankind and Vader, in order to set the up the Hart Foundation angle.


 * Bret Hart was close to jumping to WCW in the early 90's, but declined at the 11th hour, because he didn't like WCW's then attendance numbers of their house shows. He also almost jumped in 1989, at the behest of Ric Flair, but was lowballed in an offer by Jim Herd.
 * It's unknown how fast, or even  if, Hart would have risen without it. But apparently, Vince McMahon actually started to push Hart after  SummerSlam 1992  because of his match with the British Bulldog. Allegedly, Hart had to drag his brother-in-law around the entire match because the latter  was coming down off a cocaine binge the previous night.
 * Had Hulk Hogan's ego not gotten in the way, causing Vince McMahon to change plans completely, we might have seen Bret Hart vs Hulk Hogan at  SummerSlam 1993.
 * Obviously, the  Survivor Series 1997  match. As Bret tells it, the original finish was a disqualification finish where the Hart Foundation and DX would brawl again, and Bret would've surrendered the belt on  Raw  the next night.
 * Was originally considered to play Batman in  Batman Unchained  before production was canceled because  Batman & Robin  was a flop at the box-office and was panned by audiences and critics.