owen

On the plane home, I’d been so dejected that my fist held up my chin the whole way, looking out the
window with the occasional tear rolling down my cheek. I couldn’t stop them and I didn’t feel like
hiding it. Jade just kept patting my hand.



Paul Jay’s crew filmed me on the plane: I couldn’t understand why Paul was so happy. He kept saying
to me, “You’re going to love what I got,” but I wasn’t getting it because I was literally in shock. Paul
said the God of documentaries had shone down on him in Montreal and he had the whole
conversation I’d had with Vince before the match on tape. But I wasn’t processing what he said.



At home on Monday night I couldn’t bring myself to watch Raw, so I called Marcy to find out what
happened. When she told me that Shawn had walked out with the belt, said how he’d beaten me in
my own country with my own finishing move and had run me out of the WWF, I finally knew for
certain that Shawn had been full of shit when he swore to God that he wasn’t in on it. Marcy was on
a relentless campaign to get the truth out, and on a leap of faith she contacted Dave Meltzer. She’d
never spoken to him before because she knew that I would have considered it a betrayal, despite


the fact that it was clear that Meltzer had by this point become pro wrestling’s most accurate
chronicler. After a lengthy conversation with him, she pointed out to me that the one thing Vince
seemed to be counting on to eventually save his ass on this is that I would never expose the
business, and she suggested I talk to Dave. I?had been considering it too, so on Tuesday, for the first
time in my life, I gave Dave Meltzer a call. If Vince could do this to me, he could do it to any of the
boys. I told Meltzer, “You don’t have to take my word for this. You go ahead and try to disprove
anything I’m telling you.” He printed every word I said, at the risk of alienating the sources he
needed to make his living. His meticulously detailed story about what has come to be called the
Montreal screwjob has never been refuted and is now considered a historic document in the history
of pro wrestling.



In the days after Montreal it was rumored that Vince was going to lay assault charges against me.
Apparently I broke his jaw and sprained his ankle. At first I thought, Great, bring it on. Vince would
have to sue me in Canada, exposing the truth about what happened in a court of law. I’d be happy to
swear to God and explain myself. But Carlo kept calling, building fear in me about what could
happen in a long, costly legal battle filled with uncertainty. I paced my pool room and briefly found
myself wishing I’d never hit Vince. Then I shook my head and laughed at how surreal this all was
continuing to be. They could put me in jail, they could do whatever the hell they wanted, and I knew
someday I’d be sorry for a lot of things, but I’d never, ever be sorry for knocking that son of a bitch
out.



I didn’t know at the time that Rick Rude had already called Eric Bischoff and told him everything that
had happened. When I phoned Eric from my hotel room after the match, he howled with laughter
over the fact that I had broken my hand on Vince’s jaw. As far as he was concerned, the whole
screwjob only made me hotter. On Nitro the day after Montreal, the nWo came out waving
Canadian flags, and Bischoff called me “a knock-out kind of a guy.” Hogan chimed in, “He passed the
initiation!” Then Miss Elizabeth conducted as Bischoff, Hogan, Hennig, Macho, Nash, Razor, Kid,
Konan, Virgil and the rest of the nWo sang the worst rendition of “O Canada!” I’ve ever heard! But in
many ways it was the best too.



Stu and Helen were hurt by what Vince did to me. But Stu reiterated that, under the circumstances,
I’d done the perfect thing. The love and support that my parents gave me was the only light I
needed. If I’d beaten up Vince badly, I’d have looked pretty bad as well, but one punch was more
than fair considering all the factors. What better way to say good-bye to a crooked boss than to deck
him on my last day of work?



Davey was trying to get out of his contract and was already talking to Eric. Owen had asked to be
released, but Vince refused to let him out of his contract, even when he told Vince that I vowed to
never talk to him again if he stayed. This was only a work, of course, but we both thought Vince


might feel bad enough to go for it. When I approached Eric about my brother, he was interested, but
he didn’t want to pay Owen the same money he was making with Vince.



As a favor to Owen, I spoke with Vince Russo on the phone—he’d gone from writing the WWF
magazine to writing the shows, and we both thought of him as a friend. I told Russo angrily that
McMahon wasn’t good for his word and that it was impossible for Owen to trust anything he ever
said again. My hostile tone wasn’t directed at him, and Russo and I hung up on good terms. Seconds
later, my phone rang, and to my startled amazement it was Vince McMahon. I concluded that he’d
listened in on the entire call. He said, “I can’t believe how truly selfish you are that you would want
to hold back your brother Owen.”



“How can you expect him to ever believe anything you say?”



“If you say another word to Owen, I’ll sue you so fast that you won’t know what hit you.”



“Vince, if you had an ounce of decency you’d let him go, or at least let him make his own decision.”



“Well, I’m not letting him go. And I’m never going to let him go! And you better get used to it. If you
keep doing what you’re doing, messing with Owen’s head, I’ll sue you with a smile on my face. And
I’ll sue Owen for breach of contract too!” He slammed the phone down.



I called Owen to tell him what happened. I said I couldn’t do anything more or Vince would sue us
both. For some reason, Owen apologized.



I told him not to worry; we would never let the wrestling business come between us. “I’ll always be
here for you, Owen. Do what ya gotta do and don’t worry about me. Watch yourself. They’ll be
coming for you next, you watch. Watch your back, Owen, and I’ll be waiting for you over at WCW.
Just get home in one piece.”



PART FOUR



PINK INTO BLACK




42



CASUALTIES OF WAR



I ALWAYS FELT THEY KILLED The Hitman character that day in Montreal. Every picture and mention
of my career quickly vanished from the WWF’s website. Vince McMahon was rewriting history to
suit his own purpose, erasing me like I never existed.



Not surprisingly I’d become an overnight hero of a different sort for having the balls to KO Vince, but
I knew he’d be coming after me. He openly challenged me on TV, but at the same time he was still
talking about suing me for assault. Neither Shawn nor Hunter had the guts to admit their
involvement, but it didn’t matter: The boys had seen the yellow stripes on those two snakes long
ago. Soon enough, Taker called to tell me, “I got it right from Vince. That little cunt Shawn, he was in
on the whole thing.”



One respected champion after another phoned me. Dory Funk laughed when I outlined what had
happened, and said about me punching Vince: “You couldn’t have done a more masterful job of
doing the perfect thing.” Pedro Morales was yet another former World Champion who told me that
Vince had a habit of doing this to every star he made, and said Vince had learned it from his dad:
“Vince senior never gave me any warning about dropping the belt either. He gave me less than an
hour’s notice. I told him, you should prepare me for this.” Pedro told me to watch my back, stand up
for myself and never let them destroy me. Harley Race filled my heart when he said, “I’m proud of
you, Bret.” I felt like a scrappy alley cat that had got in an ugly fight with a big, vicious dog; even
though I was limping off, that dog was limping off too.



Vince was deep in damage-control mode. He gave a big talk to all the wrestlers at Corn-wall TVs on
November 11, 1997, saying that he did what he did to me for the sake of the boys and the business.
Owen told me that nobody believed a word he said, but Vince’s words seemed to do a number on
Carlo, who did an about-face, calling me to say that Vince’s explanation made a lot of sense to him. I
kept my disappointment with him to myself, but distanced myself a bit from him after that.



On November 24, Vince broke his promise that he would never tarnish my character after I was
gone, the way he’d done to Hogan and Macho. First he teased the audience into thinking that I was
going to appear on Raw, and then he had Shawn parade out a Mexican midget wrestler wearing a
leather jacket and a Hitman Halloween mask. Hunter and Shawn quipped that they always knew The
Hitman was short on talent, charisma and stature. I have to admit that I was hurt by such stunts. I


was also worried about starting at WCW, though I kept a brave face for my family and the fans.
Harley had warned me that WCW was a den of wolves too.



On my first visit to the WCW offices in Atlanta on December 14, I bumped into Hogan, Macho and
Eric Bischoff, who smiled confidently at me as he said, “If you think you’re a big star now, you’re
going to be an even bigger star when I’m done with you!” Hogan said what’d happened between
him and me before he left the WWF was all Vince’s fault. He said that Vince had bragged to him that
he loved to ride the boys into the ground, “then cook and eat ’em.” The truth was that Hogan didn’t
put me over when he had the chance for his own reasons. Because we needed to work together,
however, I shook his hand when he offered it and told him I was sorry for anything I said about him
after he left the WWF. He grinned back like I was an old friend. He also surprised me by giving me a
compliment: He said he thought I was the best interview in the business now, even though I knew
that honor really belonged to Stone Cold.



I made my WCW debut the next day on a sold-out live Nitro in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was a bit
surprised that it didn’t feel that much different to me than a WWF show. WCW was loaded with
hard-working Mexican boys. I’d never been much of a Lu-cha Libre fan until I saw the dedication and
effort those wrestlers put in every night. In particular, I loved the amazing work of young Rey
Mysterio Jr., a masked lightweight Mexican who could spin through, up and over the ropes with
backflips and beautiful dives and rolls. In my opinion, he is the most talented Mexican wrestler there
has ever been. I felt mucho respect from all the Mexican boys as they came to me to shake my hand.



Paul Wight, the new Giant of wrestling at seven-foot-two and four hundred pounds, lumbered up to
say hello. There were old-timers, such as Roddy Piper and Ric Flair, and great young talent, including
powerhouse Booker T and, from the Stampede territory, Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho. Even Miss
Elizabeth was there, now working as Lex Luger’s valet. Curt Hennig gave me a big, warm smile and a
slap on the back.



I felt honored to shake Rick Rude’s hand. He’d been at a taped Raw on November 17, which aired on
November 24, just as he walked out live on Nitro. This was the first and only time a wrestler
appeared for both organizations on TV at the same time. Raw was taped on alternate weeks from
the live Nitros, and Bischoff liked to give out the results of Raw matches before they aired. Rude
walked out there and delivered a well-spoken monologue about the rights and wrongs of
professional wrestling. He said it was wrong for Shawn to claim he was the World Champion when
Vince had cheated me out of the title. A lot of wrestlers were disgusted by what Vince had done in
Montreal, but Rick Rude was one of the few who actually quit the WWF for good over it.




Mick Foley had quit too and missed a Raw but then returned the next day. He was finally making a
name for himself as Mankind. For him, going back to WCW would have been career suicide. Steve
Austin called to tell me how sorry he was that it ended up this way for me but warned me that WCW
was a black hole of bad booking and bad organization. Ken Shamrock had been so furious that he’d
also wanted to quit, but I advised him to do what was best for his family and he finally elected to
stay, though he said, “I’ll always be one of your crew, Bret.” Then he was quoted in a story in
Maclean’s magazine on the screwjob, saying, “I can’t speak for what happened between Vince
McMahon and Bret Hart, but I can say that Bret Hart was the kind of guy everyone looked up to.”



Davey had to pay a $150,000 penalty to get out of his WWF contract in order to jump to WCW. For
him, I was just the excuse: Quitting was more about letting down his dying sister in Birmingham than
it was about Vince betraying me over the way I got to leave. One week after Rude left the WWF, Jim
was brought out to the ring to be humiliated and disgraced by Shawn and Hunter as part of a
storyline, and then he was fired. Luckily, Eric liked Jim enough to sign him to a $150,-000-a-year deal.
I was glad to have Jim, Davey and Rude around.



That first night in the WCW dressing room in Charlotte, I also met Steve Borden, known as Sting. This
hard-working pioneer of WCW was a well-built, born-again Christian with long, dark hair who
worked a white-painted-face gimmick based on the movie The Crow; for his entrance, he was
lowered from the rafters on a steel cable. He’d been famous for his scorpion death lock long before I
ever came up with my own variation of it: the sharpshooter.



I was also impressed with the look of Bill Goldberg, a muscle-packed former NFLer who went simply
by his last name. Bill was forced to retire from football after badly tearing an abdominal muscle. His
former head coach, Bill Sleeman, later told me that if he had a whole team of Bill Goldbergs, he’d
win the Super Bowl every year. Goldberg was bald-headed, with an angry face punctuated by a
goatee—all he needed to be intimidating was simple black trunks and low-cut black boots. He made
his entrance to dramatic marching music, pausing just long enough to pound his chest in a haze of
billowing smoke. He was destined to be WCW’s new weapon in the battle of supremacy against
Vince. Unfortunately, Bill was green and was injuring a lot of guys too.



I was bedazzled enough by that sold-out Nitro that for the first time I felt that WCW might actually
work out for me. I had a great first interview and got a good pop when I said: “Nobody knows better
than me what it’s like to get screwed by a referee.” That comment set me up to referee Hogan’s
World title match with Sting at the Starrcade ’97 pay-per-view in Washington, D.C., on December 28.
Personally, I thought that appearing as a referee would be a lackluster debut, but what did I know?
What did I care? I wanted to comply, to do whatever they asked to the best of my ability—win, lose
or draw—then pick up my check and come home safe. Nobody would accuse me of taking this
business too seriously ever again.




The following morning at the Charlotte airport, I ran right into none other than Earl and Dave
Hebner. Earl came up to me with his hand out and an apologetic look on his face. I refused to shake
his hand, warning him calmly, “Don’t talk to me.” He insisted that he didn’t know what was up with
Shawn and Vince until he was on his way out to the ring in Montreal.



“What d’ya mean you didn’t know? I told you, Earl! You promised me, swore on your kids!” But in
the end, I forgave him. I knew that Vince held Earl’s livelihood in his hands, and the only thing Earl
was guilty of was not having the guts to take a stand against the man who wrote the checks. Then
Dave asked me if I thought Bischoff would take either him or Earl on, and I told him I’d ask.



Vince’s big news was that he was bringing in Mike Tyson to work an angle with Austin leading up to
WrestleMania XIV, where Tyson would guest ref a main-event title match between Shawn and Stone
Cold. At first, Bischoff laughed it off, saying he’d turned Tyson down. But then the WWF’s ratings
went through the roof and Bischoff wasn’t laughing anymore. All I could think about was how Vince
told me he was in such financial peril he couldn’t afford to live up to our contract, yet he was paying
Tyson over $3 million for a few hours of work.



Tyson was part of a storyline with Stone Cold, who turned out to be the perfect antihero to go nose
to nose with Vince’s own new TV persona: Vince had become a dictatorial heel boss! To this point,
Vince had been known to the majority of wrestling fans mainly as a ringside announcer. With the
truth out about what he’d done to me, he decided to capitalize on the intense heat by turning
himself heel and making the betrayal all part of the “storyline.” Owen was forced to confront Vince
as part of the storyline, because the corrupt wicked promoter had screwed over his big brother. On
Raw, Shawn and Hunter called Owen a nugget of shit that didn’t quite get flushed down the toilet
and, of course, I was the big, smelly turd. I admired how Owen refused to let Shawn or Hunter get to
him, ignoring their swipes as if they didn’t matter. Owen put Shawn over, and Shawn purposely
potatoed him at one point, splitting his head open. Like me, Owen found himself making truces with
Shawn while at the same time never trusting anything Shawn said or did.



Vince kept working angles based on what he’d done to me for real. It not only made the Montreal
screwjob seem less significant, it made an increasing number of fans wonder if everything that
happened between Vince and me was “only” the biggest work in the history of the business.



Meanwhile, Paul Jay and his crew were quietly holed up in their studio in Toronto, meticulously
editing the documentary. Paul kept telling me it would be my vindication, and I wanted to believe
him.




Back at home, things were not good. For eighteen years, I’d yearned to be home. Now that I was
home more, Julie and I found that we were leading completely different lives. We had a lousy
Christmas and barely even spoke to each other. She served a beautiful Christmas dinner on paper
plates. The kids were too consumed with all their presents to notice her gesture, which only
deepened her already dark mood. The truth was that none of us wanted to piss her off any further. I
was dragging my heart around over what Vince had done to me, and Julie snapped at me to get over
it. She was also threatening to divorce me again.



I surrounded myself with my sadness—I missed my old friends, the fans, all kinds of people from the
WWF circuit, from hotels, gyms, restaurants, clubs, arenas and airports. I had also lost track of my
old loves, some of whom I missed terribly, but the truth was I didn’t want them to see me this way. I
was hurt, vulnerable, changed: I had lost faith in the world. Bischoff wasn’t going to ask me to
wrestle until late January 1998, and I couldn’t do any weight training because of my broken hand. I
kept in shape through that unseasonably warm, brown Christmas in Calgary by riding my bike all
over town.



I’d barely seen Owen or spoken with him since Survivor Series. On Boxing Day, up at Hart house, he
seemed surprised when I greeted him warmly. He told me the WWF was only getting worse, with DX
getting more vulgar every week, not to mention Sable, a sensuous valet, walking out topless for a
Fully Loaded bikini match with painted-on black handprints to cover her breasts. When he asked me
again whether I was mad at him, I told him again that we could never let the fucked-up crazy
business get between us. With the money Vince was paying him, Owen said, he was thinking about
building a big house on some land just across from Clearwater Beach. I told him just to do whatever
it took to survive and to take care of his wife and kids.



“In three years when our contracts are up,” I said, “we’ll sit on each other’s back decks and laugh
about all this shit.”



Stu and Helen celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary that New Year’s Eve under the pall of the
Montreal screwjob. Sipping tea in the kitchen, we reminisced about how happy and different
everything was back at the Stampede show in July. What happened? I think 1997 was the weirdest
year of my entire life.



My debut at Starrcade ’97 in December had been anything but brilliant. Eric told me my storyline
was going to be about how I saved WCW by helping Sting win back the title from Hogan, which
called for me to confront the referee after he made a fast count on Sting. In true WCW fashion, the
referee forgot what he was supposed to do for real and made a normal count, but that didn’t stop


me from knocking him out cold and declaring myself the new referee. Sting resumed the match and
beat Hogan seconds later. If I thought things were going to get better for me from there on in, I was
sadly mistaken.



My fans tuned into WCW for a while, but according to the mail I received and the opionions of the
fans I ran into in person, they had a hard time following the incoherent story-lines—and so did I. In
comparison, the WWF was well organized; usually Vince’s storyboards were done months in
advance. I also noticed a stark contrast between WCW’s agents and Vince’s. With the exception of
Dusty Rhodes and Paul Orndorff, none of Eric’s men had ever drawn a dime in the business. It was
like having an NFL team run by a bunch of high-school coaches.



WCW took a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to live TV. Nitro was three hours of high-flying
matches mixed with live interviews starring Hollywood Hogan and the nWo, with Eric playing the
part of a crooked promoter, just like Vince was doing. Many times, the ideas for the interviews were
dreamed up just seconds before the befuddled wrestler had to walk out and deliver his lines, and
they often contradicted whatever weak storylines were in place. Eric reminded me of a guy with a
hundred birds pecking on his head all day long. Still, WCW was doing incredible business.



I tried my best to keep a low profile even though most of the boys wanted to pick my brain and hear
all about what happened between me and Vince. After so many years of being at home in the
dressing room and a leader, I was guarded and not so trusting. Hogan seemed to be the rock here,
with waves constantly lapping up to him.



Hennig, Rude and Duggan looked out for me like big brothers. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were
plotting and scheming, trying to pull me to their side to help them get rid of Hogan. Every-where,
there were little factions of backstabbers. Many of the WCW boys despised Flair, especially Hall,
Nash, Macho, the Steiners and Hogan. The only guys who didn’t stir up shit were the Mexicans and
some of the young talent—Chris Benoit was having some of the best matches in the business at that
time with Booker T. Some of the best talent were the smaller wrestlers, such as Eddie Guerrero and
Dean Malenko, both second generation, and young Billy Kidman, who reminded me a lot of myself
when I was starting out. These were the unsung heroes of WCW, and they worked really hard at
keeping everything going.



When I packed my bag to leave my house on January 23, 1998, for my first WCW pay-per-view
match, against Ric Flair, Blade was the only one to wish me good luck.




I was worried about how Flair would work with me—with my still-injured hand, I needed to keep a
close eye on him. Flair appeared to be trying to get along in this den of wolves and multiple wolf
packs, but as hard as he tried, nobody liked him except his old cronies, such as Kevin Sullivan, Arn
Anderson, J.J. Dillon and Mongo McMichael. Hogan took every opportunity to try to stir me up about
Flair, but I said nothing. I let Ric do the match his way, even letting him chop me to his heart’s
content as he tried to show me how good he really was. I offered no resistance in what was, as usual
with Flair, twenty minutes of nonstop non-psychology.



On January 25, Vince’s mother, Juanita, passed away. She’d always been nice to me, and so, despite
everything, I sent a card of condolence to Vince’s house. I didn’t expect a reply, and I never got one.



I couldn’t find any way to be at peace with what I had. When a soul gets bigger than a mind can
comprehend, it becomes easy to give up on trust and judgment. I heard two voices in my head,
talking loud and fast, contradicting each other. Go left! Go right! Look out! I now measured time by
how many more trips I’d have to take before I could say, “Fuck you, I’m going home” to the whole
business—whatever “going home” meant. Would the day ever really come when I could walk away
and not be another wrestling tragedy? I was forty-one now, and Harley Race was right about getting
to the point where you were feeling every damn one of those bumps. My knees were running on
borrowed time and so was the rest of me. I’d do whatever they asked, yet I’d be careful and work
safe. Pedro Morales had told me, “There are only three things in this business—you, you and you.”
What he meant was that at this stage of the game it was imperative to protect myself, especially in
the ring. So I did my job and waited for a much-anticipated storyline between me and Hogan to
start. A Hitman-Hogan match clearly had the potential to be the biggest match of all time.
Meanwhile, back in the WWF, Vince converted Papa Shango from a gangsta into a pimp, whose line
was “Pimpin’ ain’t easy!” Raw was becoming more about bra-and-panty Jell-O matches than about
wrestling, with Jerry Lawler’s commentaries going on about all the girls showing their puppies.



Still, the hype about Tyson refereeing the main event title match between Shawn and Austin at
Wrestlemania XIV ignited the WWF into a roaring fire. The fire that Vince tried to put out, but
couldn’t, though, was the one raging in the hearts of my fans. At the Wrestlemania XIV press
conference, a fan angrily shouted at Shawn, “You screwed Bret!” until he was dragged away. Shawn
had to realize that screwing me would haunt him for the rest of his life; more than it would haunt
me, which is saying a lot.



I was more than eager to see Shawn drop the belt to Stone Cold, whose character had become a
gun-waving, beer-guzzling antihero perfectly suited to punishing the prima donna asshole who
screwed over Bret Hart.




I often reflected on the five of us who had started out so long ago, galloping free like wild stallions:
Dynamite, Davey, Jim, Owen and me. Dynamite was now stuck in his wheelchair, drunk and bitter,
everything gone. It seemed to me that now Davey was falling lame like Dynamite, his drug problems
getting worse, and Jim wasn’t much better. Despite my broken heart, I was strong and free, and still
at the front of the herd along with Owen. I fantasized that my brother and I were literally stallions,
lathered with sweat, galloping up a Rocky Mountain foothill, steam coming out of our nostrils in
snorts. We reach a ledge wide enough to stop, where two clear paths lead in two different
directions, and we stare at one another with eagerness and apprehension, long tails swishing. Which
way should we go? The dark horse shakes his head, then carefully picks his way south up the
cliffside. The palomino prances to and fro, wanting to follow, but then takes the path to the north,
and they part ways forever.



A lot of pro wrestling’s old horses were falling away or dying off. Britain’s Big Daddy Crabtree had
died in 1997, Loch Ness was failing and then the legendary wrestler BoBo Brazil died at seventy-
three. But the Grim Reaper of wrestling wanted more young bones too. On February 15, 1998, a
drunken Louie Spicolli downed twenty-six Somas and died at the age of twenty-seven, drowning in
his own vomit. The sad thing was that more guys were worried about drug testing being introduced
as a result than about dying like Louie did, or like Brian Pillman had. Eric Bischoff was pissed off after
the news hit the dressing room about Louie, and said to me: “Man, these guys are just getting
dressed and nobody gives a shit.”



Dave Meltzer wrote a scathing piece about how Louie’s death should finally be the wake-up call for
all wrestlers, but nobody was listening. The industry was too caught up with stunts such as Shawn
Michaels jerking off a wiener on camera as Hunter wore a SUCK THE COOK T-shirt.



Vince appeared on Off The Record, a Canadian sports talk show, where he claimed that before I left,
I’d become a real pain in the ass with a bad attitude; that I was disruptive in the dressing room; that I
was breaking down physically; and that I was starting to miss dates. I guess that last one was my
thanks for having shown up at Omaha Raw in a wheelchair only five days after surgery. But the
determined interviewer, Mi-chael Landsberg, finally got Vince to admit, after considerable
squirming, that he had lied to me.



Owen had become the Intercontinental Champion, and was working with Hunter and Rock, while I
was working with Hennig and Rude. Then Shawn came down with another “career-ending” injury,
four days before the lead-in pay-per-view for Wrestlemania XIV. Now he wouldn’t have to put Steve
over. I just shook my head. In the end, Wrestlemania XIV was a huge success, but it took Vince right
up until match time to coax Shawn into dropping the belt to Austin. (On another note, Earl Hebner
wasn’t at WrestleMania at all, having been hospitalized with a brain aneurysm that could easily have
been fatal. When I called to wish him a speedy recovery, he broke down on the phone.)




In the face of relentless competition from Vince, Eric Bischoff seemed to be burning out, and as a
result, the disorganization at the WCW was getting worse. Though the house shows were still selling
out, by March his TV ratings were beginning to slip. The WWF had figured out that the way to beat
WCW was to get raunchier and sleazier every week. Vince’s shock TV pushed the envelope of what
the censors would allow, and Bischoff looked more lost and confused every day: He had to put out a
product that fit within Ted Turner’s squeaky-clean guidelines, and Vince knew it. Maybe it’s a good
thing that Eric couldn’t go that way, even if he’d wanted to. I liked Eric and often offered him ideas. I
don’t know if it was pride or politics that made him shoot them down one by one; his own angles
rarely made sense. They’d fly me to TVs—paying for first-class air fare, hotel and a lux-ury car—only
to leave me off the show. At the end of the day, in the WWF I got screwed for money, while in WCW
I got paid well enough for so little output that I felt a bit too much like a whore.



I saw a rough cut of Paul’s documentary, which was set to air in the fall, and now I understood what
he’d been trying to tell me: The story of what had really happened to me in Montreal was going to
be told, and it would be a vindication.



Eric had me turn heel by double-crossing Sting and revealing that, all along, I was part of the nWo.
Vince’s radical new direction was as brilliant in the ratings war as Eric’s was weak. Aside from Stone
Cold being one of the most popular TV characters in the world, Sable, Taker, Mankind and Rock were
all coming into their own. On April 13, Austin wrestled McMahon to a DQ on Raw (because of
interference from Mick Foley as Dude Love), the WWF shot out in front and never looked back. The
ratings war was essentially over. I was the greatest weapon Eric had at that time, and why he never
deployed me, I’ll never know.



With my marriage and my career both falling apart, I felt darkness from all sides. I kept to myself
more than ever, which wasn’t a good thing. One day Julie summoned all the kids into the living
room, against my protests, and told them we were divorcing. She then asked them to pick who they
wanted to live with. The kids and I had been through this before, but when seven-year-old Blade
broke into tears and cried, “I’m going with Dad!” it hit a powerful nerve in me. It had been six
months since Vince had broken my heart, and neither Julie nor I knew how to fix it. This time I took
Julie at her word. We officially separated on May 15, 1998.



Meanwhile, Stu and Helen had their own misery to deal with, being in a deep financial hole. I gave
them $70,000 to get them through, making them promise me they’d use the money for themselves
and not for those Harts who always had their hands out.




On May 17, I worked a good hard match with Macho at the Slamboree pay-per-view in Worcester,
and that set up a tag match: me and Hogan versus Piper and Macho at the Great American Bash in
Baltimore, which was a month away.



Death took yet another wrestler on June 2. The Junk Yard Dog, Sylvester Ritter, fell asleep at the
wheel and rolled his car. He was forty-five.



I was worried about Davey, who told me that he and Diana were on the rocks too. He again confided
to me that he needed help with his drug problem. I went to Eric on his behalf, and Eric said that if
Davey got help, he didn’t have to worry, his job would be secure. Sadly, even though Davey freely
admitted he needed help, he wasn’t yet ready to accept it.



At the Great American Bash, Macho and I cut a good pace, but Roddy and Hogan showed their age.
Hogan was starting to remind me of Giant Baba, who was old, phony and uncoordinated, but whose
fans loved him anyway. The whole storyline didn’t make sense to me, or to the fans, but to Eric and
Hogan it was all great work. My heel character had become a deranged, angry bad guy. My fans
didn’t like him, and neither did I. My original following was now outnumbered by a new breed of
fans, who were like cartoon characters themselves. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw younger
kids or a family at ringside. Even The New York Times proclaimed that pro wrestling was no longer
suitable for kids.



On July 20, I won the U.S. title in Salt Lake City when I beat up Diamond Dallas Page with a steel
chair. Page was a close friend of Eric’s, a scruffy, wiry older rookie who resembled a Scottie dog. He
was playing the part of an old veteran, even though he’d only been wrestling a few years. He was a
good hand who was always trying to improve. We had a kind of chemistry and got on well in and out
of the ring.



I’d brought Blade with me to Salt Lake City, and he sat watching the monitor in the dressing room as
Scott Hall took some kind of phony-looking bump into a TV production trailer while wrestling Kevin
Nash. Minutes later, when Scott walked in, my eight-year-old son called out, “Hey, Razor, that was
pathetic,” cracking up the whole dressing room. During these sad and empty days, the only real joy
in my life was Blade.



On August 4, I boarded a plane home after a Nitro in Denver and was happy to find Owen in the seat
next to mine, smiling as if he’d been waiting for me. For the next couple of hours, we talked about
the state of the business. He was disgusted by a recent angle on Raw that featured wrestler Val
Venis and special guest John Wayne Bobbitt, where Venis put his penis out on a chopping block.


Owen didn’t like the guns, sleazy sex and female fans taking their tops off in the audience. He told
me he wanted to resurrect his old Blue Blazer character just to change things up: Perhaps becoming
a masked superhero was a way to avoid involvement with the vulgar aspects of the show.



I had just moved, alone, into an old stone ranch house planted on the edge of a hill in the west end
of Calgary, overlooking the Rocky Mountains; because I had to travel so much, it made the most
sense for the all the kids to live with Julie. I took the opportunity to invite Owen to come over to see
my new place as well as watch a rough cut of Paul’s documentary, now titled Wrestling with
Shadows. I was worried that my dad came across as too harsh in the doc when I talked about him
often stretching me hard enough to pop the blood vessels in my eyes and about my life passing
before my eyes while he smothered me in various submission holds. I wanted Owen’s honest advice
because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my dad, and I was relieved when he told me not to
worry because it was all true. The thing that upset Owen was when, in the documentary, I compared
losing to Shawn with blowing my brains out. My brother admonished me, reminding me,“We always
said there’s nothing in wrestling worth dying for.”



The next day I got a script to do a Disney series called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, in which I’d play
myself. There was also a part for a Hart brother and I got Owen the job so we could spend some
time together. Owen couldn’t have been happier.



I lost the U.S. title to Lex Luger on August 10, only to win it back from him three days later. Titles
didn’t mean anything anymore; they changed hands almost as many times as the WCW senselessly
turned me from heel to babyface. At that time, Eric was pinning his ratings hopes on the return of
The Ultimate Warrior. But within days, Warrior tore a biceps muscle and that was the beginning of
the end for him, not that he could’ve been Eric’s savior anyway.



I’d given Eric and Hogan advance dubs of Paul’s documentary, and they both called to tell me they
loved it. I thought perhaps it would encourage Eric to keep me baby-face, seeing as how wrestling
fans would soon see me looking like a real hero in Paul’s movie. I was baffled when Eric wasted Hart
versus Hogan on a free match at Nitro, on September 28, throwing away a guaranteed moneymaker
that the fans had been waiting years for. The plan, in my view, was insane. He wanted me to turn
babyface during an in-ring interview, challenge Hogan, then get injured and have Sting take my
place. When Sting twisted Hogan into his scorpion death lock, I would limp back out and double-
cross Sting by DDTing him headfirst into the mat, turning heel again. To turn me heel at this point
was so stupid it felt like sabotage.



Then I heard the news that my old pal Jim Duggan had kidney cancer, which only added to the
weight I was carrying around. My divorce had also turned into a War of the Roses.




Julie and I had monumental fights, over money, over whose friends were on whose side, over . . .
everything basically. And then we would make up. We went through this cycle over and over again. I
couldn’t take the up-down, push-pull anymore and sank into a deep depression. On October 11,
while riding with The Giant from Milwaukee to Chicago, I found myself wishing I was dead. But then,
when Paul Wight actually started to pull out to pass—in front of a speeding semi truck—I heard
myself shouting, “Stop!” When both our heart rates had slowed again, the big guy looked over at me
and said, “Thanks for saving my life tonight.”



I worked Halloween Havoc with Sting in Las Vegas, retaining the U.S. title by beating him senseless
with a baseball bat that was actually made of foam.



I could rarely bear to watch Raw anymore but checked it out to see Owen’s new turn as The Blue
Blazer. I understood what Owen was talking about when I saw Vince McMahon appear to piss
himself in the ring on live TV after Stone Cold pressed a .38 special to his head. With the WWF
ratings going through the roof, Sable appeared in the highest-selling Playboy magazine of all time
and Stone Cold was on the cover of Rolling Stone.



That November, Jesse The Body Ventura surprised political pundits when he was elected governor of
Minnesota. Dave Meltzer wrote, “Pro wrestling is more real and more phony than people can
imagine.” The simple truth was that wrestling had never been more widely acceptable to the
mainstream than it was that year. But it felt to me that I kept spiraling down, in my own estimation
and in my fans’ eyes too.



On November 9, a year after the Montreal screwjob, I thought I finally had my chance to show Eric
what I was worth when I worked the Nassau Coliseum, wrestling in New York for the first time since
coming to WCW. To my complete dismay, I had a meaningless match with Konan and did a run-in
during the last few seconds of the show. But I refrained from complaining: Eric had just given Davey
more time off to get his act together, though he’d had to let Jim go because he was clumsily missing
shots—not showing up for work.



The high point of the whole year was the premiere of Paul’s documentary at a gala in Toronto. After
watching it with the audience, I got a standing ovation. A week later, I sat with Stu and the rest of
the Hart family at the IMAX theater in Calgary, where once again the audience got to its feet to
cheer me. That felt especially good, because halfway through the screening, Bruce abruptly dragged
his kids out because of how Stu was portrayed. But Stu told me he liked it, which was a great relief.
Afterwards, I fielded questions from the audience, and I saw a warm smile on Owen’s face when I
said the only thing I missed about the WWF was him.




New Year’s Eve, 1998. I had no idea when I bought my new house that the view would be like an
ever-changing painting every day. I was alone and had my music cranked while looking out my
kitchen window at a family of deer digging up fallen crab apples beneath a blanket of snow.



I eased myself into a more comfortable position on a huge round couch, where I could stare out at
the distant lights of Calgary. I’d dropped the U.S. title again, to Dallas Page in Phoenix on November
22. The next day I worked a Nitro match in Grand Rapids, Michigan, against pintsized Dean Malenko,
a second-generation wrestler who was a good, capable worker, although his style reminded me of
Cirque du Soleil—it was a little too rehearsed. When Malenko went for a standing suplex on me, I
went up for him effortlessly in the air, straight as two dinner forks stuck together. Instead of taking
me back for a simple back bump, Malenko decided to walk me the short distance to the corner, but
he didn’t have the size or strength and dropped me full-weight, crotching me and tearing my groin. I
don’t even know how I was able to bring myself to finish the match. I was in too much pain even to
tell Dean how pissed off I was at him. Even worse, he dressed fast and left without acknowledging
that he hurt me, or that he was sorry. As well regarded as little Malenko was, I lost respect for him as
a professional that day. I could barely walk, let alone wrestle, yet Eric had me win back the U.S. title
from Page in Chattanooga a week later, with a lame finish where The Giant helped me. As ridiculous
as the storyline was, at least The Giant did do all the work.



I also managed to do another appearance on Mad TV in December, in a sketch about The Hitman
becoming Jesse Ventura’s lieutenant-governor and getting too physical at a press conference, where
I’d rough up the cast before stomping off the set. The funniest bit came at the end of the show when
I decked the heavy-set Will Sasso with a plastic chair, twisted him into a sharpshooter and fled. He
followed me back to my dressing room, with a camera crew in tow, asking me what my problem
was. I jumped him from behind, pulled his shirt over his head and appeared to beat him senseless.
The show went off the air with cast members attending to Will, who actually got a bloody nose in all
the excitement. As ole J.R. Foley used to say, “I never, erm, touched him.”



Christmas had been especially bleak. Diana had got so fed up with Davey passing out like a zombie
on the couch in front of the kids that she downed his entire bottle of Xanax right in front of him to
prove a point. Sadly, it was young Harry who had to call 911 because Davey was too out of it to dial
the number. Alison said that Diana had had her stomach pumped and that they’d read her the last
rites. But Owen told me at dinner at his place on Boxing Day that, as far as he was concerned, the
incident hadn’t been life threatening and that Diana only acted like she was out of it when there
were people around. I thought Owen was being a little too hard on Diana. She was having a tough
time with Davey’s out-of-control drug problem. Poor Davey. His sister, Tracey, had only just passed
away in November and his mother, Joyce, was dying of cancer and was down to her last days in a
hospital in England too.




No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to escape the Montreal screwjob. With the release of
the documentary, wherever I went people stopped me to shake my hand. A teary-eyed Marine came
up to me at the St. Louis airport and told me he’d never watch the WWF again, and that he was
proud of me. But I’d read in a Forbes magazine before Christmas that the WWF was now a $500
million-a-year company. In the last year alone, the company grossed $54.7 million, breaking all
records. I had to shake my head at the irony of the fact that the whole thing started when Vince told
me that the WWF was in financial peril! Vince had used what he did to me for real to turn his
company around completely—and his words about WCW not knowing what to do with a Bret Hart
echoed louder and louder in my head.



The heated negotiations over my divorce were basically done, and all I needed to do was sign the
papers. Though I’d decided that marriage was not for me, I’d gone through some kind of strange
metamorphosis: I now had no interest in the pretty girls at the hotels who threw themselves at the
wrestlers after the shows. Oddly, now that everything Julie and I had owned had been divided up,
we were getting along better than we had in a long time.



The constant pain in my groin was bad enough that I winced when I hoisted myself off the couch to
pace around inside my big house, thinking and remembering. I promised Eric I’d delay my groin
surgery until after WCW’s Canadian debut, which was going to be in Toronto, on March 29, 1999. I
thought I could make it because I could walk, run reasonably fast and take some bumps, but I’d have
to go real easy. Eric had also apologized to me for how they’d dropped the ball with me from the
start.



On February 1, Bill Goldberg and I were waiting on the runway in Los Angeles for Hogan and Bischoff
to arrive for a chartered flight to San Francisco, both of us worried that we wouldn’t get to Nitro on
time. As we chatted I told Bill that I had an idea for WCW’s debut in Toronto, which was coming up,
a great angle that played on my popularity in Canada, especially after the documentary. Wearing my
trademark skater shorts and a Hitmen jersey, I’d call him out and goad him into spear-tackling me
like a freight train, only I’d hide a “steel” chest plate under my jersey, and he’d end up knocked out
cold for the one . . . two . . . three. This of course would set us up to work together, with him coming
after me to get even. “It’s great television, Bill, and it doesn’t hurt you one bit.” Bill grinned and told
me he was all for it.



Eric, Hogan, Bill and I missed all but the last three minutes of Nitro and hit the ring one after another
in our street clothes. The next day I told Eric my idea about Goldberg and the steel plate and he told
me he loved it too, but he thought Bill would never go for it. I explained that I had already run it past
Bill and that he wanted to do it. Surprised, Eric told me we could do it. I suggested to him that with
Toronto barely two months away, I’d need to be built up some, get a few wins and cut some good
promos. We planned out my next few weeks leading into Toronto, and Eric asked me not to say a
peep about our plans to anyone.




On February 7, I was flown down to Atlanta to sit in on a booking meeting that was supposed to
determine finally where The Hitman was going at WCW. I wasn’t surprised to find Hulk, Nash, Eric
and the rest of the booking committee playing God with the careers of the wrestlers. First off, Hogan
suddenly brought up rumors that I was going back to Vince, which would do big business. I
downplayed the chance of it ever happening, while knowing this fear was really the only leverage I
had anymore. The only thing bigger than a Hart-Hogan match would be if I did an angle with Vince,
but for all the money in the world, I would never let Vince make an angle out of something that hurt
so deeply. I let them know I was happy to put over anybody they wanted, but it seemed to me that it
didn’t make much sense to beat me so often considering what they were paying me. Bischoff and
Hogan stayed in the meeting just long enough to clear the way for me to work with Hogan in the fall.
After they left, Nash, who was the new captain of the booking committee, told me there was no
chance I’d be working with Hogan in the fall: he had Hogan with Gold-berg.



“Eric was just here and we were all in agreement.” I said. “Where were you?”



Nash walked off, bitching and shaking his head.



The next day, in Buffalo for Nitro, as part of an angle that was tied in with Mad TV, I was supposed to
drop the belt to an unworthy and unreliable Razor, but at the last minute that was switched, and
Roddy Piper was going to get the belt. I wanted to do all I could for Roddy, in return for all his years
of being a true friend to me. I laid him out after the referee had also been knocked down. Then I
attempted to drag the semi-conscious ref over to make the count, just as Will Sasso climbed over the
railing. We got into a tug-o’war over the ref, with me pulling on his arm and Will pulling on his leg.
When Roddy schoolboyed me from behind, with the ref just able to make the count, it got a huge
pop.



Then Eric decided to go on a family vacation to France, leaving Nash in charge. Eric’s last Nitro before
his time off was February 22 in Sacramento; instead of building me up for Goldberg, he had me lose
to Booker T. This made no sense to me at all, but Eric sheepishly told me that his booking committee
insisted that it was time to see me do a job. I told him I’d done plenty of them and beating me was
beyond stupid when they had so much invested in me. “Just put Booker over and we’ll build
everything after this,” he said. I had nothing but respect for Booker T, so told Eric I’d do whatever he
needed me to do. (I was pleased to see that despite my groin injury, Meltzer rated it a four-star
match.)



Three days later, at Thunder in Salt Lake City, Eric was gone and Nash had the nerve to tell me that
he’d taken my groin injury into account but he still wanted me to do a ridiculously long seventeen


minutes with Disco Inferno. Disco was comic relief, and no way to build me for Goldberg, let alone
Hogan. Next, at Nitro in Worcester on March 8, it was Malenko I would supposedly lose to. When I
protested to Nash that I needed to stay strong for Goldberg, of course he didn’t know what I was
talking about. To me, it felt like Rome was burning yet again. Nash was doing all he could to kill me
off, for reasons I’ll never know. That time, I somehow managed to persuade him that Eric had
something big planned for me, so, acting like he was doing me a huge favor, he threw me in with a
big, clumsy rookie named Heavy Metal Van Hammer. I didn’t lose, but it added nothing to my heat
going into Toronto.



At home, my mom told me that Smith’s on-and-off girlfriend Zoe—Chad’s mother—had died of a
drug overdose. I decided to go to her funeral to be there for Smith. A few days later Smith showed
up at my place with Stu in tow, his excuse being that Stu wanted to see my house (clearly an excuse
because Stu had just been over for a visit). I helped my dad into the kitchen where we soon got so
engrossed in talking about Davey, and the pain he was in from a hurt back, that I didn’t immediately
notice that Smith had gone missing. I soon found him rummaging through my things in the living
room, and I invited him back to the kitchen, telling him he had to stay where I could keep an eye on
him. He sheepishly followed me. My dad told me he thought Eric Bischoff was the cause of Davey’s
problems and soon I was defending Eric to my dad: Davey’s story was that he’d hurt his back on a
malfunctioning trap door in a WCW ring. He and Diana were even talking about suing. I told Stu that
as far as I was concerned, Davey was battling a morphine addiction more than any injury or
infection, and he needed to get clean. Eric had given him lots of chances to do just that, but Davey
was still procrastinating about going to rehab.



On March 22, I flew all the way to Panama City to find out I’d be off that night, but I managed to
persuade Nash to give me an interview on Nitro to set things up for Toronto—because it looked like
WCW was going to waste that opportunity too, even though I was over in Canada following the
documentary release. In my brief interview with Gene Okerlund, I prepped my Canadian fans by
challenging Hogan and Nash, and then subtly tossing Goldberg’s name out for the very first time,
planting a seed that I knew was sure to grow in the week remaining before the Toronto show.



At Wrestlemania XV in Philadelphia on March 28, Austin pinned Rocky Maivia, now known as The
Rock, to win the World Heavyweight title, while Owen and Jeff Jarrett defeated D-Lo Brown and Test
to retain the Tag Team belts. The WWF was red hot.



The next day at about noon, I walked into the Air Canada Centre in Toronto for Nitro and there were
already a few thousand fans standing on the street in the frigid cold chanting my name. Eric had
filled in the booking committee about my Goldberg angle, but, much to my disappointment, Nash
and WCW road agent Kevin Sullivan had got to Bill and persuaded him that the angle would kill him
off.




I tried to talk Goldberg back into it in the dressing room. “C’mon on, Bill. You’re kidding me? We
talked about this, remember? You loved it! Nothing’s changed. You know this will set us up to work
after my surgery.”



When I left him, I ran into Nash, who’d now decided he would come down at the end and leave me
laying, which made no sense at all.



I went and found Eric in his office. I knew that the ratings success of Wrestlemania XV had to be
weighing heavily on his mind, but I still couldn’t believe my ears when he said, “How ’bout this—you
go out and tell the fans that you don’t need them anymore!”



In my first WCW refusal, I shook my head: no. “Eric, you hear that sound?” I said. “That’s the sound
of thousands of my fans, and only my fans, standing outside on the sidewalk, in the dead of winter,
chanting my name. Why would I do that?”



He had another idea: We’d do everything the same, except that Hogan, not Nash, would come down
at the end. He’d go to high-five me, but instead he’d double-cross me, jump me and leave me for
dead. Dumbfounded, I asked Eric if I was going to work with Hogan instead of Goldberg. He said not
until next fall. I asked if Hogan was going to be wrestling Goldberg. He said not anytime soon. I asked
him, “Why in God’s name would you fuck up such a great angle with something so stupid and
pointless?”



Eric said nervously, “You’ll have to convince Terry. If he says it’s okay, then fine.” Now I knew who
was really in charge of WCW.



So I went and found Hulk and asked him. “So why would you come down?”



“I don’t need to come down,” he admitted.



When I relayed Hulk’s response to Eric, he seemed surprised and relieved. Eric wanted me to feed
the rumors that I was going back to the WWF, so he told me that after the bit with Goldberg, he
wanted me to get on the mic and quit WCW. I had no idea what that would be about, but I agreed.




I felt like a cat in the dark, watching Hogan battling Nash in some kind of power play in which we
were all caught in the middle; Eric was clearly in over his head, unable to cope with the warring wolf
packs.



As I walked out to my music, there was a commotion going on in the entranceway. Kevin Sullivan
was on the floor, frothing at the mouth in a seizure (in the dressing room the next day, he explained
that he had miscalculated his GBH dosage). Who could make such stuff up? As I stepped over him, I
couldn’t help thinking, It’s a good thing I don’t follow the leaders around here.



I walked out wearing my friend Tie Domi’s Maple Leafs jersey underneath my Hitmen jersey. I knew
if Eric had seen it, he’d have made me take it off because he was already terrified that I was going to
go over so strong with the Canadian crowd that it would turn Goldberg heel, which was going to
happen anyway, no matter what we did. I received a thundering ovation from the crowd, and then
on the mic, I accused Goldberg of hiding in his dressing room, biting his fingernails and trembling
with fear. While I peeled off my Hitmen jersey to expose the Maple Leafs jersey, declaring Canada
“hockey country,” Eric was frantically running around backstage screaming at Goldberg to get out
there before I killed him off. When Goldberg finally got in the ring, snorting like a Brahma bull, I
taunted him, begging him to come and get me. When he spear-tackled me, the fans had no idea
what was going to happen next. We both lay there without moving for what seemed like an eternity.
Then I rolled him off me, counted him out, stood up, peeled my jersey off and threw it down on his
unconscious body revealing the “steel” plate: the whole building came unglued. As Eric requested, I
got on the mic and declared, “Hey, WCW, I quit!”



When I got home I actually contemplated quitting for real. It seemed to me that Eric just didn’t have
enough wrestling smarts to do his job: He had freaked out backstage because he thought I
overshadowed Goldberg, but within hours the angle was being talked about as the best thing WCW
had done in years. It even made the front page of The Toronto Sun, under the headline “HITMAN
QUITS.”



When I?got home, I signed a two-year extension to my contract. I hoped it would dispel any fears
that I was going back to WWF, which might give WCW the incentive to do better by me—not to
mention that $2.5 million a year until 2003 was too good to turn down. Then I?had my surgery.
Davey was in the hospital too, supposedly with a staph infection that had traveled to his spine. I
believe he was actually going through withdrawal. I don’t think it helped when WCW, not being able
to reach him, FedExed termination papers to his house and Diana brought them right to him in the
hospital. What did help was when Owen and Mankind visited him that same afternoon and put him
on the phone with Vince, who told Davey that if he got clean, he’d have a job waiting for him. With
Davey, though, that was a big if. The WWF was in Calgary for a sold-out non-televised show at the


Saddledome on April 17. Owen asked me if I would come down and say hi to all the wrestlers. I
decided I would, as a favor to him, but I also needed to do it for myself. I didn’t want to carry around
my bitterness anymore.



I spoke to Eric the night before, and he told me to go down to the show, that it would really feed the
rumors on the Internet. When I arrived at the back of the Saddledome, Carlo was there to meet me
and seemed overly concerned about letting me come backstage. The closer we got to the dressing
room, the more I realized that Carlo was the only one who had a problem with it. I was soon
surrounded by the smiling faces of Owen, Mankind, Edge, Test and Papa Shango. Even Hunter came
out to greet me, with Chyna, who clearly had had radical cosmetic surgery since the last time I’d
seen her; she looked drastically altered, reconstructed and beautiful in a ghastly kind of way. I gave a
hardy handshake to Ken Shamrock just as agent Jack Lanza waded in with a big smile, flashing a look
of annoyance at Carlo, who was still standing around like a useless guard dog. “What the hell?” he
said to Carlo. “Of course he can come down. Are you kidding?”



It felt good to see my old friends, and I could tell by the huge smile on Owen’s face that it meant a
lot to him that I was there. I was soon pulling my pants down just enough to show them the four-
inch incision from my surgery. Then I went to watch Taker’s match, and when the fans glimpsed me
in the wings, they began chanting “We want Bret,” over and over. After his match, Taker walked past
me grinning and said, “You’re next.”



I noticed Stone Cold playing innocently enough with some black-haired girl’s hand. I couldn’t see her
because she was all wrapped up in the curtain, but I assumed this might be a new girlfriend. Like so
many of us, Austin had just gone through a divorce. Then Steve noticed me and I noticed that the girl
he was playing around with was Diana. She’d dyed her hair. I’d seen Davey do a lot more than flirt,
but still, this seemed a bit callous with Davey in the hospital, for whatever reason he was there.
Steve left her to come over and chat with me; we parked ourselves on some equipment boxes, and
soon we were talking about our divorces. Then Owen asked me to say hi to Earl, and I had no
problem doing that.



Moments later, I stood with The Rock, who told me, “I’ll never forget what you did for me.” He also
said that I should come back, that WCW was screwing me over worse than Vince had. Shawn wasn’t
wrestling anymore, just playing the role of a commissioner, so he, Taker and Austin were the ones in
charge. I shrugged and said, “I don’t think so.”



After the show, I sat with Taker at a bar and we laughed like the long-lost friends that we were. I
went home that night feeling better than I had in months, because finally, at least in some sad, small
way, I got to say a proper good-bye.




Three days later, on the same day as the Columbine high-school massacre, the Grim Reaper came
calling for Rick Rude, who was found dead of a heart attack from an overdose of painkillers. He was
forty. I’ll never forget how Rick stood by me after Montreal. Rick was one of those guys who never
took his wedding ring off; he’d wrap a piece of white tape around it when he went into the ring. He
was the kind of guy who, when you needed someone to back you up, wouldn’t flinch at all. Not for
money. Not for anything.



And then, in early May, that crazy lumberjack, Jos The Maniac LeDuc, died. I can’t express how much
the constant string of wrestlers’ deaths affected me. They developed drug habits and took such risks
with their health, all for what? Just to make the next town? To entertain people? This sort of funeral
march happens to most people when they hit their seventies. To me it felt like the casualties of war.



On May 17, I did a bit where I came out of the crowd on The Tonight Show to accept a challenge
from Kevin Nash that I come back to WCW in one week to wrestle him. Jay Leno had been part of
WCW’s Hog Wild pay-per-view back in July 1998, and he laughed when I pulled out a WCW wrestling
card with his picture on it and asked him to sign it.



Meanwhile, the Hitmen had won the WHL championship and were set to meet the Ottawa 67s in the
Memorial Cup. Things had improved so much between Julie and me that I invited her, along with
Blade and Dallas, to fly east with me to watch the game. On Sunday afternoon, May 23, 1999, the
Ottawa 67s defeated the Hitmen in a heartbreaking overtime. Julie and I, along with the boys,
stopped in the locker room to congratulate the team on a great season. Even though the team had
lost, that visit was a sweet moment of competitive purity that one only finds in real sports.



I had to rush to make my flight to L.A. for my second live appearance on The Tonight Show the next
day. While I was saying good-bye to Julie and the kids at the airport, we bumped into some of the
mothers of the Hitmen players who were catching a flight back to Calgary. They were still tearful,
and then one of them cracked a tentative smile and said, “Why are we crying? It’s not like somebody
died.”



I connected to my L.A. flight through Toronto, but had no time at the airport to call home. I pictured
the whole Hart clan sitting in Stu’s kitchen watching the nationally televised Memorial Cup final and
feeling the same passion and heartache as me. A couple of hours later, in the air, something
ominous nagged at my heart. It couldn’t be the game. I knew all about the game. Then the cockpit
door opened and the pilot came out, and I just knew that he was looking for me. He handed me a
note that read, “Bret Hart, please call home. Family emergency!”




I tried every phone in the first-class cabin, but as luck would have it, the only one that worked was
next to the only other passenger in the compartment. At first I got nothing but busy signals. So I
checked my voice mail to find a frantic message from Carlo asking me to call him right away. I knew
at that moment that someone had died.



When I reached him, Carlo kept asking, “Are you sitting down?”



“I’m on a plane, of course I’m sitting. What happened?”



“Don’t be alarmed. Don’t get mad. I don’t know how to tell you this. Are you sitting down?”



I was getting annoyed. “Just spit it out.”



“Owen’s dead. He got killed doing some kind of stunt in the ring.”



I felt like my chest caved in. Carlo didn’t have the facts yet, but all he knew for sure was that Owen
was gone.



43



“IF I GAVE YOU MY LIFE, WOULD YOU DROP IT?”



THE NEXT DAYS ARE ALL IMAGES smeared together. I couldn’t get back to Calgary until about five
a.m. the next morning, and when I got home I went to bed. I hadn’t slept at all since hearing the
news, and I didn’t want to show up at Hart house until I’d had a little rest—I wanted my parents to
be able to lean on me. I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind: What happened to you, my little
Oje?



The night before, a somber Jim Ross sat at the announcers’ table at the Over The Edge pay-per-view
in Kansas City with the cameras on the crowd, not daring to reveal what was happening in the ring to


the live audience watching around the world. “This is as real as real can get,” he said. “The Blue
Blazer, known as Owen Hart, was going to make a very spectacular superhero-like entrance.
Something went terribly wrong . . . this is not a wrestling angle . . . this is not part of the story . . .”



Hanging from a cable off a catwalk up in the rafters of the arena, Owen suddenly fell seventy-eight
feet to the ring, smashing chest-first across the ropes, about a foot from a turnbuckle, bouncing hard
onto his back toward the middle of the ring. He lay there for several minutes turning blue while
paramedics worked feverishly on him, to no avail.



I pulled into Stu’s yard at around eleven that morning. Hart house never looked so sad. Dean’s old,
crippled pit bull, Lana, was the first to greet me, her tail whacking my car door. I thought to myself
that Owen would have laughed at the notion that the old dog outlived both Dean and him.



A swarm of reporters surrounded me as I made my way up the back porch steps. Stu was sitting at
the head of the diningroom table going through pictures of Owen. I reached out for his big hand, and
put my other hand on his shoulder. In the living room, grandkids were huddled together in little
groups softly crying while various members of the family were giving interviews. My mom politely
excused herself from a group of reporters to give me a big hug, crying as she held me tight. The story
of Owen’s fatal fall was covered by news outlets worldwide, all of which were asking if pro wrestling
had gone too far.



When Owen had been dying in Kansas City, Martha had been home packing for the big move into
their new dream house, across the road from what used to be Clearwater Beach. Leaving the media
circus at Hart house, I drove over to see her. I was amazed by her composure. She had already called
a lawyer friend of hers by the name of Pam Fischer to seek legal advice. I watched the news with
Martha and there, on camera, was Davey, looking much better than he had in a long while. I couldn’t
believe it when Davey said that Owen’s death was just an accident, and that it was nobody’s fault.
Who was Davey to say whose fault it was, when the police were still investigating what had
happened? Davey then vowed that he’d return to the WWF to win a title in Owen’s honor.



I left Martha to go to see my own kids. Owen was their closest uncle and, like the rest of the Hart
grandkids, they were taking it hard. Perhaps it was a blessing that Owen’s own children, Oje and
Athena, were still too young to really understand that their dad was never coming back. When Julie
comforted me, I broke down crying hard, sitting on the front steps. It felt somehow like I was
responsible.




Because of my experience dealing with the media, Martha asked me to be a spokesperson for
herself and her family. In the days after Owen died, I asked Marcy to relocate permanently to
Calgary to run my office and be my personal assistant; I got her a ticket on the next flight out of New
York. I did Good Morning America at four a.m., Calgary time, in Stu’s living room with Martha and
my parents. I arrived unshaven and weary. Martha’s lawyers were there to guard against anything
being said that could jeopardize her legal standing with the WWF, so I focused on how the business
had strayed too far from the premise of two athletes telling a story using only their bodies. Pro
wrestling had become a can-you-top-this ratings war of increasingly more dangerous stunts and
sleazy storylines. Owen was no stuntman and clearly someone didn’t know what they were doing. A
union for wrestlers was long overdue, I said. At least if we had one, there’d be guidelines to
distinguish between wrestling and stunt work, and there would be protection when someone got
hurt.



Meanwhile, Vince left me numerous phone messages pleading with me to call him back. I couldn’t
bring myself to do it until I had a better idea of his role in Owen’s death.



On Thursday morning, May 27, Martha asked me to come with her to meet the plane that was
bringing Owen home. We watched as the closed casket, draped with a big Canadian flag, was placed
into a hearse. The next morning at the viewing, I stared down at Owen in his coffin laying there with
his fingers laced across his chest. It didn’t look like him. When I kissed his cold cheek, it struck me
that my little brother felt like a porcelain doll. Smoothing his hair, I kept asking, “Ahh, Owen, what
were you thinking?”



I finally relented enough on the Vince front to have Carlo arrange to have Vince meet me on a park
bench overlooking the Bow River where I’d spent so much time thinking about what Vince had done
to me. Soon, three limos pulled up at my old house, and I led them to the park. A Calgary policeman
told me, some time later, that Vince had hired him and some under-cover cops to stake out our
meeting in case I got violent. Apparently Vince was wearing a wire: The cop said he heard every
word of our meeting and had been impressed with my dignity.



That whole May was cold in Calgary, and the backdrop of our meeting was a watercolor sky of ashen
gray and swollen, black, angry clouds that would be crying along with us before long. Vince wore a
long, heavy coat. He slapped me hard on the shoulders, hugged me and told me how sorry he was.
“This is the worst thing to ever happen in the business, to the nicest guy who was ever in the
business.”



He asked me if he should go to Stu’s, and I suggested that he might want to wait until after the
funeral. I’d left Hart house not an hour earlier and Bruce and Ellie were still screaming for his head,


but I didn’t see the need to tell Vince that. When I asked him what happened, he told me he didn’t
know all the details, he was in makeup at the time. I told him that, in all likelihood, Martha would be
suing him. I gave him fair warning that if he had anything to tell me, he should go ahead, but that we
didn’t need to talk about it. He accepted that and seemed to relax a little.



I told Vince that I didn’t appreciate that they went on with the show after Owen died. He replied
that nobody knew what to do, they were so shocked; and they were afraid the fans might riot if he
stopped the show. That struck me as ridiculous, and I said that if Shane had been dropped from the
ceiling, Vince would have stopped it fast. He stared out at the river and simply said, “We didn’t know
what to do.”



I also didn’t appreciate them airing a replay for profit either, and I didn’t like watching Raw the day
after Owen’s death, when wrestlers sick with grief were given no choice about pouring their hearts
out on live TV for ratings. I said a more fitting tribute to Owen would have been to celebrate his
career by showing his matches.



Then I sighed and told Vince that this never would have happened to Owen if I’d been there. Owen
always came to me for advice, and I would have shot such a stupid idea down fast.



Vince finally admitted, though I didn’t know whether I could believe him, that “There isn’t a day that
goes by that I don’t regret what I did to you. You need to come back and finish your career with me. I
could put the belt back on you. . . . I could have a storyline for you by tomorrow morning.”



I couldn’t imagine getting back in the ring ever again, I replied, and aside from that I’d just resigned
with WCW for another two years.



Vince seemed to mean it when he asked if there was anything he could do for me. When I still
worked for him, we talked about doing a Best of Bret Hart video collection, but that was more than
unlikely after Montreal. I didn’t have much of a history if Vince locked up everything I did in a
warehouse somewhere. “Well, it would mean a lot to me if I could have access to my video history
and photos whenever I need them . . .”



He cut me off, “Anything you want.”




“I don’t want to lose my legacy. I don’t want to be forgotten . . .”



He waved me off. “You don’t even need to ask. Anything you want.”



I found myself thanking him and telling him how much this simple gesture meant to me, especially
under the circumstances. If the police cleared Vince, then maybe I could forgive him.



After two hours on that park bench, exchanging stories about Owen and finally even managing to
laugh a little—for better or worse, Vince and I had fourteen years of shared history—we shook
hands and headed back to our cars.



The WWF wrestlers and a lot of the crew and office staff made the long flight to Calgary for Owen’s
funeral. The May 31Raw was already in the can, but Nitro was live and Eric left a message for me
apologizing for not being able to attend. To his credit Hulk arrived in town quietly, on his own with
no fanfare.



On Monday morning, May 31, I got up from my dining-room table, where I’d been writing the
finishing touches of a eulogy to my brother, and went out for a walk. The Calgary sky was as gray as
my mood and it cried tears from heaven on and off all day. When I got back I donned my best suit
and drove over to Stu’s to meet the motorcade. A dozen perfectly polished white limousines were
lined up in Stu’s front driveway, into which climbed various Harts all dressed in black. I was annoyed
when I saw Ellie and Diana guiding Vince by the arm into Stu’s limo; as far as I was concerned, he
was far from forgiven yet.



Tension was smoldering among the siblings. I’d heard various rumors that Diana was pissed off
because I’d got so much more TV time all week than anyone else. Bruce was upset because Martha
wouldn’t let him speak at the service. And Smith, who’d written a poem for Owen, was crushed
when Martha told him he couldn’t read it. Martha did ask both Ross and I to speak, and she
requested that I tell some lighthearted stories about Owen before she delivered her own eulogy.
Unfortunately, all these little things that I did to oblige Martha were only getting me heat from the
rest of the family. It wasn’t as though I wanted to be on TV right after my brother died, and I
dreaded having to be on Larry King Live immediately after the funeral. All I wanted was to be left
alone to grieve like everybody else.



The line of cars grew longer with each passing mile of the procession, with media and police
helicopters overhead. The WWF wrestlers followed in a bus that bore a banner proclaiming, OWEN


YOU WILL ALWAYS BE IN OUR HEARTS. All that banner really told me was that Vince was treating the
funeral as much as an exercise in damage control as it was about laying my brother to rest.



This was one of the biggest funerals that Calgary had ever seen, and people lined the motorcade
route, many in their finest clothes, some bowing their heads and others holding signs. The Calgary
police, in dress uniforms, closed major highways and provided a motorcycle escort all the way to the
McInnis ; Holloway funeral chapel, which was surrounded by thousands of people of all ages and
walks of life. The chapel only held three hundred, so a separate room with TV monitors was provided
for the WWF personnel and a PA system was set up outside for the public.



I remember seeing a blur of old and young battered faces. Owen’s close pal Chris Benoit stood with
Killer Kowalski, The Funks, Mick Foley, Taker, Bad News, Jericho, Hunter, Chyna and a cavalcade of
other wrestlers.



The next thing I remember clearly is the heartfelt vow with which Martha closed her eulogy: “There
will be a day of reckoning. This is my final promise to Owen. I won’t let him down!”



The six remaining Hart brothers carried Owen’s casket out of the chapel. It was the heaviest weight
any of us had ever carried.



The procession then wound its way to Queen’s Park Cemetery, where I’d so long ago raked leaves
from headstones and made the decision to give the wacky world of wrestling a try. Tears filled my
eyes when I saw a military officer in full dress uniform standing on an overpass at attention, saluting.



After Owen was lowered into the ground, the motorcade headed to Hart house, where friends and
family from around the world gathered. It wasn’t long before Pat Patterson came to find me. He
wanted to tell me that he wasn’t in on what happened to me in Mont-real, but he shut up when I
asked coldly, “So, where were you when they brought the midget out all dressed up as me?”



Finally, after doing Larry King Live from Martha’s living room, I went home totally spent. I found a
FedEx package from Carlo sitting at my doorstep among a forest of floral deliveries. I opened it to
find Owen’s bloody Blue Blazer gear inside. I held up the bloodstained blue mask that’d been cut off
my brother, remembering that it was originally my idea for Owen to wear a mask. I grabbed my coat,
got away from the smell of all those flowers, and went for a long, long walk.




Smith’s Poem for Owen



Once you were here



What a difference you made, dearest of dear brothers.



To the hell that was raised when a dozen then played without any others.



Only heaven knows why you got chosen,



and that you’ll await us is our belief.



I smell lily and rose and read each and every heartfelt card,



through flows of grief.



What is spoken is tasted



and what is heard of your greatness is felt deep within our heavy hearts



and certainly all around this solemn gathering.



As I still try to write in this, the 13th hour, Owen



And search for words of praise and worth,



I sense your presence pure and sweet.




Owen, don’t think I don’t know



that you are haunting our house already.



Sadly, I’d lose more family than Owen after his death.



That Wednesday morning, tears came to my eyes reading about my brother’s funeral in the morning
papers while listening to Tom Petty sing about having a room at the top of the world and not comin’
down. I’d be leaving for Missouri the next day with Martha, Pam Fischer and Ed Pipella, Martha’s
other Calgary lawyer. I had no misgivings about supporting Martha, who was determined to see the
WWF pay dearly for destroying her life and her husband. I also needed someone to tell me for sure
that Owen had not been murdered in some way. So I swore to Martha that I would be there for her
no matter what happened, but I was having a tough time trying to get some of the Harts to stop
talking to the media about Owen’s death.



Still, my kids were over for a visit, and the sound of them playing lifted my spirits. I remembered
how, whenever we landed in Calgary, Owen would grab his two carry-on bags, ready to race down
the ramp as soon as the plane doors opened because Martha and the kids were always there
waiting. As I flipped through the Calgary Herald, I couldn’t get over the smiling face of my sister
Diana, looking way too happy for the occasion as she posed with a bunch of sad wrestlers flanking a
deflated Stu. There was a quote from Diana in the paper that made my blood boil: “Dad is like a
father figure to Vince and Vince felt like Owen was one of his sons.” Why couldn’t they just say “no
comment,” at least until the criminal investigation was over and we knew whether any charges
would be laid against Vince or his organization? This was what Owen’s widow had asked us all to do!



I phoned Diana and I wasn’t surprised that she turned on me like a grass fire. She blistered my heart
when she tore into me about how Owen was a better wrestler than me and that I was jealous and
had always held him back. She defended Vince, saying that this was no different than if Owen had hit
his head in a cage match—accidents happen!



“All you have to say is no comment,” I said. “How hard is that, Diana? Vince hasn’t even been
cleared of criminal charges.”




“You hold it against Vince for what he did to you at Survivor Series because you didn’t want to do a
job for Shawn Michaels. You’ve got a vendetta and you’re the only one that wants to sue anybody.”



“Diana, this is about Martha. It’s her decision!”



Then Ellie was suddenly on the extension, and I shouldn’t have been so hurt or surprised when she
coldly fired back, “You know, Bret, I’ve hated your guts since the day you were born and I’m glad to
tell you that.” I listened to them both screaming and yelling and it felt as though someone was
pouring scalding water down my back. I was trying so hard to stand up for the whole family, to make
them proud, and what I was asking Ellie and Diana to do was only what Owen would have asked of
them himself, if he could have. I rose, clutching the phone, and erupted in a loud, booming voice, “If
you two think for one minute that you’re going to use Owen’s death to get your husbands jobs, if
you don’t support Martha and Owen’s kids right now, I will never, ever talk to either of you ever
again!”



I slammed the phone down hard, then sat with my hands trembling as my kids all gathered around
to comfort me. Then I actually called my mom to tell her the vicious, biting words that Ellie and
Diana had said to me, as though I were a little kid again. She told me that she and Stu were firm in
their decision to support Martha; it was the only thing to do; it was their decision; and it had nothing
to do with me at all.



“Why do they all hate me so much?” I asked, and she broke down. “Dawling, they’re all just so damn
jealous of you. Jealousy is an ugly thing, and some of your brothers and sisters are infected with it.
They don’t mean it, they just wish that they could all be like you and have what you have.” And then
she comforted me as best she could.



In Kansas City the next day, Martha and I and her Calgary lawyers met Garry and Anita Robb, highly
respected Missouri counsel who hoped to be hired to handle Martha’s case. At noon we all went to
a Kansas City police station where they showed us the flimsy sailboat clip the riggers used to attach
Owen’s harness to a single cable. The chief of police and a room full of detectives explained what
they thought happened. Some of the cops in that meeting had been in the ring with Owen less than
forty seconds after he hit the mat and they did everything they could to try to save his life.



I had heard that he was supposed to do the stunt with the same Mexican midget they paraded out
as me after Montreal scissored between his legs, and was shocked when the cops confirmed it. The
midget had only been nixed that afternoon. The officers calmly explained that Owen had been alive
after he hit the ring and that he lay there for eight minutes with a severed aorta, his lungs filling with


blood until he drowned. He had tried to sit up, to reassure the fans, but he couldn’t. The impact
when he hit the ring smashed almost all the heavy wooden ring planks and loosened all the ropes
like they were rubber bands.



We were also told that criminal charges weren’t likely to be laid but hadn’t been ruled out.



Afterwards, the Robbs took us to Kemper Arena. As we headed up to the catwalk, Ed Pipella noticed
a creepy insurance adjuster tagging along with us. When Ed quizzed him about who he was and what
he was doing there, it turned into an ugly scuffle until security dragged the adjuster off.



It was a long climb to the top of the building. I wanted to get to the exact spot where Owen had
fallen and started up a steep ladder to the catwalk. My stomach was queasy as I thought of a line
from The English Patient, “If I gave you my life would you drop it?” Then it was a long, nerve-
wracking walk along the catwalk to the score clock—and this was with the lights on. I could just
imagine Owen having to race all the way up here as fast as he could in the dark, dressed in bulky
coveralls, with a baseball cap pulled down to hide his face from the fans. Climbing over the railing of
the catwalk must have been a terrifying moment. Standing next to the score clock, I looked out to
where he would have hung. I pictured him fidgeting with his cape, breathing hard from the sprint up
and then—ping—the sailboat clip holding his full weight released prematurely: the deep breaths he
was taking would have provided more than the eight pounds of pressure the clip was designed to
take. The riggers happened to be looking away at that moment, and when they turned back they
were aghast to see that he was already falling, clawing at the air with his hands. I looked down and a
chill went up my back wondering how in hell he let himself get talked into this. If Montreal never
happened, I thought, and I had still been in the WWF, I would’ve stopped this from ever happening
to Owen!



By the time I got home, I was even more distraught and wildly confused. Owen had been so straight
and so good, whereas I had always broken the rules, always been a bad boy, drinking, doing drugs
and cheating on my wife. Why would God take the best one? Owen once said, “You can be a good
person and do everything right and it doesn’t guarantee you anything.” Since his death, the Harts
were forming into backstabbing cliques of their own, with Ellie and Diana fiercely demanding that
Martha and my parents settle with Vince immediately, extolling the head of the WWF as some kind
of saint who loved all the Harts.



Not surprisingly, a desperate Bruce, with his wrestling school and the broken-down vestiges of the
Stampede Wrestling promotion, was looking for Vince to fund him in some way. Smith was talking
about suing Vince because, he claimed, he and Owen were going to open a wrestling school
together. Owen wouldn’t have opened up a lemonade stand with Smith! Every time I encountered


them at Hart house, Ellie and Diana demanded that I fill them in on the details of the lawsuit, yet
every time I tried to make Martha’s case, it turned into a shouting match, which only upset my
parents and the grandkids. If Martha could’ve been a little kinder to them, instead of propping me
up to take the heat, she might have avoided a lot of heartache, for herself and everyone else. But
really, this whole thing should have had nothing to do with the other Hart siblings, or me.



In one of her many curt phone messages, Ellie implored me: “I’ve got the right to feed my family,
and my dealings with Vince McMahon don’t have anything to do with you, and nothing to do with
Owen’s death. Not everyone wants you to be their spokesperson.” Ellie and Diana soon had Vince
convinced that I was the driving force behind Martha’s lawsuit. After Owen died, we had reached a
delicate détente about my archive of matches for the WWF, which Vince totally controlled, and he
had been on the verge of agreeing that I could have access to them. Now the WWF’s in-house law-
yer told my lawyer, Gord Kirke, that Vince simply had no recollection of any conversation with me on
the subject. Vince now saw me as the enemy and seemed determined to make me suffer, as if I
hadn’t suffered enough.



Eric asked me to fly down and meet him in Chicago on June 25 to talk about where I was at. It was
still nearly impossible for me even to think about getting back into the ring, but as the days passed, I
realized that it wasn’t right for me or my fans to let Owen’s tragic death be the end of my career.
Eric had been incredibly kind after Owen’s death, telling me to take all the time I needed, and I
didn’t want to leave him in the lurch either.



At our meeting, Hulk was friendly and told me that he was anxious to finally work with me in the fall
that year. Eric talked about putting the World title on me, but he understood that I wasn’t ready to
commit to anything yet and that I still needed time to heal physically and emotionally. Both of them
listened empathetically as I told them about the problems in the Hart family since Owen’s death and
that Vince had offered jobs to both Jim and Davey, in effect bribing Ellie and Diana to be on his side
against Owen’s widow. Eric kindly said if it would help the situation, he’d hire Jim back and told me
to have Jim give him a call. I left, shaking both their hands, content to show up at the Georgia Dome
on July 5 for an in-ring interview on Nitro. Eric told me I could say anything I wanted wrestling fans
around the world to hear. For the next ten days I thought about it almost all the time. I really didn’t
know what I’d say. Maybe it would be good-bye.



44



“WATCH THE KICK!”




WHEN I WALKED INTO THE DRESSING ROOM at the Georgia Dome, the boys rose from their chairs,
one after another, to offer heartfelt condolences. In that moment, as in too many others, I felt more
support and unity from my wrestling brothers than from my blood siblings. It meant so much to me
when Randy Savage gave me a hug, with tears in his eyes. “Brother, I’m so sorry.” Jim Duggan put his
hand on my shoulder. “Sorry man!” (Hacksaw had beaten the cancer and was now back at work,
minus his right kidney.)



Before I knew it, I was caught up trading Owen stories with Randy, Hacksaw, Crush and Brian
Knobbs. I felt safe being back with the men who truly understood this life. These were my brothers
from other mothers.



Suddenly, I was called out to do my interview. My terrible WCW entrance music rumbled and the
crowd cheered as I made my way up the aisle, still having no idea what I was going to say! This was
going to be a shot from the heart. Without even thinking about it, that day I left The Hitman behind
and for the first time came out to the ring as Bret Hart, as real as real can be. No Hitman shades,
leather jacket, ring gear, hair gel—not even the strut and the attitude. I did all I could not to break
down as twenty-five thousand fans grew still for me, and for Owen.



And so, I learned at the same time as the fans did what was in my heart and on my mind. I told them
what Owen meant to me and that I was at a crossroads in my life and I just didn’t know if I’d ever be
back. “I’m gonna take some time, put things in perspective, but if I never get the chance to ever say
it again, I just want to thank all my fans everywhere that I ever had and still have. You’ve been with
me from the very start and if this is the last chance I ever get to talk to all my fans all over the world,
thank you very, very much. I wanna thank all the wrestlers in dressing rooms all over the world, it
was a pleasure to work with each and every one of you. I hope I wasn’t too stiff!”



I returned home to find another phone message from Ellie: “I want to know what’s going on with the
lawsuit. I want to find out what options Mom and Dad have. If you want to go through with this five
or six years down the road, even two years, it’s taking its toll on Dad and we need to discuss this. It’s
not the only way to go. Enlighten me a bit. Di and me haven’t done anything yet. We’ve got a bad
rap. No more stress on Dad.”



What was I to make of that?



When I called my mom, she said, “I just wake up every day and try to live with it all day long all over
again.” Stu was never the same after Owen died. My mom wept, a few weeks later, when I confided
to her that I’d been talking to Senator Harry Hayes’s office in Ottawa and that they were in the


process of nominating Stu for the Order of Canada, the highest civilian medal of honor in the
country, in recognition of the lifetime of charity work my dad had done.



My mom said that I needed to remember that she and Stu were with me 100 percent, and that they
were suing the WWF along with Martha. In an attempt to ease the family tension, Martha’s lawyers
were trying to work out an agreement that would allocate a portion of my parents’ settlement to
each of the remaining siblings if Stu and Helen died before the suit was settled. But Ellie, Diana and
Bruce refused to sign any such agreement. Before long, Ellie was calling Martha’s lawyers names
again. The idea was scrubbed and the potential truce was quickly forgotten.



On July 27, Vince coolly stated on Off The Record: “Out of respect for Owen, I met with Bret. Bret
carried the entire conversation. I really thought he wanted to talk about Owen. . . . It was looking
into the eyes of a skeleton, in some respects. It seemed like he wasn’t human. It was a very weird
experience.” Vince went on to pretty much blame me for everything related to Martha’s lawsuit. I
was already mad that he’d reneged on his promise to give me access to my footage, but when he
referred to me as a skeleton and to my not being human, my anger flared into real hatred. But as far
as criminal responsibility for Owen’s death went, four days later he was in the clear. After two
months, on July 31, then and only then did the Kansas City Police determine that there wasn’t
enough evidence for criminal charges against Vince.



WCW called me out of the blue to come work some house shows with Hogan; I actually looked
forward to going back on the road. At the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Hogan did all he could to
show me he could work a realistic style. It’s fair to say that nobody, especially Terry, wanted the
boys to come back saying how bad it was, because almost nobody ever had a bad match with me. It
seemed to loosen everybody up when I took to the blackboard again, drawing Knobbs with ten
penises and a speech balloon that read, “Now you know why they call me Knobbs.” A lot of the
WCW boys had only heard about the cartoons I used to draw in the WWF dressing rooms, and it was
nice to see Sting and the rest of the boys crack up laughing.



I wasn’t the only Hart-affiliated wrestler to return to the ring. Flying the couple in to New York City
so that Davey could do an interview with the WWF magazine, Vince put Davey and Diana up at the
Waldorf Astoria. In the interview Davey again did what Martha asked him specifically not to do,
declaring that Owen’s death was nobody’s fault. He also garnered headlines in the Calgary papers
about his courageous comeback.



I did some Florida dates leading to Nitro in Miami on September 6. Eric said he wanted me to work a
hero-versus-hero concept for a couple of months, leading into Halloween Havoc. The hope was that
the good reaction at the house shows with Hogan might help turn WCW’s sagging business around.


When I walked into Eric’s office at Miami Nitro, I hadn’t been seen on TV since the interview in
which I’d said I wasn’t sure if I’d ever wrestle again. I waited around all day until Eric finally broke the
news that I would be part of a heel run-in. I said, “After all these months I’ve come here to do
what?” Given all that had happened, having me do a run-in on someone else’s match would have
been an incredible waste, and really dumb booking.



At 7:59, one minute before the live show started, Eric decided that I should do an interview, and
then walked alongside me to the TV entranceway inventing what he wanted me to say. I walked out
to a good pop from the crowds but went into the ring and cut a shitty promo, talking about how I
was coming back soon but I didn’t know when. What should’ve been a huge kickoff for my return
was just terrible.



I think Eric knew his days were numbered. First his boss, Harvey Schiller, was gone, then on
September 10, Eric was too. Bill Bush, who’d been WCW’s head accountant, took over from Eric, and
the first thing he did was hire Vince McMahon’s now-former scriptwriter, Vince Russo. Russo, a thin
New Yorker with a black beard and mustache, liked to dress only in black and had the air of a carnie
magician. It was Russo who’d come up with the idea for the Blue Blazer to descend from the rafters
in Kansas City. As soon as Owen landed in the ring, he was supposed to trip and fall as a spoof on
wrestling superheros. That’s why there had been no safety line—Owen had to release himself
quickly so he could deliver Russo’s pratfall. I’m not laying blame here. It’s punishment enough that
Russo has to live with the knowledge of his role in Owen’s death.



I saw a long, empty road ahead. The business was more dead to me than it had ever been before,
but I still cared enough about my career that I wanted to have one last great match. I knew the
Kemper Arena was the best place to do it, and that Chris Benoit was the only guy to do it with: a
tribute match for Owen right there in front of the fans who watched him die.



I knew the end of my career wasn’t so far away anymore. I could still put out, but I could feel the
pain every night and I couldn’t truthfully make the claim that I was the best in the business anymore.
Wrestlers seemed so much more reckless now, and the business had sunk even deeper into violence
and sleaze. Often, there was no attempt at realism, which couldn’t have been more clear than on
September 14 when Vince himself defeated Hunter to become WWF World Champion. Wrestling
belts were just props now.



I actually had to talk WCW into letting me work with Chris Benoit in honor of Owen. Like anything
else that made sense, it took them a while even to get behind it, and it was Chris who got them to do
it. Chris had never forgotten that Stu, and Bruce, had got him into the business. Wrestling, old style,
was all about trust and respect, the business of very tough men who could set aside those prized


reputations when they needed to do so in order to make each other and the business. Benoit,
despite being a young man, was old school. I wanted the Benoit match to honor my dad, the workers
of his generation, the boys in the dressing room, those old-time fans—and, most of all, Owen.



October 4, 1999. Kemper Arena. I could feel Owen’s spirit there with me, and that he was really
looking forward to watching this match. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I’d been off for so long
that my conditioning and timing weren’t the best. I said a prayer, asking for Owen to help me out. I’d
also invited Harley to be the special guest announcer, and he’d driven for three hours with a bad
back to be there.



The fans were respectful and quiet when Chris and I started. The fact was, they weren’t used to
babyface contests anymore and it was a hard sell. Too bad, I told them in my head, you’re getting an
old-time match whether you like it or not!



Twenty minutes later, we had the crowd riveted to every move as we neared the finish. Mickey Jay,
the ref, gave us the cue and after a hard-fought battle, Chris went for his crippler finish. I blocked it,
tripping him backward to the mat. I sprawled over Chris and somehow came up with the
sharpshooter, and the Kemper Arena crowd rose as one and cheered for both of us as Chris tapped
out. I could feel Owen’s presence. I looked up, fighting off tears, and gave Owen one last wave. Then
I hugged Chris, who broke down crying. “Chris, he’s up there right now watching us.” I somehow
knew that this would be my last beautiful moment in the ring, ever. Back home in the kitchen at Hart
house, my mom and Stu, too frail to attend, watched with tears in their eyes.



The WWF’s legal eagles countersued Martha for U.S.$75,000, plus costs, which could easily add up
to millions if she lost. They asserted that Owen’s contract stated any litigation against the WWF
under its terms would be brought in its home state, Connecticut, where punitive damages weren’t
awarded. Martha’s legal team argued that the contract was terminated when Owen died, that it did
not cover negligence by the defendant outside the ring and that since Owen died in Missouri and the
suit was filed in Missouri, it should be heard in Missouri. On October 23, Yokozuna died of a massive
heart attack in a sleazy London hotel. He was thirty-four years old and at the time of his death he
topped seven hundred pounds. On that same day, Vince McMahon offered shares of the WWF to
the public and became a billionaire. Within days, Linda McMahon told CNBC that the McMahons
would love to settle with Martha in a way that would take care of her and the children for the rest of
their lives. But no such settlement had been offered, and one of her lawyers, Ed Pipella, fired back,
in the Calgary Herald, that the WWF’s threatened countersuit could more than wipe her out
financially, no matter what Linda’s fine sentiments were. At WCW, we were hanging on for dear life
trying to put over Vince Russo’s weird story-lines. Russo thought his storylines had a lot to do with
the WWF’s rise in the ratings war, but he didn’t get, and never would, that the best wrestling needed
at least to pretend to be real. He had grand plans for me—as a heel. I told him the sympathy factor
for me was too strong to pull off a heel turn, not to mention that I’d been turned so many times


already. He still wanted to do this big angle on Nitro where I turned heel on Goldberg the day after
Starrcade ’99 in Toronto. I hated it all, but I was so angry at McMahon that I hoped Russo could bring
the company back to life with his radical soapopera booking. At the Halloween Havoc pay-per-view
on October 24, he had me pretend to injure my ankle and give up to Lex in a single-leg Boston crab
as part of the buildup. After the match, Liz gave me a big hug and told me she was sorry things had
got so dark for me. “Things will get better,” she said, and she sweetly added that I had always been
her favorite wrestler to watch. Her words meant a lot to me.



The following night, I pulled up to the back of the building in Phoenix for Nitro, popped my trunk and
got out to get my bag. One worried little boy, wearing Hitman shades pushed up on his forehead,
stood blinking at me. “How’s your ankle, Hitman?” he said. I hardly pretended this stuff was real
anymore, but as I lifted my bag I hissed, “It’s pretty sore.” After signing his shades, I limped painfully
off: I had too much respect for both of us not to. I didn’t see enough real fans anymore.



That night, Russo put together a storyline that had me face Goldberg with my “bad” ankle. I wasn’t
too keen on getting hurt by Goldberg for real; he’d already hurt three or four guys, including nearly
breaking Haku’s neck. I liked Goldberg, but I was going to use this opportunity in Phoenix to feel him
out in the ring.



When I jumped on Goldberg’s back, I felt like a cowboy riding a Brahma bull at the Stampede. Bill’s
neck was so thick it was hard for me to grip him in a sleeper. He reached up and yanked me down,
taking out a referee. When I rolled out to the floor, Nash, Razor and Sid came charging out and after
a tough stand Goldberg was laid out. I crawled back into the ring just before going off the air and
covered Bill for the one . . . two . . . three. This would give me my second big win over him.



As usual, there were messages from fans on my hotel phone that night, a lot of sincere good wishes
and the usual number of women offering themselves up to me. Clearing my inbox, I hit the gentle
voice of a woman who called herself “The Nasty Girl,” telling me once again that she was going to
make all my sexual dreams come true. She’d been leaving me messages after every Nitro for
months. She called me again later that night and got me on the phone. I tried to be nice, but I finally
had to be blunt with her and hung up. Some fans I’d limp for, others I had no time for at all.



On November 2, I jetted off to England to attend the U.K. premiere of Wrestling with Shadows.
Meanwhile, a compelling documentary that Paul put together on Owen, which included interview
footage of Owen that had not been used in Shadows, was shown on TV in Canada and the United
States. While in England, I finally had a chance to catch up with Dynamite on the phone and told him
I’d be more than happy to pay for any back surgery that might help him get out of his wheelchair,
but he said there was nothing that could be done. He told me he’d written a book, and laughed


about how he was going to include a story about Stu scooping up cat shit with a spatula while
making eggs for him. Stu was such a wounded soul right now though that I worried that Dynamite
telling a ridiculous story like that would be hard on his already broken heart. (Later, I read
Dynamite’s book, and the story was there, along with all kinds of other nasty and depressing stuff. I
have not talked to him since.) November 19, 1999. I stood talking with Ric Flair, who I was going to
work with that night. As he knew, I loved to hear stories of wrestling history, and he was telling
about what happened when he finally got his chance to work with the real “Nature Boy,” Buddy
Rogers. Rogers had walked away from the business after a falling out with the Crocketts, and was
only coming back for this one match where he was about to put Flair over. Before they started,
Rogers grabbed Flair by the wrists, looked him square in the eye and said, “Just remember, kid,
there’s only one Nature Boy!” I glanced at Flair, wondering how long it had been since anyone had
called him a kid. There was only one Nature Boy and it wasn’t Ric Flair. I respected Ric for hanging
on, but I vowed that no-body would see me wrestle old. Julie, my kids and my nephew Marek, Tom’s
son with Michelle, all flew in for the big night in Toronto, on November 21, where I was slated to win
the WCW World title.



I won my match with Sting after all kinds of hokey interference, then took on Chris Benoit in the
final. Chris and I worked a good solid match, with me finally fighting off his crippler and slapping on
the sharpshooter. Chris tapped out, I rolled off and Mickey Jay handed me the World title. Twenty
thousand Toronto fans stood in one long, rousing cheer, wanting to believe that this moment really
did mean something. I held open the ropes as Julie, my kids, Marek and Wayne Gretzky’s kids all
climbed into the ring to celebrate my sixth World title win. (Wayne and his children had been invited
to the show, and though Wayne couldn’t make it, his kids had spent the day hanging around with
mine, and I invited them to join in.) When I came back to the dressing room, Curt Hennig was there
to greet me with a handshake. “You’re the iron man, Hitman! I don’t know how you keep doin’ it!”



The next day Julie and the kids went home and I headed off to Detroit for Nitro. On the moving
sidewalk at the airport, I noticed a heavy-set black woman glaring at me and studied her stare long
enough to remember it.



At Cobo Hall, I kept my babyface storyline going even though Nash and Razor always arrived on the
scene to interfere in my matches. The wrestling was silly, but I went along with it because that’s all I
could do. Over the next few weeks I somehow even won the WCW Tag belts with Goldberg as my
partner. After Nitro, I listened to a phone message from that Nasty Girl. She said she’d seen me at
Detroit airport and she was furious because apparently I’d stood her up again: The next time she saw
me I’d be a dead man! I’d received a lot of weird threatening messages in my time, but I put
together the look I’d got at the airport with that scary message and a chill went down my back.



I kept working as many house shows as I could because I wanted to whittle down the number of
days I was required to work in order to have more time off in the summer. I worked some house


shows with Goldberg down south in Alabama and Florida. Goldberg was no fun. Every night he
mowed me down with his full-contact spear tackle, only to have Razor, Nash and Sid run in for the
DQ to save the belt for me.



Starrcade ’99 came on December 19, 1999, at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. I sat on my bench
strapping on my knee brace, wrapping my battered wrists and knees. My ribs were sore from
Goldberg spearing me; they’d been tender for at least ten years, ever since Dino Bravo knocked me
into that steel fence back in 1989. I stretched and paced as I waited for my match with Goldberg.
“Whatever you do out there, Bill, don’t hurt me,” I said. I really wanted this to be a great match.



The storyline called for the referee to get hurt and be replaced three times, with Roddy coming out
at the end. After wiping out the first ref, Goldberg and I brawled out on the floor, but once the
replacement ref showed up Goldberg tossed me back in the ring, like a suitcase. He reminded me of
the gorilla on that old Samsonite luggage commercial. Then he had me backed into a corner and
drilled me with an elbow smash that I can only compare to someone swinging a pillowcase full of
bricks. It was a stiff blow that left me dazed. Goldberg knew it too and whispered in my ear, “Sorry,
brother.”



He grabbed me in a front face lock and wrenched me backwards, wiping out the second referee. I
was still groggy as I pulled myself up, and I barely moved out of the way in time as Goldberg charged
me in the corner, nearly hitting his head on the post. The impact shook the whole ring, and he was
lucky he didn’t really hurt himself. I slid out to the floor and pulled his legs toward the post to do my
figure four around the post. I threw one foot up on the apron and felt Goldberg grab it like I’d told
him to, but when I fell backwards he let go! My head thumped hard on the padded floor and all my
weight buckled on top of me like an accordion. The crowd was chanting “Goldberg!” as I pulled
myself up. I had to carry on. This was my heat.



To give myself time to recuperate, I rolled Goldberg in and began fiercely working his leg—neither
the crowd nor Goldberg had any idea that I was hurt. He snatched me by the throat and gave me a
couple of punches as the third referee tried to break us up. I snapped a boot into his knee, fired him
into the ropes and as he reversed me, I heard him call, “Watch the kick!” I had no idea what kind of a
kick he meant and there wasn’t much room coming off the ropes. Goldberg was standing in the
middle of the ring, standing sideways to me, and his right foot flew just under my right hand, which
I’d thrown up in an attempt to shield my face.



WHAAAAM!




I felt like someone chopped me with a hockey stick, an agonizing blow that sent me crashing to the
mat where I lay holding my neck just behind my right ear at the base of my skull.



I was thinking, I’ve got to get up for the finish . . . but I can’t remember what it is!



I got up anyway, just in time for Goldberg to spear-tackle me like someone running me over with a
car. The ref was still down and Goldberg played to the crowd. Right on cue, out came Roddy, doing
his best John Wayne imitation, making his way down the aisle in a referee shirt. I have a foggy
recollection of clipping Goldberg from behind and quickly twisting him into the sharpshooter. The
crowd was confused when Roddy didn’t even wait for Goldberg to give up to signal for the bell.
When Roddy took the belt and headed back down the aisle, I was as confused as the booing fans. I
jumped out after Roddy. I felt nauseous, and my head was throbbing and my vision blurred, but I
managed to race up and grab him before he cleared the curtain, where he handed me the belt. On
autopilot, I followed the script, but I was totally out of it as I stumbled through the curtain.



I was dazed and glassy eyed and my neck was killing me. The dressing room was almost empty
because the boys had rushed to beat the crowd out of the building, except for Roddy and the WCW
trainer, Danny Coach Young. I told Danny I had hurt my neck, and he apologized because all he could
do was hand me a few packets of Advil. I was in such a fuzzy state of mind, I barely remember
handing Marcy the car keys because I knew I wasn’t capable of driving back to the hotel. As we made
our way through the dark, in an icy rain, I was slurring my speech and Marcy was very worried. She
wanted me to see a doctor, but I thought—in the way you think when you’ve just suffered a severe
concussion only you don’t realize it yet—that I’d just take it slow and see how I felt in the morning.



When I staggered through the sliding doors of the Marriott, the fans, who usually stampede over top
of one another to get pictures or autographs, stopped in their tracks. Clearly something wasn’t right
about me. The lobby was a blur, and the walls of my room were spinning when I dropped my bag
and passed out on the bed.



I woke up around five the next morning still in my clothes, drenched in sweat, with a pounding
headache and an aching throb in the back of my neck. I slept miserably for a couple more hours and
when I checked out, the front desk gave me a message from that crazy Nasty Girl. Her note said that
she’d caught a bus all the way up from Detroit after I supposedly stood her up the second time and
included an even more disturbing death threat than the first one.



It was ingrained in my nature just to keep on going, so I showed up at the building in Baltimore, still
too out of it to know how out of it I really was. I went over everything with Russo as he set the stage


for my heel turn. After the horrible finish the night before, I forfeited the World title on Nitro and
gave Goldberg an immediate rematch. It was a total farce, with Nash and Hall hitting the ring and me
double-crossing Goldberg again for a flat ending.



The next day in Salisbury, Maryland, for Thunder, I told Russo that I was badly hurt from Goldberg’s
kick and that I thought I might have a concussion. He still wanted me to work a match with Benoit,
with Jeff Jarrett coming out to double-team him. Goldberg would charge out and spear Jarrett while
I fled the scene with cameras following and Goldberg coming after me in hot pursuit. I’d race to my
rented Cadillac, which would be parked on the back ramp with the keys in the ignition, and just as
Goldberg reached my car I’d zoom out of the building. We’d go off the air with a seething Goldberg
punching out the windows of a limo, a sharp steel gimmick hidden in his fist.



While Russo went over everything, I reasoned (in the foggy way a concussed person reasons) that I
could do all that easy enough. All I could think about was getting home for Christmas. That night I
had a good solid match with Benoit, who did his best to take it easy. Jarrett came out and then the
one-man tank, Goldberg. When Goldberg speared Jeff, I ran down the aisle, jumped in my car and
floored it out the back ramp just as Goldberg caught up and pounded furiously on my car windows.
What nobody noticed was that as I pulled out, my car hit the icy pavement and I skidded out of
control, having had no time to put on a seatbelt, so there I was with a concussion, barreling head-on
towards a huge TV production truck! I thought of Owen in that instant. What would the world think
if I got killed plowing my car into a TV truck for some stupid stunt? People would say, “You’d think
Owen’s stupid brother would know better than that!”



Luckily the tires hit a patch of dry pavement and I burned rubber past the truck to safety. Even with
my head full of fuzz I was plenty pissed off and came steaming back to blast Russo, but I completely
forgot about it when I saw a worried Goldberg holding his arm in the air with blood pouring
everywhere. The gimmick he was using had failed to break the window, so Gold-berg decided that
he’d simply break it himself. He did, but he sliced a twelve-inch gash the length of his forearm all the
way to the bone. Paramedics tried to staunch the flow of blood and raced him to a hospital. I felt
terrible for him; for the first time this big brute of a man looked very afraid as he was loaded into the
ambulance. I showered and then left, not even remembering what it was that I’d been so livid about
only minutes earlier—that I’d nearly got killed doing some stupid shit from the same screwball who
scripted the stunt that killed Owen.



I bought Julie a ring for Christmas, which she unfortunately took to mean more than I intended.
When my mom called to congratulate me, I downplayed it. When it became clear that the ring was
just a present, Julie’s disappointment put a damper on everything.




Over Christmas at Stu’s, Ellie and I had another shouting match with Stu in the middle again. Stu was
far more deaf than he was blind and he felt obligated to defend her, as he always did. I’d about had
enough of Ellie. The way I tore into her put a scare into Stu. I shouted, “Ellie, this has nothing to do
with you or me! This is all about Martha’s decision to sue Vince for killing her husband! Your
brother! How in the hell can you work hand-in-hand with Vince against your dead brother’s wife and
kids and your very own parents? How can you sleep at night?”



“Real easy,” Ellie shot back.



Stu, who couldn’t hear anything, kept defending her. “I don’t believe Ellie is doing that!”



“Dad, she’ll tell you herself!”



My mom took up for me, telling Ellie that she and Stu chose to support Martha and it had nothing to
do with me. Ellie lashed out, accusing her of always taking my side. I’d had a nonstop headache from
hell ever since Goldberg’s kick and by the end of this scene my head felt like it was going to explode.



In Houston for Nitro on December 27, I went looking for Bill Bush and Vince Russo. I could barely
remember Christmas, despite how crappy it was. I still wasn’t sleeping well, and my head was
pounding with the constant pain in the back of my neck. I told Bush: “I’m not a stuntman, I’m a pro
wrestler, and from now on everything I do needs to be done in the ring.” They both apologized
profusely for the circumstances that put me in the state I was in; yet not ten minutes later, Russo
told me that he needed me to drive a giant monster truck over the top of Sycho Sid’s rental car, with
Sid in it! As out of it as I was, I looked at Russo and said, “Are you guys for real? I just told you that I
don’t do stunts. I’m a goddamn wrestler.”



On top of everything else, Russo was putting me with Jerry Flynn, an ex-kickboxer with limited pro
wrestling ability. That night, while brawling out on the floor, Flynn leaped up with a spin kick and hit
me so hard in the guts that I crumpled to the mat. I struggled to recover because either I had to or
take more of the same. I finished the match, but I wondered why WCW thought the best way for me
to get through my concussion was to work with a stiff rookie. Then I watched a fully loaded Cadillac
with eleven miles on the odometer get crushed by the monster truck—all for a thirty-second ending
to Nitro. Stu would’ve cried if he’d been there.



The first night I was at home again, I had a fantastic dream. I was sitting with Owen at my kitchen
table. He had on his favorite baggy blue sweatshirt, and we actually laughed and talked about all the


problems in the family since he died. He shook his head as though we both knew this would happen
and told me he never had any doubts that I’d be fending off various siblings. In the dream, I got to
tell him how much I loved him and he seemed at peace, which did a lot for me and my shattered
heart and battered brain.



As the dream began to fade, I could feel myself pleading for it to keep going—don’t let me wake up, I
have so much left to tell him—but it dissolved and Owen was gone. I woke up with the sense that
we’d really talked. That morning I found a thank-you poem from Martha tucked in my front door.



Bret’s Poem



Let it be you



who comes to bring the light, who



guides me with his hand held tight



let it be you



who navigates through all the gray



to help me see a better day



let it be you



who listens endlessly of broken lives



and shattered dreams




let it be you



who sees the ugliness of people’s



souls in times like this



let it be you



who’s tall while others fall, whose



heart is purest of all



let it be you



whose love and tenderness will not



let me slip into this great abyss



let it be you



who stands by faithful friend



until the bitter end



(written with love by Martha, December 29, 1999)




As the millennium came to a close, I was relieved that 1999 was over. What a horrible year for me
and all the Harts. At least Bill Bush called me at home to thank me for all I was doing. He asked me
how long I could keep going and I told him: “I still have a few good years left.”



Then my old friend Wilk called and told me to turn on the TV. So there I sat, at first amused but then
disgusted, watching the embarrassing conclusion to Bruce’s Stampede Wrestling show. Diana did a
run-in to save fourteen-year-old Harry, who’d been dragged into his first angle. Soon, even Ellie was
in the ring taking a bump. I could only roll my eyes in disgust. A farce like this made all of us Harts
look bad.



45



THE LAST DANCE



PEOPLE WITH CONCUSSIONS are the last ones to figure out how badly hurt they are. I was more
responsible than anyone for downplaying my condition to myself and everyone else. Somewhere
inside me, a fearful voice cried out that I was seriously hurt, but that same voice warned me to quit
listening to my brain because it was my brain itself that was damaged. So I let myself go on believing
that the problem was a sore neck.



I drifted through every day in a pale-faced, sweaty, head-pounding stupor, pacified to the point of
numbness by the four Advils I took every three hours. The turn of the millennium floated right past
me. By January 3, 2000, I was in Greensboro, South Carolina, for Nitro, and in too much of a haze to
heed my own vow to Bush and Russo one week earlier: that I’d only do wrestling and in a ring. I
rubbed the back of my head as Russo laid out the script to hype my upcoming pay-per-view title
match on January 14 with Sycho Sid. That night, Nitro opened as cameras caught Sid attacking me as
I came into the building. I was thrown into backstage walls and knocked into a stack of steel trusses
that broke apart, spilling everywhere, nearly clipping my knees and ankles and coming close to
crushing all my toes. Working a backstage brawl was far more dangerous than an actual wrestling
match. I was soon battered to the concrete floor, over thick wire cables and equipment boxes,
where Sid stood pummeling me with a barrage of punches.



Only a few hours earlier, road agent Terry Taylor had successfully begged me to fill in for Kevin Nash
for the rest of the week because Nash was out with a concussion, of all things. With nobody else to
replace Nash in the main events, I said I would, even as I reminded Terry that I thought I might have
a concussion of my own. Guys such as Taylor and Russo were quick to tell me how much this all was
appreciated, assuring me that I’d be protected in every way possible. Unfortunately, this was a


promise that neither one of them could keep or even had a right to make, because they weren’t the
ones in the ring with me.



Every night I crawled into bed, my head pounding and my neck aching: my solution was more Advil
and another fitful sleep. In Florence, South Carolina, for Thunder, I opened up the show standing
glassy-eyed in my nWo T-shirt, along with nWo members Jeff Jarrett, Scotty Steiner and Kevin Nash,
who appeared not to be suffering from a concussion after all. Russo’s new acting commissioner,
Terry Funk, had just ordered me to face him in a hard-core match later in the show. Somewhere in
the back of my mind I remembered having his retirement match with him back in Amarillo. With a
scornful over-the-top sneer, I coldly cut a promo: “I think I just might have to kill you tonight, Terry
Funk!” I laughed to myself at how ridiculous I sounded, but I gave Russo what he wanted because I’d
all but given up. I also knew that I could trust Terry with my body a helluva lot more I could trust the
other WCW wrestlers.



Terry did all he could to go easy on my head, even as we brawled around the ring and on the floor
with chairs, rubber bats and garbage cans. I beat Terry hard, loud and mercilessly with a steel chair,
right down to his knees, because he made me promise to lay it in. Terry was old school, the King of
Hardcore for real. He spent most of the match selling for me, flopping around like a fish. When he
finally charged me with a steel chair, I got my hands up and deflected it completely. So far so good. I
staggered off in retreat, making my way up the aisle as Terry grabbed a fistful of my hair and tossed
me into a big, rolling canvas laundry bin that just happened to be sitting right there. With my legs
hanging over the sides, I couldn’t pull myself up into a better position. Terry spun it around and
pushed it hard toward the ring. I braced myself by wrapping my arms around my head, but when I
spilled out I whacked the back of my head on the heavy wooden lid of the cart, which made a sound
like a dropped watermelon.



After the match, Terry felt terrible, but it wasn’t his fault—I shouldn’t have been in a hard-core
match with a concussion in the first place. I gulped down another handful of Advils and didn’t give it
another thought, but I sure wished my horrible headaches would go away. And when I finally called
Marcy, back in Calgary, to set up a doctor’s appointment, it was because I thought I needed my sore
neck looked at, not my head.



I filled in for Nash against Sid in Roanoke, Lowell and Utica. Each night I took a choke slam and a
powerbomb. Sid did everything he could to set me down as lightly as he could, but it was nearly
impossible. I took my lumps with little complaint.



In Utica, New York, I was needed to make a call to a radio station using the phone in an office across
from the dressing room. I stripped down to my black singlet and left Doug Dillenger sitting outside


my dressing room like a fat old sheriff to guard my stuff. Over the past year, Dillenger and his crack
security team had allowed every one of my leather ring jackets to be stolen by fans until I stopped
wearing them. After the call to the radio station, I returned to my dressing room to find Doug
snoozing and all my wrestling gear stolen, except for one pink and white boot. Amazingly, the
thieves never thought to grab my wallet, which was in the pocket of my jeans still hanging there, or
my Rolex, which was tucked into my shoe.



On January 9, I worked in State College, Pennsylvania, wearing my work-out gear. That night I got a
phone message from Martha letting me know that a judge had been picked and the trial date was
set for February 5, 2001. She could at least see light at the end of the tunnel now.



I also got a message from Stu telling me that he and my mom agreed completely with everything I’d
written in my column in that week’s Calgary Sun. I’d written an impassioned piece about the state of
the business and how, when a fan asked me if wrestling is real, I realized that I didn’t even know the
answer to that question anymore! It once bothered me when people thought wrestling was fake,
and now it bothered me that they thought we were really hurting ourselves and one another: The
sad part was that we were! In the column, I wrote that the colossal pulverizing that Goldberg gave
me had been real, and so were Jerry Flynn’s stiff kicks. When The Hitman tried to kill Sycho Sid with
a monster truck, that was fake, but when I careened out of control and nearly crashed my rental car
into the television truck, that was real. I’d written about how my match in Kansas City with Chris
Benoit was the ghost of what wrestling used to be, but what I had always thought it was meant to
be. And I asked myself, in the column, how far I could bend without breaking in order to help WCW
beat Vince McMahon. Maybe I’d gone too far already. Maybe the whole wrestling business was
fucked up now, including me.



I didn’t know when I got up on January 10, 2000, that this would be the day I’d have the very last
match of my twenty-three-year career. My head ached miserably and it was a long drive from State
College to Syracuse, where I caught an early morning flight to Buffalo. I dropped my bags on the
floor at the Avis car rental counter and made small talk with the lady working there. I happened to
glance over my shoulder and caught Nasty Girl poking her head out from behind a cement pillar
across the street. I was tired, fed up and sick of the threat of her doing God-knows-what to me. I
matter-of-factly asked the Avis lady, “Have you ever seen a real-life stalker be-fore?”



She couldn’t help but notice this large girl poking her head out from behind the pillar over my
shoulder, and she began taking me more seriously. “You’re not kidding, are you?”



“No, I’m not.”




She asked me if I’d mind if she called the airport police and I told her that not only would I not mind,
I would greatly appreciate it. Within a few minutes, three policemen showed up and we had a brief
chat. Two of the officers walked me to my car, while one headed over to ask Nasty Girl a few
questions. I drove off to my hotel.



I called Julie when I got to the hotel, and we’d opened up our next round of peace talks when we
were interrupted by a knock at my door. I set the phone down and found one of the policemen I’d
just said good-bye to standing there. He looked a little rattled, and asked me if I’d come make a
statement. Nasty Girl had attacked a cop with a knife. I told Julie I had to go, and I’d explain it all
later.



Sitting at airport police headquarters, I couldn’t help but hear loud wails from a not-too-distant
holding cell, followed by the thuds of Nasty Girl’s powerful kicks. The officers around me kept
shaking their heads in amazement at the sheer power and volume of her rage. An exasperated cop
finally came out of the holding cell, slamming the door behind her. She told her fellow officers, “If
you want her wig off, you’ll have to do it yourselves!” Apparently they’d needed to remove her wig
to check whether she was carrying a concealed weapon in it! The cops then gathered in a circle and
drew matchsticks to see who’d be the lucky one to take the wig off. Finally the cop who’d lost burst
out of Nasty Girl’s cell letting out his best war cry while shaking a long black mane above his head, “I
got it! I got it!” I signed my statement; the policemen whom she’d attacked would ensure that she
didn’t bother me for a while.



When I arrived at the arena for Nitro, I found that Russo had concocted a storyline around me being
forced by Terry Funk to wrestle a title match against my own nWo team member Kevin Nash. I’d
hoped to be off that night, but instead I had to hurry away to buy black skater shorts, new running
shoes and knee pads and change in time to air live clips of me and Kevin getting worked up and
dressing for the match. With my head thick and thumping and that stabbing pain in my neck, I taped
my ankles, wrapped my broken-down knees and smeared my lower back with gobs of Icy Hot. Just
another day in my pain-filled life.



Kevin had read my last Calgary Sun column and told me: “You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, it’s
not your fault the business is so fucked up.” He promised me we’d take it real easy and then he
surprised me when he said, “The match I had with you back at Survivor in 1995 was the best damn
match I ever had. You’re the best worker this business ever knew. And that’s the God’s honest
truth.” I smiled and thanked him, wondering all the while why Kevin had put so many rocks in my
path at WCW if that was the way he truly felt.




I made my way out to the ring, WCW Champion of the World, with the big gold belt hung on my
shoulder. I felt less than myself in a sleeveless nWo shirt and runners. If I’d been able to foresee the
future, I would have strutted out there in my pink and black tights and my shades, and I’d have
climbed all four turnbuckles taking in the faces of the fans who loved me in those final moments. I
was Humpty Dumpty about to fall and never be put back together again. I’ll forever imagine how it
could have been, with fans, young and old, slowly rising, proudly standing and clapping and waving
signs. In my mind’s eye, I read them: HITMAN YOU WERE THE BEST; WE’LL MISS YOU. But I was the
last one to know that this would be my last dance.



The bell rang, and Kevin and I worked hard and well together. He protected me as best he could. I
chopped him down at the knees, and we let Russo’s silly storyline unfold; it wasn’t long before Kevin
dropped me hard with a punishing sidewalk slam. I was rocked, and the next thing I saw was Arn
Anderson on the floor cracking Kevin across the back with a rubber lead pipe, which was my cue. I
forced myself up to fend Arn off with a steel chair, when suddenly Sycho Sid was behind me. As I
turned, he mistimed his frontal kick, but somehow I still managed to clunk myself on the head with
the chair anyway. Sid snatched me by the throat, hoisted me up over his head with one hand and
held me, then drove me down into the mat with a choke slam. He pulled me right back up and
proceeded to give me his powerbomb. I tucked my chin to protect myself as I?floated to the mat in
slow motion, but I landed flat and hard. Lying on my back staring up at the lights, I saw millions of
tiny silver dots everywhere, a galaxy of stars. Like a TV falling from a high shelf, my tube smashed
and I lay there not moving. I couldn’t help but think, This must be what you see in the seconds
before you die. I thought of Owen and tears filled my eyes. Then I managed to roll out of the ring to
see Terry Funk racing out, brandishing a flaming branding iron and pretending to burn Kevin with it.
By the time I sat down to unlace my boots, I’d already forgotten enough of what had just happened
that I complained only about the pain in my neck.



The next day, in Erie, Pennsylvania, for Thunder, I told Russo again that I was hurt. He replied with a
confident grin that I wasn’t to worry—I didn’t have to wrestle. Instead he had a storyline built
around me turning babyface, appearing to be taken hostage by a hostile nWo, only to swerve
everyone by the end of the show when I’d double-cross Funk and turn heel again. I hated it, but at
that point I’d have done anything not to actually have to wrestle. I was so foggy it didn’t occur to me
that I could have just told them I was hurt and gone home, but maybe I stayed because it had always
been so ingrained in me to keep going no matter what. Besides, Russo was on such thin ice I wanted
to do whatever I could for him. I don’t know why. It was just my nature, I guess. With hindsight, as
soon as I told my WCW bosses I thought I had a concussion, they should have sent me home.



I opened the show coming out in a T-shirt and jeans for a heartfelt in-ring interview. I apologized to
the fans for taking the wrong road and told them I was so disgusted with myself that I didn’t deserve
their respect. The camera cut to a fan holding a sign that read, RESPECT BRET HART! I saw one older
woman in the bleachers cheering and jumping for joy, and I hated the thought of seeing their faces


when I turned heel again at the end of the night. Then I challenged the nWo, and when they came
out, Kevin declared, “Tonight, Hitman, your career will be finished, maybe even your life!”



All through the show there were clips of me being held hostage, choked and bullied with baseball
bats by Nash, Steiner and Jarrett for my disloyalty to the nWo. They even burned some pink tights—
not mine but they said they were—in effigy, setting them alight in a trash can. At the end, I made my
escape, limping out into the ring holding a bat, and I again challenged the nWo to fight me. Seconds
later, we were all taunting one another with bats and chairs. The three-to-one odds were too much
for Terry Funk and a cavalry of WCW babyfaces to take, and they charged the ring to rescue me. I
saw the old lady in the bleachers clapping and cheering like a schoolgirl.



Then Arn tossed a pail of water in my face so everyone could see that my blackened eyes were only
make-up. Unfortunately for Russo, nobody understood it. So I smashed Funk with a rubber bat to
reveal the double-cross. I felt like a total piece of shit as the nWo beat all the baby-faces down with
bats. And my heart filled with shame at the sight of the old woman in the stands now sobbing like a
baby.



On Thursday, January 13, I sat in Dr. Meeuwisse’s office in Calgary, telling him about Goldberg’s
ferocious kick to my neck while he felt around with his fingers. I told him about taking the choke
slam and seeing silver dots. He noticed that I was slurring my words and asked me if I thought I had a
concussion. I told him maybe a slight one. He probed me with questions and then recited some
numbers and asked me to repeat them back to him backwards. I couldn’t. Then he gave me five
random words that he’d ask me to remember in a few minutes. I couldn’t. He studied me, then
asked me again if I thought I had a concussion. I told him again, a slight one.



He asked me what I was taking for my headaches and when I told him, “Four Advils every three
hours,” he shook his head and told me they’d eat a hole in my stomach as he wrote me a proper
prescription.



“I can feel a hole in the back of your neck the size of a quarter.” He felt around the back of my skull.
“This part here feels like hamburger.”



“I have a pay-per-view on Sunday. I’m the main event.”




With a dry smile, he said, “You’re not going anywhere. The problem with people that have
concussions is that you think you’re okay, but you’re not.” He paused and crossed his arms, looking
me in the eye. “I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but your career is probably over.”



“What happens if I don’t stop?”



“The boxing world likes to pretend that Muhammad Ali’s problems today are all related to
Parkinson’s disease, but the simple truth is Ali kept on boxing after being concussed. All those blows
to the head cost him. You’re no different than him, and I’m sure you don’t want to end up like him. I
don’t want you doing anything. It could take up to a year before we can even determine how bad
this is. No working out, no flying, no watching TV, no listening to loud music.”



“When I call WCW, what should I tell them?”



“You tell them your doctor has diagnosed you with a severe concussion.”



“Yeah, but who are you?” I meant, Why would WCW believe him?



“I’m the chairman of the NHL injury committee. Tell them to call me.”



Driving home, tears came to my eyes as I thought about calling J.J. Dillon with the news. After
twenty-three years, I didn’t want to go out like this. What would I do now?



By that weekend, Vince Russo had been sacked and WCW rewrote their storylines without me; it
was like I had never been there. I had been erased.



I sat home staring blankly at the walls with the TV off and the lights dimmed. I couldn’t even read,
my head hurt so much. Julie was pissed off and wasn’t talking to me again. For comfort, I relied on
the steadfast loyalty of a pug dog named Coombs, which Dallas had given me. He rested his head on
my lap doing his best Jim Neidhart impression with a face that looked even sadder than mine.




I didn’t want to lose myself to brooding, and Dr. Meeuwisse told me to find a hobby. When I was
chosen by Calgary’s Glenbow Museum as one of six guest curators to help design an exhibit paying
tribute to Canadian heroes, I really put my heart into it. One of my choices was Tom Longboat, one
of Canada’s most famous long-distance marathon runners in the early 1900s. My mom surprised me
with a story about how Longboat had run against her father, Harry. “My father impressed upon me
that a mara-thon runner never, ever turns his head to look back,” Helen said. “It’s just not done. It
throws off the timing. But in a big race one day, my father could hear footsteps behind him, always
there, and so, for just a moment, he turned and his gaze was caught by the brown eyes of Tom
Longboat, only a step behind him. Then Longboat edged past him! I don’t know who won the race,
but my father never forgot the speed and grace of that kid or the look in his eye.”



WCW desperately needed me to make a tour of Germany in February: I was the headliner and it was
sold out. I’d only step into the ring to say a few words to the fans. Reluctantly, Dr. M cleared me to
fly, mostly because I was afraid I’d be fired if I didn’t. Duggan, Sting, Knobbs and Liz all reached out
to me with supportive arms. A big, young, white-haired kid from Philadelphia named Jerry Tuite,
who worked as The Wall, insisted on carrying my bags for me. Still, I couldn’t help but see that most
of the other wrestlers didn’t believe I was hurt. When I slurred my words, they grinned at me like I
was putting them on, which hurt because I had never faked an injury in my “real” life or missed a
match on purpose. But there were so many worked injuries in WCW that when somebody got hurt
for real, hardly anybody believed it.



On the bus in Hamburg, I had a talk with Jeff Jarrett, who had been one of Owen’s closest friends. He
told me he was offended when Martha’s lawyers pressed him about any possible philandering Owen
might have been doing, and had refused to even call them back. I told him that they were just doing
their job, checking out every aspect of Owen’s life—and for the sake of Owen’s kids, he needed to
talk to them. He told me how he and Debra McMichael, his valet, had been up next after Owen’s
match in Kansas City and backstage everyone was running around in a panic, as Jeff stood at the
Gorilla position. Owen’s dead body was wheeled past him at the same time as two firm hands
shoved him hard through the curtain, “Go! Go! Go!” He told me he was sorry he went out to the ring
that night and that he bawled his eyes out the whole time, as he did again just telling me about it.



Terry Funk had been listening to us, and now he asked me how my family was doing. I told him how
crazy things had got up at Hart house. Terry knew the Harts pretty well, and he gave it some deep
thought before telling me: “Everybody’s crazy. The whole world’s crazy. You’re crazy. I’m crazy. It’s
all about to what degree you’re crazy.” In my concussed state, Terry made a lot of sense.



Poor Davey was a case in point; he was a shell of his former self and still hooked on morphine. Being
in no shape to wrestle, he hadn’t lasted long in the WWF, but Vince still said he needed him, so he
headed off to a rehab program in Georgia. In answer to my criticisms of the year-end show on
Stampede Wrestling, that involved various non-wrestling members of the Hart family, Bruce ripped


into me on the Stampede Wrestling website for taking shots at Davey in my column. He defended
Davey, saying he was “a damn loyal and trusted trooper of the clan who’d been unjustly maligned
and made to look bad.” Bruce had as much right to express his opinion as I did, but he didn’t know
the truth.



I felt more and more estranged from so many people in my family because nobody stood shoulder to
shoulder with me in defending Martha, except my mom. Keith, Wayne, Alison and Ross all steered
clear of Ellie and Diana, supporting me only from behind the scenes. I understood why Georgia was
on Ellie’s side: she had spent her whole life defending Ellie and turning a blind eye to Ellie’s actions,
and she would never forget Ellie’s support when she went through the loss of her son, Matt.