The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '97: The Last Time WWF Was Number Two

by Dave Meltzer

  His “story” had to be amended to a “story” where he left the company that made him famous because he could no longer put up with the direction of the racial angles and antics of his most-hated rival and the company’s pick to replace him as champion, Shawn Michaels, that had made him so embarrassed as to no longer allow his children to watch the WWF television.

  Hart agreed to his 20-year-deal with the WWF on October 21, 996, with the plan at the time, which didn’t quite materialize as promised, that he would be getting the title long-term beating Michaels at WrestleMania. As the story played out, Michaels didn’t last until WrestleMania as champion, or until WrestleMania where he was to put Hart over.

  Exact contract terms weren’t known, but it is known that Hart was earning well over $1 million per year guaranteed on his Titan deal and the total worth of the contract between guaranteed money and other considerations over time was probably in the $10 million range. Hart chose the deal over a WCW contract that offered him a $2.8 million guaranteed figure over three years, figures that were $800,000 in wrestling income and another $2 million guaranteed for starring roles in two movies per year over the terms of the contract, at a time when Hart was contemplating easing out of wrestling and into being a full-time actor. The structure also allowed the huge wrestling contract to be picked up on the Turner movie studio books, making the wrestling company appear to be more profitable at a time when corporate restructuring with the Time Warner purchase was going on. That figure that didn’t include potential merchandising revenue and bonuses for PPV appearances so it would in all likelihood also have been worth well in excess of $9 million.

  All that is known about the WCW deal he agreed to is that it is similar to the original deal Bischoff offered last year, although the money is scaled down because Hart insisted on working fewer dates, believed to be in the 125 to 140 range, than in the original deal because of his injuries, in particular his knee that has never fully recovered from an injury earlier in the year and a chronic bad wrist from numerous breaks and no time off to allow for proper healing. There may be modifications or changes in the movie role aspect of the deal as well. In addition, the contract is for two years rather than three, with an option for a third year.

  When Hart arrives, he’ll immediately be inserted into the top of the mix within the promotion and used to get the new Thursday night live show on TBS over, as well as help the company’s presence in Canada, where he is the country’s most popular wrestler. Nitro just began airing weekly on TSN in Canada, and TBS just became a regular as opposed to a premium cable station throughout the country, giving WCW tremendously improved exposure in a country they’ve never really done a lot of business historically in. Even before Hart’s signing, the company was making plans to run shows more frequently and market its product stronger in Canada in 1998. Although Hart would also help internationally, particularly in Europe, WCW doesn’t appear to have any interest in cultivating that market after a series of largely unsuccessful tours in that part of the world over the years.

  Hart, in one of the most memorable live pro wrestling interviews of all-time, announced literally hours after making up his decision, live in Fort Wayne, IN on Raw, his acceptance of the WWF offer while Vince McMahon feigned concern over a decision that he actually already knew. However, it didn’t take long before Hart started getting disgruntled with the new direction of the WWF.

  After a few months, Hart devised his own angle starting with a double turn in his WrestleMania match with Steve Austin, which would result in he, along with brother Owen and brother-in-law Davey Boy Smith, being the top babyface internationally, particularly in Canada, but as strong anti-American heels in the United States. During the summer, particularly in the wake of the WWF PPV show in Calgary which was the single most well received PPV show in company history, the angle appeared to be red hot. It had cooled and the focus of the company had shifted from Hart as the top heel to his long-time rival, Shawn Michaels, who he had a legitimate dressing room fight with earlier in the year due to a Michaels television interview referring to Bret having “Sunny days” which affected Bret’s personal life, a line that he thought was unprofessional to cross.

  The problems between the two went back farther, dating back to Bret putting Michaels over at WrestleMania in 1996, and then deciding to sit out to watch Michaels flop with the spotlight on him. With Bret gone and Michaels on top, things both did and didn’t go exactly as Hart had surmised. WWF house show business flourished. At the same time, with Michaels as the focal point, television ratings hit company all-time record lows. Although a tremendous performer in the ring, Michaels was seemingly on a path of self destruction, as a perfectionist throwing unprofessional fits when the show didn’t go exactly perfectly or if a few hecklers would get on his case.

  Michaels, claiming a career ending knee injury, walked out on the promotion just before he was scheduled to have to put over Sycho Sid for the WWF title on a live USA network special, and getting out of his scheduled match where he was going to have to put Bret over at WrestleMania to boot. Many within the company blamed WrestleMania’s poor buy rate on the fact they had spent one year building up to one match, and then just a few weeks before the show, that match was pulled and they had to start building into a different direction. When it became apparent Michaels’ knee injury, while legit, was nowhere near as serious as he intimated, he was scheduled to return. But before another scheduled match with Bret that he was supposed to lose on 6/8, this time it was Bret whose knee gave out and he underwent surgery. After some classic verbal battles on television, no match took place—in the ring.

  With Bret still recovering from his knee surgery, he and Michaels had a backstage brawl on 6/9 in Hartford, CT, resulting in Bret aggravating his knee and keeping him out of action even longer, and Michaels, claiming knee and neck injuries, walked out on the company claiming an unsafe working environment, just weeks after he attempted and failed to get out of his own five-year contract with the WWF so he could join WCW. Neither Hart, who by all accounts threw the first blow, nor Michaels, who taunted him into doing so by sarcastically responding to Bret’s complaints by saying something along the lines of “so what are you going to do about it,” were punished for the fight, and instead officials seemed to beg Michaels to return, creating the sense of anarchy that has resulted in what some categorize as the beginning of the fall of a once great promotional power.

  Eventually the two agreed to peacefully co-exist, agreeing to keep families and personal lives out of their interviews. Bret felt Michaels violated that when in a recent interview he brought up Bret’s 83-year-old father Stu, claiming that he was walking around Calgary dead, only his brain and his body didn’t know it yet, although Michaels did apologize afterwards claiming that he simply got carried away performing for the crowd.

  Michaels antics in recent weeks, which even though his television persona pretends otherwise, were obviously encouraged and allowed by Vince McMahon, turned Hart off worse because his vision of pro wrestling dating back to his childhood was of something that a father could watch with his kids and not have to turn off the television set in embarrassment. Perhaps the final blow was when Titan made the decision to go with Michaels as champion over Bret in the Survivor Series, a decision that asks even more questions.

  Of course that decision could simply by the latest in the line of short-term business decisions by a company that seemingly changes its direction by reacting every other Monday. Michaels had become such an effective heel that he literally had turned his rival, the anti-American foreigner, almost into a babyface in the U.S. At the same time, there were thoughts within the company that the Hart contract was a 19-year debt that in hindsight many were questioning, with the feeling being McMahon made the decision out of wanting to win a momentary battle that he and others hyped into the immediate priority in a bitter wrestling war and not necessarily a contract that made economic sense given the financial structure of the company.

  Certainly those in
charge had to know how Hart would feel if asked to put Michaels over for the title, which leads to the speculation that all of these actions by both Michaels and Hart to an extent were actually an expert marionette pulling strings of his two strongest puppets. Michaels’ track record of finding a way numerous times to not drop titles (besides walking out earlier this year instead of dropping the title to Sid, he also quit the WWF in 1993 rather than drop the Intercontinental title, he was injured and failed to drop the IC title in 1995, and earlier this year walked out on the company at a time he and Steve Austin held the tag team title) and the fact he’s refused to work more than once a week made any decision giving him back the major title to be one somewhat perplexing. Even more so to his most hated rival who valued the title belt to a degree that outsiders would find almost incredulous.

  Most of Michaels’ juvenile television behavior that fans see were part of his new character orchestrated by McMahon where he continually does things “to try and get fired” based on the idea that “everyone” knows that earlier this year that is exactly what he wanted to do. Still, as noted below, it clearly rubbed Hart the wrong way, particularly when he jumped up and down and showed his bare butt on television, which over the past week many have given as the reason for an incredible 26% turn-off ratio of the Raw audience after that segment aired on 10/27, although Raw’s 2.63 rating on 11/3 was right at its usual average. Michaels had already been put over British Bulldog for the European title in a match that was originally booked for Michaels to do a clean job in.

  Exactly what is going to happen in Montreal is unclear. With Hart leaving, everyone will expect him to lose to Michaels for logical common sense business reasons. With wrestling the way it is today, the title switch shouldn’t be taken as a lock, although obviously he will be dropping the title at some point very quickly.

  WCW scored a second major coup with word that Bischoff and Ric Flair had basically agreed to terms this past week and that it was expected Flair would be signing a contract extension very shortly. Flair, whose contract expired in a few months, was someone WWF officials were highly interested in going after and who at least strongly considered the idea of such a move back.

  The next obvious questions concerns the future of Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith. The belief is that both, who signed five-year contracts each over the past 14 months, will remain with similar roles as at present in the WWF and the situation with Bret has nothing to do with their futures.

  Just a few days before Hart made his final decision to leave, he wrote a column in the Calgary Sun. Obviously much of the column was typical pro wrestling attempting to hype his next big match in the new in vogue more realistic insider fashion, but in hindsight, you can see where his head was at in other ways just before making his decision. The column was written as a letter to Michaels:

  Shawn Michaels, you are a disgrace to professional wrestling. It amazes me that there was a time I actually thought you’d be the guy who could come up behind me and carry the ball when my time comes to retire. Now when you’re behind me, I have to make sure I don’t bend over. I am a second generation wrestler. Like a lot of second generation wrestler, I’ve paid my dues. The way you are degrading the business makes me sick and breaks my heart. That’s not what Heartbreak Kid was supposed to mean. I told you, and Vince told you, to leave our families out of this. So you got on RAW and said that my father is dead. This time you’re so far over the line that there’s no coming back. Every so often, after you shoot off your mouth, you come to me backstage with a lame apology and a limp handshake. “Oh Bret, my mouth always gets me in trouble when I get goin’ out there. You know I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  Don’t bother this time, I’m not buying it. I would not embarrass my father—who is not only very much alive but is still tougher today at 83 and more of a man than you will ever be—as you have embarrassed your father with your degenerate behavior. How humiliating for your poor father to have to explain your lewd gestures to her friends. You don’t respect anybody, do you? What does Jose Lothario think of how you’ve made pornography out of what he taught you? Shawn Michaels, you are nothing more than a whore for this business.

  You called me a paper champion because it bothers you that my contract is worth more than you and the whole Degeneration X put together. You said I wrestle because I need the money, but you wrestle because this business needs you. You are a festering cancerous tumor in this business. After WrestleMania XII, I went home for a while to give you the chance to become “the man” because as long as I’m around you’ll never be “the man.” You were so bad at being “the man” that the WWF and WCW had the biggest bidding war in wrestling history to get me to come back. You’d have the World championship belt. But you don’t. What do you have, besides a big mouth and a bad attitude?

  Shawn Michaels, you said that beating the Undertaker makes you an icon. Not taking anything away from `Taker, but you weren’t the first guy to beat him, you just did it too late. You said you’re the only icon that can still go, not like the fossils. You’re so beat up from taking completely overdone bumps like a Mexican jumping bean that you can’t even work a full schedule like the older guys. You only wrestle about once a month and you’re proud of that? Then people who think they know more about this business than they actually do, write about what a hard worker you are. Anyone can work hard once a month. You’ve barebacked your way to main event matches and they give you the best guys in the business to make you look good.

  So you and your boyfriend, Hunter, think I’m told. Hunter said he’s bigger than me in more ways than one, and then you pointed at Hunter’s crotch and said he could put an eye out with that thing. Thanks for admitting that you know what Hunter has in his pants. So how come I have four kids and all you two have is each other? I’m not the one shooting blanks. By the way, you both looked very comfortable eating bananas together on Raw. Lots of parents tell me they won’t let their kids watch the shows anymore because of you and they don’t watch either because you’re such an asshole. People are shutting the show off because of you! It took so long to make wrestling into family entertainment. Thanks for setting the business back 50 years! You are the one who is confusing expansion and destruction, not me. You, Shawn, are the destruction of this business. You make me sick. You said you’re the best sports entertainer in the world. Don’t even think about saying you’re a wrestler. What I do is an art form and what you do is...what do you do, anyway, cause it’s not pro wrestling anymore?

  You called the WWF world championship a “tin title” but you’re only saying that because you don’t have the belt. When you did have it, you treated it like garbage and then threw it away! So now you want to try to win the title at Survivor Series? You’d better reconsider that because when I get my hands on you it’s going to make the beating I gave you in the locker room last June look like a warm up. After that little scuffle, you went running to Vince, complaining that the work conditions in the WWF are unsafe. The only thing unsafe about the working conditions in the WWF is you, Shawn. You’ve gotten in the ring so “pilled up” lately that you can’t even talk straight on TV. You’d better shake the cob webs free before you get in the ring with me at SS. This business has been my mistress for my whole life and I love her. You ar raping her and taking her dignity away. Don’t count on my reputation for professionalism saving your ass at SS. You’re the one who threw the rule book out the window. The 17 stitches you got at Hell in the Cell are nothing compared to what’s coming at Misery in Montreal.

  NOVEMBER 17

  It will go down in history as the single most famous finish of a pro wrestling match in the modern era. Twenty or 30 years from now this story, more than any famous wrestler jumping promotions, more than any prominent death, and more than any record setting house, will be remembered vividly by all who watched it live, and remembered as legendary from all who hear about it later. Through the magic of videotape, the last minute of this match will live forever, and be replayed literally million
s of times by tens of thousands of people all looking for the most minute pieces of detail to this strange puzzle. But the story of what led to those few seconds starts more than one year ago, far more reminiscent of the dirty con man past of the industry than the current attempted facade of a multi-million dollar corporate above board image those in the industry like to portray outwardly that it has evolved into.

  (October 20, 1996) Bret Hart was in a hotel room in San Jose, CA, hours from making the biggest decision of his life—who would win the biggest bidding war in the history of pro wrestling. He had pretty well leaned toward staying with the World Wrestling Federation despite a much larger offer from World Championship Wrestling, but had changed his mind a few times over the previous two weeks as each side presented new offers.

  In the waning hours, Eric Bischoff and Kevin Nash were trying to convince him to change his mind and how great life was with an easier schedule. Bischoff was offering big money and a shot at becoming a movie star, a goal Hart had been pursuing while on a semi-retirement from wrestling since dropping the title to Shawn Michaels a few months earlier at WrestleMania. Vince McMahon was offering him, in the now immortal words of Arn Anderson, not just a spot, but the top spot in the company, the chance to be a major part of deciding the future direction of the company, and almost literally, to be WWF 4 life.