Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett former four times WCW World Heavyweight champion recently talked about the Hitman Bret Hart joining WCW. He said Hart did not realise what WCW was before joining the promotion.
Bret Hart was one of the biggest names of WWE during the great Monday Night Wars and he was believed to be one of the biggest weapons of the promotion against WCW during that time. But he was really difficult to manage since he was one of the biggest faces of the promotion. He could not agree to most of the booking decisions pitched by the creative team.
Jeff Jarrett Reveals Bret Hart Did Not Understand WCW Before Joining The Promotion
At Survivor Series 1997 pay per view event, Hart defended his WWE World Championship against Shawn Michaels and the original decision was him dropping the title to Michaels. But he did not want to drop the Championship. At the end, Vince McMahon himself had to call for the bell. Hart was so upset that he decided to leave WWE at the very moment.
He left WWE to join the biggest rival of the promotion that was WCW. He was definitely a big grab for WCW and at that time it looked like WWE has no chance against their rival promotion. He had been treated as a main event start in WCW as well as he won WCW World Heavyweight championship two times. But in 2000, a botched kick from Goldberg killed his in ring career forever.
Jeff Jarrett former four times WCW World Heavyweight champion recently spoke on “My World with Jeff Jarrett” where he talked about the Hitman Bret Hart joining WCW. He said Hart did not realise what WCW was before joining the promotion. He said;
“I remember telling him that when I left WWF the first time in ’95 or ’96, my contract expired and I came down. The business was red hot. The NWO was taking off. Nitro was kicking ass. It was just really cranking up.”
“During ‘96 and ‘97, I immediately knew you’re not working for Vince McMahon. You’re not working for any one boss. You’re in a corporate environment. There’s things candidly where the right hand doesn’t talk to the left hand. There is no Vince McMahon. There is no Pat Patterson. There is no machine. The marketing is different. PR is different. It was a corporate environment.”
“I had that brief, but it was kind of a detailed conversation. I don’t want to say Bret was checked out. I think the realization that this isn’t the WWE by any stretch of the imagination, and the lack of attention to detail in so many ways was just so obvious. I’ll say we were not only just disappointed and the air was kind of out of the room.
“It’s just like, well, all we can really do is what we can do, but we can only take care of what we normally take care of. But that conversation was there. Bret is a professional and busted his ass and did what he could do, but we both knew that a corporate run wrestling industry is just very, very difficult.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription