If you are a wrestling fan whose love of the business goes further back than the days when John Cena was an entertaining mid-card rapper you will undoubtedly have an opinion on Bret “The Hitman” Hart. You may choose to remember him as “the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be” or as a true Canadian hero. You may, alternatively, be one of those people who mocks the way humourless Bret treats it all so seriously and how his bitterness manifests itself in incidents like the now infamous “4/10” comments on the HHH/Undertaker match.
Myself, I was never a huge Bret Hart fan. I respected his abilities and enjoyed many of his matches but having nailed my colours firmly to the Shawn Michaels mast in the early 90’s, another wrestler with a divisive reputation to this day, Bret was never my favourite of wrestlers. I enjoyed his autobiography to a degree but the sheer barrage of self-aggrandising comments left me a little cold and there were times, such as the tale of talking with Vince McMahon on the day of Owen Hart’s funeral about Bret getting access to his old matches for a DVD, when I wondered if Bret had any self-awareness left. Even on his new Blu-Ray, The Dungeon Collection, I found my eyes rolling at the sheer number of times Bret put himself over by saying that an opponent asked to work with him because they thought he was so great or that they respected him so much.
But as easy as it is to mock Bret, I began to question whether or not it was fair to do so. Although “history” has made somewhat of a comeback since the time in the 1980s when Vince decided his was the only show in town (mainly due to the fact that Vince can make money off the archives now) it is still true to say that there is little mainstream attention paid to wrestling history. Bret may have been leaving himself open to accusations of hypocrisy by returning to the WWE to accept the Hall Of Fame offer after saying, in his book, that he wanted nothing to do with a promotion that would continue to employ Triple H and Shawn Michaels (who were destroying wrestling in Bret’s eyes) but what choice did he have. If he wanted to secure a “legacy” where else could he do that?
Similarly, with Vince and the WWE owning so much of his career footage, if Bret wanted to see a release of a compilation of his best matches, how could he possibly do this without working with Vince’s company? Especially when Vince publicly stated his intention to film a less than flattering documentary about Bret and release it under the title of “Screwed”.
But then we come to perhaps the biggest injustice of them all; that Bret is mocked for caring so much about his legacy at all.
Bret isn’t an actor (as anyone who saw him in Lonesome Dove would attest) who could expect grand interviews on television with Larry King about his famous back catalogue or a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars. Neither is Bret a “legitimate” sports star who can point to the record books and say he won the World Series, the SuperBowl or Olympic gold. Being “given” the World Title by Vince McMahon five times doesn’t quite resonate as well in the wider-world as those particular accolades.
So why shouldn’t a man whose entire family was consumed by wrestling care about the legacy he leaves behind? Why shouldn’t a man who has given the best years of his life to his career care about how history and the fans will remember him? Why shouldn’t a man who has lost so many friends and family to “the business” have some pride in his achievements and hope that they will remain recognised for years to come?
You do not have to agree with everything Bret says, nor do you have to particularly believe that he was the “best there ever will be”. But to mock a man who gave so much to his career merely for wanting to be remembered and to have a legacy to be proud of? After all, he’s not exactly the first former wrestler to have a huge ego. Wrestling fans are well within their rights to disagree with Bret’s statements and of course are more than welcome to arrive at their own conclusions about the merits of his career. But to mock him for caring about the business he’s devoted most of his life to hardly seems fair, especially when a lot of us that are mocking him are just as passionate about professional wrestling as he is.
– By Matthew Roberts