Scandals & Feuds ·
The Finish Bret Hart Had Not Agreed To
In Montreal in 1997, a changed ending cost Hart his championship. Years later, two men who helped carry it out described the instructions—and one man’s hesitation.
Bret Hart had not submitted when the bell ended his championship match in Montreal on November 9, 1997. Shawn Michaels had him in the Sharpshooter, Hart’s signature hold, and referee Earl Hebner called for the bell under Vince McMahon’s direction. Michaels was declared the winner. Hart had entered the ring expecting a different finish—one that would leave him with the title that night.
The match at Survivor Series came as Hart was preparing to leave the World Wrestling Federation, now WWE, for rival promotion WCW. His departure presented a practical problem: he was still the WWF champion. It also involved a personal dispute. According to Hart’s account, he had been willing to lose the title to Michaels until Michaels told him he would not return the favor. Hart then refused to lose to him.
The official plan called for a disqualification through outside interference, with Hart losing or surrendering the championship later. Paul Jay’s documentary Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows includes a recorded conversation in which McMahon affirmed the planned disqualification finish; McMahon did not know he was being recorded. What Hart understood before the match was not what happened in the ring.
Jerry Brisco, then a road agent and producer, later described how the alternative was arranged. Speaking on Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw in 2023, in an interview transcribed by Wrestling Inc., he said McMahon took him aside after a production meeting where the official finish had been discussed. Brisco said he proposed using the Sharpshooter and subsequently prepared Michaels. Hebner, Brisco recalled, was not told until the music hit.
Hebner remembered hesitating when Brisco laid out the instructions. He also recalled telling his brother Dave to gather their belongings; the plan was to have a car waiting with its engine running so he could leave after the match. “I don’t think anybody [else] there could have told me what you told me and I’d have went along with it,” Hebner told Brisco.
McMahon’s concern, as later accounts described it, was that Hart might take the championship onto WCW television. But Hart remained under contract to the WWF for several more weeks and did not debut for WCW until that obligation ended. Eric Bischoff, who was in charge of WCW, later said using the WWF belt on WCW television was never a possibility because of the legal consequences. The feared appearance was not something Hart actually did.
After the match, McMahon sought out Hart backstage. Hart said he knocked McMahon out with one punch in the dressing room; the documentary shows an unsteady McMahon walking down an arena hallway afterward. On Raw weeks later, McMahon accused Hart of refusing wrestling’s tradition of losing to another performer on the way out. “Bret screwed Bret,” he said.
The incident has since inspired theories that Hart secretly participated in it. Hebner said in 2019 that he believed Hart may have been involved, while Hart reaffirmed in 2022 that it was not a staged collaboration.
The earlier promise between Hart and Hebner also remained disputed in its details. Hebner recalled assuring Hart that he would not count him out. Hart’s memoir, drawn from contemporaneous audio diaries, described a broader promise not to betray him over the finish. By the 2023 interview, Hebner said he and Hart had reconciled. Brisco said putting Hebner in that position had continued to trouble him: “But that was our jobs, Earl. That was what we were paid to do.”