Montreal Screwjob - Hart's Departure From The WWF

Hart's Departure From The WWF

At the time of the screwjob, Bret Hart was a 14-year veteran of the WWF, having started his career in the 1980s as one-half of the popular Hart Foundation tag team. Hart achieved tremendous success as a singles performer in the 1990s, twice taking the Intercontinental Title, and then winning the WWF Championship five times. Hart took a seven-month leave of absence from the company after WrestleMania XII, during which he negotiated both a new contract with the WWF and an offer from its rival, World Championship Wrestling. In October 1996, Hart declined a three-year, $8.4 million offer from WCW, opting to sign an unprecedented 20-year deal that he had been offered by McMahon, which promised to make him the highest-paid wrestler in the company and secure him a major role with the company management following his retirement. Both Hart and the WWF saw the contract as an expression of mutual loyalty.

By mid-1997, the WWF was facing financial difficulties due to stiff competition from WCW, which had become the largest professional wrestling promotion in the United States. At the same time McMahon was planning to make the WWF a publicly traded company, a move which required him to minimize any long-term financial commitments.

For several months prior to Survivor Series, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels had several backstage arguments including a fight before a house show in Hartford, Connecticut (after Michaels had publicly accused Hart of having an affair with Sunny), which saw Michaels suspended for 2 months. After a show in San Jose, California on October 12, 1997, Hart claimed he spoke to Michaels about being professional and trusting one another in the ring. Hart allegedly said he would have no problem losing to Michaels if McMahon requested. Hart also claimed that when Michaels replied that he would never lose to Hart, Bret was shocked and became angry. This led to Hart's outright refusal to lose the WWF Championship to Michaels at the pay-per-view event in Montreal, although in Hart's documentary, Hart states to McMahon that he would happily drop the belt but not in Canada. However, in his own autobiography, Shawn Michaels refuted Hart's claim, saying that he would have cleanly lost to Hart had storylines demanded so. Michaels also pointed out that he had lost cleanly to Hart several times in the past, most notably in the WWF's first-ever ladder match at a Wrestling Challenge taping on July 21, 1992, which would subsequently be made available on multiple Coliseum/WWE Home Video releases and in the main event of Survivor Series 1992. Michaels also lost to Hart in a Steel Cage match in December 1993.

McMahon believed he made the right choice in fighting for Hart to return, which kept him from joining rival WCW in 1996. However, by late 1997 the WWF's monetary problems were at an all-time high. McMahon began to defer payments to Hart, claiming that the WWF was in "financial peril." At this time, McMahon reviewed the WWF's plans for the future, and saw the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and D-Generation X leading what was to become "The Attitude Era". His plans included many stars, but not Hart; as such McMahon encouraged Hart to reopen negotiations with WCW.

While Hart considered an offer from then-WCW President Eric Bischoff, McMahon informed Hart that the WWF would honor his contract if he chose to stay. However when Hart talked to McMahon about future plans and storylines, he was disappointed by McMahon's response and what he considered lackluster suggestions. As seen in the documentary, Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows, Hart acknowledged around this time that his career had been sabotaged by his nationalist character, invented by McMahon. Throughout 1997, "The Hitman" regularly criticized America and deemed it inferior to Canada, drawing the ire of American audiences and yet winning him the respect of WWF's sizable Canadian fan-base; this rendered Hart neither a definite hero nor a villain, even outside the United States, and left him unable to properly enter into feuds with other wrestlers. Hart had also been unhappy about McMahon's move towards more controversial subject matter, which the World Wrestling Federation would later call "The Attitude Era." Convinced that McMahon's future plans did not include him, Hart resigned from the WWF. He signed an agreement with WCW, which had just offered him a large $3 million per annum contract on November 1, 1997. McMahon was worried about the possibility of him entering WCW as the WWF Champion. Hart asked McMahon if he would be mocked after leaving for WCW, as had occurred with other wrestlers who had transferred to WCW from the WWF; for example, in the previous year the WWF had made fun of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage in vignettes referring to them as "The Huckster" and "The Nacho Man", in addition to having Glenn Jacobs and Rick Bognar portray "Diesel" and "Razor Ramon", characters that Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had made famous before their 1996 departure from the WWF. McMahon assured him that nothing of the sort would happen.