Why Vince McMahon Screwed Brett The Hitman Hart!

For fans of professional wrestling, especially those that watched it in the nineties during the Monday Night Wars between the defunct World Championship Wrestling and then World Wrestling Federation, the question has plagued us all for years. Why screw over the Hitman? What was it really all about? Taking a look at the time between the mid-nineties and the late-nineties, it was an intriguing time in professional wrestling. Forget Donald Trump and Vince McMahon's showdown at Wrestlemania, the true battle of the billionaires was in the middle of the nineteen-nineties.

During the middle of the 1990s professional wrestling grew to new and never before dreamed heights of popularity. The growth was largely in part due to Vince McMahon and the WWF aggressively looking for a monopoly on televised wrestling, Vince having bought up smaller promotions already as he was on his way to holding all the cards. When Ted Turner opened up his checkbook and gave the position of Executive Vice President to Eric Bischoff, things began to get heated, the Monday Night Wars had begun. It all probably started when Ted Turner realized that Bischoffs' vision of running head to head against the then, WWF, was going to be how they would take the ratings. It was a highly competitive night for television, considering Monday Night Football and WWF's flag show, Monday Night Raw, both competed for two very sought-after hours.

Ted Turner had the bucks to spend and with Eric Bischoff at the helm would go on to steal such talented performers and icons in the business as Hulk Hogan, the Macho Man Randy Savage, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash even defected and they formed a group called the New World Order, or NWO. Now, the NWO is a group that has held onto its' appeal. For the time frame that factions in wrestling were such a huge part of the creative story, the NWO is the only faction that has ever appeared underneath both the WWF/WWE and WCW brands.

Eventually, Vince McMahon and company had to realize that Ted Turner was stomping them, especially during the NWO's highest points when the WCW three-hour show beat out WWF's programming for 83 weeks straight. During this time we saw more defections and the back and forth between companies became a regular occurrence due in large part to the high dollar contracts being afforded the prominent stars. It wasn't a business tactic that lasted as over time such higher dollar contracts became what other wrestlers sought would eventually jump ship to join the WWF. Such stars as Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, and even Bill Goldberg would eventually make their way to WWF/WWE by 2005 after the WCW went out of business.

One of the most notorious events of the era, the Montreal Screw Job, will no doubt get talked about long after professional wrestling goes through another change or two, as we've seen it do so over the past few years. Brett Hart was due to leave WWF and take a spot in WCW in the late nineties after a championship match with Shawn Michaels. In front of Brett's hometown crowd in Canada, in a match that Brett clearly got screwed in, Vince McMahon ordered the bell rang while Shawn had Brett locked in Brett's own move. Thus, Shawn Michaels was the WWF Champion.

Why would you screw one of your own over? Well, for those that have watched it the last thirty years, the Monday Night Wars between Vince McMahon and Eric Bischoff's WCW got brutal. During the December 18th, 1995 broadcast of WCW Nitro, WWF's Womens' Champion, Alundra Blayze showed up at the commentators' booth and surprised the world as she made her first appearance for WCW. Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and Steve "Mongo" McMichaels all played shocked as she not only showed up in WCW but also brought the competitor's championship belt with her, only to throw it in the trash as she badmouthed the WWF.

There'd been several shots fired across the WWF bow during the beginning of the Monday Night Wars. To some, the defection of a championship competitor to another company with the championship belt was unthinkable but what was done on television was considered by many as reprehensible. With Brett Hart's status, his defection to the WCW, while Vince McMahon has never admitted it, had to come as a shock. When it came time to let Brett leave, there's not a doubt in my mind, Vince McMahon was not going to allow the WWF World Heavyweight Championship to be disposed of like garbage on a competitor's broadcast. Screwing Brett Hart over, well it sucked to watch. Brett was, is, and always will be in the argument for who's the best of all time. But, as they say in the WWE, it may have been "What's Best For Business."