The Montréal Screwjob: How Bret Hart's Betrayal Changed Wrestling Forever
Inside the infamous 1997 incident that shattered wrestling's fourth wall and transformed an industry
The sound of 20,000 voices rising in unified outrage echoed through Montréal's Molson Centre on that November night in 1997. In the center of the ring, Bret "The Hitman" Hart stood frozen in disbelief, his face a portrait of betrayal. Seconds earlier, referee Earl Hebner had called for the bell while Shawn Michaels had Hart locked in his own signature move.
But Hart hadn’t tapped out.
As debris rained down from the stands and confused commentators scrambled to make sense of what had just happened, Hart locked eyes with WWF owner Vince McMahon at ringside. In a moment of unscripted fury, he spat directly into his boss’s face, then began smashing TV monitors and WWF equipment. Professional wrestling changed forever in that moment.
What unfolded that night would be dubbed the "Montréal Screwjob," a real-life double-cross that blurred the line between performance and reality, creating ripples that would transform an entire industry and haunt its participants for decades to come.
Hello there. I’d like to share a story about a truly extreme event in Canadian sportes entertainment history. One that took place in a packed wrestling arena in Montréal, blurred the already obscure lines between reality and scripted performance, and changed the industry forever.
Let’s begin.
Second-generation Canadian wrestler, Bret Sergeant Hart (“The Hitman”) was born on July 2, 1957. He started training and wrestling as a kid and participated in amateur wrestling at Ernest Manning High School and later at Mount Royal College.
Bret got his professional start in the 1970s in his hometown of Calgary, wrestling for his father Stu Hart’s promotion, Stampede Wrestling. At first, he was just supposed to be a referee, but fate intervened.
In 1978, when another wrestler couldn’t perform, he got his first chance to compete. Nobody expected that quiet young man to become one of wrestling’s biggest stars, but he did.
From early on, he showed a knack for making matches look genuine. He once said, “No one could take a [$#!%]-kicking like Bret Hart.” That statement might sound blunt, but it tells you how much pride he took in making every slam, punch, and hold look real.
When Bret started wrestling for his Dad, there wasn’t one major “league” or organization. Instead, there were approximately 30 regional districts and promotions, and there were decades-old unwritten rules and agreements that prevented any of the territories from encroaching on others. Stu Hart controlled one of these 30 regional wrestling outfits.
By the early 1980s, the wrestling scene started changing as boundaries started to crumble and larger companies bought up smaller promotions.
One of the biggest shifts happened in August 1984, when the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) acquired Bret’s father’s Stampede Wrestling. This allowed the WWF to reach far beyond its traditional borders.
Earlier that year, Maple Leaf Wrestling out of Toronto had given in to the pressure and sold to the WWF, and it was just a matter of time before the WWF was going to control the Canadian market.
Bret was among several wrestlers who were able to remain on and become part of the WWF after they purchased Stampede. The folks at WWF quickly identified Bret’s star power. Over the next decade, he won multiple championships: first as part of The Hart Foundation tag team, then as a solo star during the WWF’s “Golden Era” (1980-1993).
During the Golden Era, the WWF had swallowed up most of its competitors and created its most popular stars you might remember (even if you weren’t a wrestling fan), like Hulk Hogan, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, and another Canadian: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
In the early 90s, the WWF started to find itself in trouble due to its doctor selling steroids to its performers and allegations of sexual assaults occurring within the organization. WWF owner Vince McMahon was also indicted on charges related to the illegal distribution of steroids and alleged to have sexually assaulted a former performer.
Hulk Hogan was jumping ship and set to testify in the steroid scandal, and the WWF seemed vulnerable. Its competitors smelled blood in the water and tried to take advantage and take control of the American/Canadian wrestling industry.
It’s reported that during this turbulent time, Vince McMahon entrusted the future of the WWF to Bret Hart, who many believed was a “safe set of hands.” He wasn’t in trouble outside the wrestling ring. He was just a hard worker that fans enjoyed watching wrestle.
So for the next few years Bret Hart was the main face of the organization. He won the WWF Championship five times. His trademark spandex was pink and black, he represented his home country with passion, and he carried himself like a proud Canadian icon wherever he went. His brother Owen had also joined him as a wrestler on the roster.
In late December 1994, McMahon was acquitted of all drug charges, and the sexual assault case had fallen by the wayside. When he was able to return his focus to pro wrestling, Bret was still holding down the fort, but they were in trouble.
A number of their big-name stars had been poached by competitor: WCW (World Championship Wrestling), including Hulk Hogan. Bret Hart stayed and helped keep the WWF competitive and keep fans tuning in to watch its product, even though fewer and fewer of its big-name stars were appearing alongside him.
The WCW had big money behind it, thanks to Turner Broadcasting, and kept aggressively trying to sign top WWF wrestlers. The feud between the two companies was akin to the Coke vs Pepsi battles we were used to seeing in the 70s and 80s. But this rivalry went deeper than ratings. Some say it was personal.
Ted Turner reportedly wanted to squash the WWF because of a long-standing beef with its owner, Vince McMahon. Vince had clawed his way to the top of the wrestling world by being cutthroat and relentlessly competitive.
Unfortunately for Bret Hart, he found himself caught in the middle of this tug-of-war.
In 1996, WWF owner Vince McMahon acknowledged Bret’s value and signed him to an unusual 20-year deal that would, in theory, keep him in the WWF until he retired. It was a bit of a Hail Mary to try to stabilize the company and avoid losing Bret to the big money across the road at WCW.
But business got rough, and the WWF could no longer afford Hart’s massive contract. Reluctantly, McMahon suggested that Bret see what WCW might offer him.
Bret did just that and signed a three-year, nine-million-dollar offer from WCW, who quickly pounced on the chance to nab another of the WWF’s biggest talents. Bret had been loyal to the WWF for his entire career and only decided to leave after McMahon encouraged him to do so because the money just wasn’t there. And this was only long after many of his peers had already jumped ship.
Before Bret could leave the WWF, there was the small matter of him being the WWF Champion at the time. As was custom when wrestlers left, if they were Champions, they’d lose their title in the ring, before departing. And that’s where our story truly kicks into high gear.
Bret didn’t want to lose his championship in Canada and wanted to have a say in how he went out. He also had some strong opinions about who he’d be willing to pass the title on to. Specifically, he didn’t want to lose to his nemesis (in and out of the ring) Shawn Michaels, whom he was scheduled to wrestle in Montréal shortly before he was set to make the move to WCW.
If you’ve ever seen Bret Hart, you know he looks like a super serious dude. Always. And for all its theatrics, over-the-top schticks, and silliness, Hart always treated professional wrestling very seriously. He viewed it almost like an athletic art form, blending real technique with showmanship.
Shawn Michaels, on the other hand, was more brash, with a flamboyant style, an edgy attitude, and a knack for making enemies behind the scenes. By 1997, tension between Bret and Shawn was at an all-time high. Though most of it was all part of the act, the way Hart still talks about that time now, it’s clear that the two performers didn’t care for each other.
Things turned especially sour when Michaels made an on-screen comment insinuating that Bret had been romantically involved with a female wrestler named Sunny. Bret felt that the joke crossed the line into insulting his family, so the two nearly came to blows backstage. While Bret signed on to all the drama that came with the soap opera that was professional wrestling, his family hadn’t.
And at a time when the line between real life and performance was getting blurrier for most fans, Bret’s integrity was something he refused to compromise. He didn’t want his family to suffer because some people couldn’t tell that Shawn Michaels was just playing a character, and that Bret wasn’t actually an adulterer.
Rumours flew about how they fought in the locker room and parted ways, disgusted with each other. Wrestling works best when there’s a bit of real tension fueling the storyline, and Bret vs. Shawn had plenty to spare.
As a final show of respect, McMahon initially agreed to honour Bret’s wishes and dropped the idea of Bret losing this match. There would still be time before Bret went to rival WCW for him to drop his title, and it didn’t need to occur on Canadian soil.
Hart’s pending exit from the WWF was unknown to audiences. And Canadian fans were pumped that Hart, who had become a national hero, was set to take centre stage during one of the WWF’s biggest events of the year: Survivor Series. An event that was to be held at Montréal’s Molson Centre. It would become a night that fans, wrestlers, and even people outside of wrestling would never forget.
As we now know, behind the scenes, McMahon was worried about Hart keeping his title past the Montréal event. Not too long before Montréal, a wrestler named Alundra Blayze left McMahon’s WWF for rival WCW while still holding the WWF Women’s Championship belt. She then promptly tossed that belt into a trash can on live TV, damaging the WWF’s street cred and popularity.
Vince feared something similar might happen with Bret and the men’s championship belt. There’s no evidence Bret would have done that, but the possibility made McMahon restless during this time when the WWF was so vulnerable.
Meanwhile, backstage rumours now reveal that a handful of people were cooking up a scheme to force Bret Hart to lose. On November 8, the night before Survivor Series in Montréal, Vince McMahon held a meeting with Shawn Michaels and other insiders.
They hatched a plan to trick Bret during the match. Only a small inner circle knew exactly how it would go down. Some said WWF producer and on-screen personality Gerald Brisco was involved, some said another wrestler named Paul Michael Levesque (better known by the ring name “Triple H”) had a major role.
Referee Earl Hebner apparently learned about it at the last minute. If Bret wouldn’t drop the title willingly in Canada, the paranoid and cut-throat businessman, Vince McMahon, would make him drop it by any means necessary.
When the WWF superstars showed up in Montréal, Bret reportedly got a warning from a fellow wrestler that went by the name “Vader.” “Be careful out there,” Vader said. “Vince has a tendency to screw people in these types of situations.”
Bret shrugged it off. He’d been wrestling for decades and believed he had earned creative control over his match outcome. He also trusted referee Earl Hebner, who had sworn he’d never double-cross him.
The official plan, as Bret understood it, was that during his match, there would be a moment when multiple other wrestlers would run into the ring (a common scripted part of the show), and another commont theatrical performance piece called a” referee bump” (meaning the referee would be “knocked out”), was planned that would end the match in a disqualification.
This non-finish would allow Bret to remain champion, so he could either forfeit the belt or lose it somewhere else after Montréal. From Bret’s perspective, he had a handshake deal with McMahon that this was the plan.
But the real plan involved Bret losing during a part of the match where Shawn Michaels was supposed to put him in a hold that sometimes makes wrestlers “submit.” It’s a “signature” move that Bret Hart often uses himself called “the Sharpshooter.” When this part of the match took place, someone would signal the timekeeper to ring the bell.
This would make it look like Bret had submitted, even though he hadn’t. Michaels would grab the championship belt, Bret would be left fuming, and McMahon’s problem would be solved. Not to mention, it would make a great storyline and might just be part of the WWF’s recovery. The “controversy” might be good for ratings. But nobody knew exactly how Bret would react. They were about to find out.
Picture the Molson Centre jammed that November night with over 20,000 fans. They were hyped to see their hero, Bret Hart, defend the WWF Championship against Shawn Michaels.
For Canadians, Bret’s matches on home soil meant a lot. He’d built his entire year around being a proud Canadian champion, so there was extra emotion in the arena that night.
The match started like a typical Bret vs. Shawn showdown. Intense brawling, some technical wrestling, and a lot of heat from the audience (who booed Shawn mercilessly).
Vince McMahon stood near the ringside, which was unusual, adding an uneasy vibe to the show. At around the 19-minute mark, Shawn grabbed Bret’s legs and locked in the Sharpshooter hold. Normally, Bret would writhe around for a moment before reversing it, pushing Shawn’s leg off and rolling him onto his back. Something fans had grown to love and expect. And all part of the planned sequence, at least in Bret’s mind.
But as soon as Shawn got the hold secure, referee Earl Hebner jumped to his feet, looked at the timekeeper, and yelled, “Ring the bell!” According to lore, the timekeeper was surprised as this wasn’t in the script and froze in shock, knowing how much this moment meant to Hart (and probably being afraid of being part of ruining it for him. McMahon also barked the same command, “Ring the f—ing bell!”
Ding ding! Suddenly, Shawn Michaels’s theme music blared, and the ring announcer declared him the new WWF Champion by submission. But Bret hadn’t tapped out. The entire crowd seemed baffled.
Although you have to suspend your belief in reality (and your critical thinking) to really enjoy the spectacle of professional wrestling, when something that looks so obviously unscripted happens, it takes you out of the performance and leaves you confused as to whether you just watched the performers make a mistake or the show malfunction.
In commentary, Jim Ross asked, “What happened?” Bret stood there, stunned for a moment, then spat directly down into Vince McMahon’s face in fury. Michaels hurried out of the ring with the belt, looking at times as if he didn’t know what was going on either. But he later said he was in on it too.
The cable TV broadcast ended abruptly, leaving viewers confused, but the fans in the arena knew exactly what had happened: Bret Hart had just been cheated out of his title in front of his home crowd. They could see it all over the fuming face of their fallen hero.
Once the bell rang, Bret realized he’d been ambushed. He smashed cameras, tore up ringside equipment, and spelled out “W-C-W” with his fingers to the camera, signaling where he was headed.
The Montréal audience erupted in chants of “Bull—!” They pelted the ring with debris as Bret’s brother and fellow wrestler, Owen, tried to console him. This was more than the usual storyline betrayal. This felt like a real slap in the face not just to Bret Hart, but to all of his Canadian fans.
Backstage, tensions hit a boiling point. Vince McMahon locked himself in his office. Bret confronted Shawn, demanding to know if Shawn had been in on it. “My hands are clean,” Shawn claimed at the time, following the script he was given to deny his involvement.
Eventually, Bret found McMahon, confronted him, and famously punched him in front of witnesses like Gerald Brisco, Pat Patterson, and McMahon’s son and on-screen WWF personality Shane McMahon. Some say Vince sprained his ankle or got a concussion when he went down. Bret says he simply knocked him out cold. Either way, it seemed like chaos.
Bret’s wife can even now be seen scolding a line of wrestlers that she believes had a hand in her husband’s betrayal, and she tells them they should be ashamed of themselves.
Many wrestlers sympathized with Bret. A character named the Undertaker was furious. Performer, Mick Foley (aka Mankind) even boycotted the next night’s Raw in protest, only returning after the company reached out to him personally to woo him back.
Rumours spread that half the locker room was ready to walk out, but Bret encouraged wrestlers to stay, not to risk losing their jobs over him. The backstage environment was never the same after that night.
The following night in Ottawa, the WWF was back for their regularly scheduled Monday Night performance. Shawn Michaels came out bragging about beating Bret “with his own move.” Vince McMahon later gave a televised interview with Jim Ross, trying to justify what happened.
He then said the iconic line: “Vince McMahon didn’t screw Bret Hart. I truly believe Bret Hart screwed Bret Hart.” That phrase stuck, and it turned Vince from a somewhat neutral authority figure into a despised on-screen villain. It was “better for business” to paint Hart as a superstar who got too big for his britches and tried to call all the shots.
McMahon leaned into this more polarizing role, becoming “Mr. McMahon,” the tyrannical boss. This transformation was part of what propelled the WWF toward its “Attitude Era.”
A time when ratings soared, and edgy characters like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who shotgunned beers and flipped the middle finger any chance he got, became megastars. It was a time when they really sank to new lows and did a lot of questionable and uncomfortable things on TV that exploited women, minorities, and made it cool to be crass.
Meanwhile, Bret left for WCW almost immediately. Fans expected a grand run for him there, but it never quite panned out. WCW never used Bret’s talent effectively, and a series of concussions and other injuries later ended his career in late 2000.
He often looked back on “the Montréal Screwjob” as a betrayal that affected not just his WWF career but his entire wrestling legacy.
It’s hard to overstate how much “the Montréal Screwjob” changed professional wrestling, reviving the WWF but ultimately spelling the decline and demise of Canadian Bret Hart.
As mentioned earlier, Vince McMahon’s role in double-crossing Bret made fans on both sides of the border despise him for real. He built on that hatred, turning himself into one of wrestling’s most effective villain characters.
His following feud with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was at the center of the WWF’s rise during the late 1990s, leading to skyrocketing ratings and revenue.
Even though wrestling was already recognized as “sports entertainment,” the Screwjob blurred the line between story and reality like never before. Suddenly, fans realized that real-life backstage politics could disrupt the scripted outcomes too.
With the help of more edgy storylines, despicable characters, and despicable acts, the WWF eventually beat WCW in the ratings war. Some say the seeds for that victory were planted when Vince decided to double-cross the respectable, technical Bret Hart character, inadvertently creating the “evil boss” angle that fans still recall today.
For Bret, the emotional fallout was huge. He left the WWF with bitterness in his heart. This was compounded when tragedy struck the Hart family on May 23, 1999, when Bret’s brother Owen, who had remained with the WWF after Bret’s departure and was one of its biggest new stars, fell to his death while being lowered into the ring via a harness and grapple line.
At the time, McMahon made the decision not to cancel the remainder of the show and didn’t tell the live audience that Owen had died. Meanwhile, Owen’s friends and fellow wrestlers had to go perform in the ring that was stained with his blood and with the knowledge that he had died from the fall.
As you can imagine, Bret was heartbroken and furious at the disrespect shown to his brother. Decades later, Bret would even say for a time, he was so messed up from being betrayed a few years earlier, that he wondered if Owen’s death could’ve even been intentional. A way to get at him.
After a few years, a lawsuit, settlement, and lengthy police investigation, it was determined that the manufacturer of the harness system was at fault and it had nothing to do with the WWF being negligent or reckless.
While Brent would eventually return to the WWF, first to accept a Hall of Fame induction in 2006, then to appear on WWE TV in 2010, it took him years to shake off the anger from that night in Montréal and to come to terms with the death of Owen.
Over time, some wrestlers and insiders floated the idea that maybe Bret Hart was in on the plan all along and the whole thing might have been orchestrated by Bret and Vince together to generate massive publicity.
Bret has consistently denied this, calling it ridiculous. In a 2022 interview, he confirmed that he was genuinely betrayed. Many fans still debate it on wrestling forums: did Bret truly not see it coming, or did he suspect something was off?
In real life, Bret and Shawn Michaels spent years trading barbs. Bret wrote in his autobiography that he would never forgive Michaels. Shawn, for his part, insisted that everything was done under Vince’s orders.
But eventually, in 2010, Bret and Shawn had an emotional moment in the ring where they shook hands and hugged. Fans watching could hardly believe their eyes. Bret said it was sincere, and Shawn said he had become a different person, one who regretted the role he played in Montréal.
Even Bret and Vince McMahon reached a point of civility. In 2010, they turned their real feud into a storyline culminating in a WrestleMania XXVI match. Bret wrestled Vince on that big stage, with the Hart family cheering him on. It was, in a sense, a final bit of closure for one of wrestling’s darkest nights.
Why does the Montréal Screwjob matter so much today?
First, it’s a Canadian story. Bret Hart was a household name, a symbol of national pride, and the match took place in Montréal, adding a layer of personal insult for many fans.
To this day, some older wrestling supporters in Canada talk about the incident as though it happened yesterday. The betrayal of a Canadian hero on home soil still stings.
Second, it’s a story about how real-life tension, backstage politics, and business concerns can merge into one unpredictable event. Even if you’re not into wrestling, the Montréal Screwjob shows how fast loyalties can unravel when money, pride, and national identity get tangled up.
Third, it’s an example of how one shocking moment can become a cultural landmark. The phrase “Montréal Screwjob” is now wrestling shorthand for any time a company or promoter deceives a wrestler about a match outcome. It’s become bigger than just Bret and Shawn; it’s a cautionary tale for all pro wrestlers and promoters worldwide.
The Montréal Screwjob endures in our collective memory not just as a wrestling controversy, but as a perfect storm of betrayal that touches on universal themes we all recognize. At its core, this is a story about loyalty, pride, and the painful collision between art and commerce.
For many wrestling fans who grew up watching Bret Hart embody integrity, his betrayal felt oddly personal. Here was a man who represented the purity of wrestling as a craft. Someone who prioritized making matches look authentic and treated his character's honor with reverence. When he was humiliated on Canadian soil, it shredded the last scraps of wrestling's innocence.
What makes this moment transcend wrestling is how it exposed the ruthless reality behind the theatrical facade. We all face moments where our professional ideals clash with business realities, where handshake agreements prove worthless against financial pressures.
The Screwjob resonates because it's the most dramatic possible version of something we all fear: being expendable despite our loyalty and expertise.
Even now, whenever a professional athlete is traded after years of service, when an artist is dropped by their label, or when a long-time employee is suddenly laid off, the comparison to Montréal inevitably surfaces.
The image of Bret Hart: proud, principled, and ultimately powerless, standing in that Montréal ring as his legacy was rewritten without his consent has become cultural shorthand for the vulnerability we all feel in our professional lives.
Perhaps that's why, decades later, we can't stop analyzing those fateful minutes in Montréal. They remind us that even our heroes can be rendered powerless in an instant, and that sometimes, the real drama happens when the script gets thrown away.
Have a rad rest of your day!
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