Hart speaks candidly.
In April, Bret Hart will be in Australia for the Starrcast festivities in Ballarat, Victoria. The Dungeon Wrestling promotion is going to be represented as one of the matches on the weekend will see Chris Adonis defending the Stu Hart Heritage Championship against Mike Rallis f.k.a. Riddick Moss.
To promote event(s), Hart was interviewed by FOX Sports Australia. Along the way, Hart expressed that he feels he’s more revered now than ever and thinks it’s because of talents like CM Punk and FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) bringing his name up and reminding people of his work.
Hart then did a deep dive into his thoughts about modern-day wrestling and making sure the in-ring work looks good without hurting anyone. He focused in on making things look precise in the ring, adding that when he’d see John Cena or another talent put a headlock in, it’d look like their arms are wrapped around a tire instead of it looking tight.
It’s hard to criticize something that seems to be going through the roof. Wrestling has had a surge in the last little while, the last few years. And even in my case, I seem to be as revered or popular as I’ve ever been – and it’s maybe because of the salutes I’ve been getting from guys like (CM) Punk, and FTR, different wrestlers have mentioned my name, or do something that I did in the ring as a nod or a salute to me, and I appreciate all that. I think CM Punk alone has done a lot to remind wrestling fans to take a look back at some of the stuff that I was doing, and how good it was. And I think it’s starting to stand out now where it’s like – in my honest opinion, without trying to sound too boastful, they’ve pulled the curtain back on wrestling so much. So now we know the whole thing’s a show, and they’re just really good physical actors, and that is what it is. But you watch my wrestling and you go, jeez, he was the best. I think I made it look more real than anybody all the time. I made your stuff look good, I made my own stuff look good, nothing looked rehearsed. There’s so much I think in today’s wrestling that’s so badly rehearsed, over and over. I saw something just a few days ago in a wrestling match where all the girls were lying in the middle of the ring together and they were doing the big belly flops on all of them. And you think they would get away from that kind of phony rehearsed kind of wrestling. Who wants to watch that? I don’t want to watch that, I know my kids don’t want to watch that. The best pro wrestling has to always pretend to be real, and that way it’s fun – but when you basically say it’s not real, and it’s all just a performance, it loses some of that what I think was in my style. My punches, my kicks, my dropkicks – if I dropkicked somebody, I hit him right in the face, but I didn’t hurt him, but both feet pushed his face hard enough to know, jeez, I’m guessing that might’ve hurt. And the thing I take so much pride in is every wrestler I ever worked, every single one came back and he shook my hand to say thanks for the match. I was a technical wrestler that made you, you know — when I put a headlock on, it (looked) like a real headlock. Not like John Cena or somebody that’s got a headlock that looks like he has it on a tire. The headlock has to be tightened – real. You know, that’s what I pride myself on. And I also pride myself on the fact that I never injured anybody, ever. I find a lot of the wrestlers today are like, when they land where they land, they realize 30 seconds later that they’re in the wrong spot, and they start wiggling all the way across the ring to get in the right position. That’s a fail. You get an F in my wrestling academy when you do stuff like that. And when these guys dive over the top rope onto the 20 wrestlers on the floor – they’ve gotta stop doing that. It’s just not real … and with the chops, and everybody chopping themselves. What a bunch of baloney. Nobody ever won a match with a chop. All the wooing. It’s really taking away from the beauty and the art of great wrestling. There’s a lot of great wrestlers out there that can deliver great matches. But there’s so many wrestlers out there that are subpar in my opinion, that don’t know what they’re doing out there. And they allow themselves to rely on things like chops, which I think is sort of like cheap heat – you get a reaction, but what’s your reaction? You’re whipping a guy across the chest with your hand? Okay, so you’re hurting some guy for real, for some stupid reason. And the crowd sort of reacts to it. In my understanding of pro wrestling, anytime anyone does anything to you that hurts for real – chopping, putting blisters on your chest when you go to your room or bed. Anytime anyone does things to you for real, they’re in the wrong business. They’re doing it wrong. Because you’re not supposed to get hurt. You’re not supposed to come back to your dressing room that night, or to your hotel room and have a big lump on your head and a black eye and your teeth are knocked out. That’s Bill Goldberg wrestling. That’s not how it’s done.
He went on to recount a segment he had with CM Punk in WWE in which he forgot his lines. Bret said he was handed five pages of script that he tried to memorize but when it came time for the segment, he went blank.
It got to a point where he considered breaking character and flat out signaling that he forgot his lines. The verbiage eventually came back to Hart. He remembers being backstage and seeing John Cena receive 20 pages worth of notes and script. Hart praised Cena and called him a pro for remembering his material and delivering it without a hitch.
In fact, I did it (forgot my lines) with (CM) Punk. And I remember I had to do an interview. And they gave me so much script. They gave me like, five pages of script to memorize; and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Five pages? I’m just gonna wing it,’ but they go, ‘No, no, it’s gotta be word for word.’ So I started reading this thing all afternoon, and I’m getting ready to go out, and I’m kind of nervous about it – well, I don’t do this stuff anymore. And also they come up to me and tell me it’s a whole rewrite, five different pages. And I remember I went out there and I totally froze up in the ring. I forgot everything I was going to say. I was all ready to say, hey, somebody in the back there, I’ve forgot all my script and I’m gonna have to wing this, like I was gonna break character. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to (say). Somehow, miraculously, I remembered what I needed to say. But the pressure on these young wrestlers today, from an acting standpoint is so much more anything I ever had to do. And I respect that a lot. And I’ll give you an example – that same day that I had brain fog going out, John Cena was standing next to me doing something on his own. They handed him maybe 20 pages of script. And I remember looking at the pages, there were a lot of changes. And he was like, ‘Ohh.’ He just groaned the same way I did. But I watched him, maybe 20 minutes after I went out, he went out there and did the whole thing word for word. Reading his script, he did it perfectly! He remembered all the changes and he did it perfectly. And I go, ‘Well that’s a real pro out there.’ Maybe I could’ve done that back (in) 1992 or 1995 or something, but I mean the wrestlers today have a lot on their backs that guys in that era didn’t have.
Starrcast Down Under is taking place April 11th through the 14th and among those scheduled are Mickie James, Lisa Marie Varon, Tenille Dashwood, Gangrel, Shelton Benjamin and independent promotions such as Melbourne City Wrestling.
