With SummerSlam coming in one week, this seems like the perfect time to bring up the most memorable moment in wrestling and muse fodder for creative decision.
It’s a known fact that wrestling is scripted (Not fake. It’s a huge distinction as fake implies they don’t take any hits). The thing that we usually never give thought to is the real life influences that invade and permeated the stories.
Like any good work of fiction, there’s always some element of the real world and truth in the story. When it comes to wrestling, it can be something as simple as playing to people’s patriotism like when we chanted, “USA!” in matches with Nicolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik or when Sgt Slaughter sided with Irag during the first Gulf War. Other times, backstage politics or personal vendettas can play a hand in an event.
One of the most infamous was, is, and probably will always be the Montreal Screw Job.
No matter which side you’re on, it fractured the innocence many of us looked at wrestling with. These were our heroes, our Saturday morning cartoons brought to life, and to see something like this changed the landscape.
To be fair, it was in the midst of the Monday Night Wars, and Vince McMahon had several superstars verbally agree to resign their contracts while already having signed with WCW. After several betrayals, it’s understandable he’d be a little gun shy when the current champion, Bret Hart, told him he’d signed with WCW.
To Bret Hart, he was doing the right thing. His only request was that he didn’t lose the title in Canada so he could drop it the following night on Raw and exit gracefully.
Remember the adage, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions?” Well, that’s what this was.
With the WWE (WWF at the time) fighting for its survival and the need for a heel that the fans would HATE (yes, HATE with capital letters), it offered McMahon the chance to strike back and begin turning the tide.
Hence, Mr. McMahon was born.
When McMahon signaled the bell keeper to ring the bell, signaling that Hart had submitted to Shawn Michaels using his own sharpshooter in Canada.
It fractured the relationship between Bret Hart and Vince McMahon. And while their relationship will probably never be fully healed, it put the weight of the company squarely on Vince McMahon’s shoulders. From that moment on, the WWE would sink or swim with him as its top heel against Steve Austin in the ring and Bret Hart outside of the ring.
For Hart, he went to WCW and had a lackluster career there, never regaining the accolades he’d received in the WWE. In many ways, the real world did more than influence storyline, it ruptured real life relationships.
Since then, we’ve seen real life marriages used to build tension, families used to break down a superstar and endear them to us. While the stories are constantly recycled, we can never tell where the next real life influence will come from or what it’ll bring.
