Montreal Screwjob

Post by **yourcrapsweak** » Jan 27th, '11, 11:11

I would love to dig up this oldie but goodie and spark a nice debate. Was Vince justified in the way he "screwed" Bret Hart in Montreal? Or did Vince screw Bret?

Post by **Big Red Machine** » Jan 27th, '11, 12:17

I voted for Bret Screwed Bret, but there is no denying that Vince screwed Bret under the technical definition of the term. I think that Bret should have done whatever his boss said. Shawn was the heel. Beating Bret in Canada would have gotten heat on him. Also, Vince was justified in protecting his company. He didn't want to take any chances, and that is perfectly fine.

Post by **badnewzxl** » Jan 27th, '11, 12:56

Vince screwed Bret. I watched Wrestling with Shadows; at no point during any discussion of what was gonna go down does Vince insist that Bret loses. He totally agrees with Bret's idea. To turn around and change the end on him is total bs.

I agree that Bret prolly should have agreed to put HBK over on his way out, but Vince never made it seem as if he had a problem with Bret's request. Furthermore, it stated in Bret's contract that he had final say in how he lost the title, so Vince changing the ending breached that contract.

Vince was wrong; he screwed Bret. There's really no argument imo....

Post by **ECWFlairfan** » Jan 27th, '11, 19:59

We all know VInce wanted Bret to do the job at SS before he went to WCW & Bret argued about it... After what happened with Madusa did with the Women's championship on Nitro Vince knew if Bischoff could have gotten hold of the WWF title he would have done the same thing with it & was justifiably paranoid about it (see later about Mike Awesome...only a legal injunction kept the same thing to the ECW title)

Post by **kaveman1969** » Feb 7th, '11, 20:46

I've been in some seriously heated debates about this before, so I may as well jump into this one too.

Here's my take: Bret screwed Bret. Bret was the WWF champion, and was going to WCW. Vince had already had Alundra Blaze(Debra Miceli) jump ship to WCW while she was still the WWF Women's Champion.
She showed up on Nitro with the WWF Womens belt and threw it in the trash on TV. I know everyone knows this, I'm just mentioning it to try to put some kind of reasoning on Vince's thinking in the Bret situation.

It wasn't going to happen again, and Vince made sure of that. I personally don't think that Bret would have done anything like that, but the Monday Night wars were heating up, and WCW would do anything to make Vince and the WWF look bad.
I just don't think Vince wanted to take any chances.
Regardless of the contract stipulations that Bret could drop the title to who he wanted to, the owner of the company, Bret's boss, wanted it dropped to Michaels.
Was it wrong of Vince to handle it the way he did? Absolutely. But Bret was also wrong in refusing what his boss, the owner, wanted him to do.

People will debate this forever, and both sides of the argument can put up really good points. But the bottom line, at least to me, is that Vince owns the company. He owns the title, and the belt representing it. If he had any reservations at all that something would happen to make him look foolish again, he had every right to get that belt off of Bret in any way possible.
Just my opinion.