WWE's Vince McMahon Gives His Side of the Story on the Montreal Screwjob

The Montreal Screwjob at the WWE Survivor Series event in 1997 has gone down as one of the most [...]

By Connor Casey

The Montreal Screwjob at the WWE Survivor Series event in 1997 has gone down as one of the most infamous and dissected events in professional wrestling history. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels have both discussed it in countless interviews, multiple documentaries about the incident have been made and the scene has been copied over and over again both within the WWE and in other promotions. But the one person who most responsible in carrying out the plan, Vince McMahon, hasn't talked that much about the show beyond the "Bret screwed Bret" interview that led to the creation of the "Mr. McMahon" persona. That finally changed on the latest episode of the A&E Biography series, which centered around Hart's career.

"I didn't want him to go to WCW with our championship," McMahon said (h/t Inside the Ropes). "So the request for Bret would be, 'Okay, let's drop this championship back to someone in WWE where it belongs' and that didn't happen so I had to do what I had to do. It's no different than an actor in a television series who at the end of it refuses to die or refuses to do the job so to speak. What do you do?"

"When, as you call it, the Montreal Screwjob occurred, I wanted to make sure that Bret saw me out at ringside and know that what I did was the right thing to do at least from my standpoint. He's really good at spitting [chuckles], I'm sorry to say." he continued. "I could have hid, I could have not gone out to the ring at all, I could have left the building and I could have done a lot of things. [Bret] gave me one [punch]. Right to the temple on the left side."

Hart promptly departed for WCW and, besides his WWE Hall of Fame induction, wouldn't come back to the WWE until 2010. He explained why during an episode of Confessions of The Hitman last year.

"I remember somewhere in that, I watched WrestleMania that week or that day, and I ended up calling WWE," Hart remembered. "And I ended up talking to a guy named Kevin Dunn, who's like one of Vince's right hand guys. And I said, 'I'd like to come back. I'd like to come back and do a storyline with Vince. I'd like to bury the hatchet.'"

He continued, "I said, 'I'm tired. Everywhere I go, all I hear about is The Screwjob, what happened with my brother, Owen. All of that starts to weigh you down. I mean, it really starts to weigh you down. Like, it was really starting to wear on me all the time. It's like, it's all I ever hear about: Vince McMahon, and The Screwjob, and 'what are you going to do now?' Anyway, it just got to the point where it's like-- I think it was the solution to all my problems at the time. It was like, the best way for me to get over this, get it out of my way so it's not in my way anymore is to go back and make peace with it, make real peace with it. And I pretty much laid it out on the table to Kevin Dunn that I'd like to go back and do a storyline."

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