Bret Hart Emotionally Opens Up About Goldberg Ending His Career, Hogan Politics, Vince & More

You know it wasn't what it should have been, not what it could have been and I think you can really think, look at Hulk Hogan for that, I mean I think Hulk Hogan was pulling Eric Bischoff's strings like a puppet and he was . It was really a piece like that when a show obviously happened with Owen and all that kind of stuff. I think it was like hell froze over before you came back to WWE, but in 2006 you were inducted into the Hall of Fame, can you talk? a little bit about what led you to let go of some of the anger you had towards the company and enter the hall of fame in 2006.

Well, let's see where to start. I mean, I was very angry for a long time. time, I mean, that's for sure, I think everyone that knows me knows that and, you know, I think for me, you know, my

career

was everything to me, everything I did in my

career

, I mean, in my family, wrestling is not just something that I started doing my adolescence, I mean, I think my whole life, I was always linked to wrestling, everything was wrestling when one of my first thoughts about being it, when I was a little kid, it all had to do with wrestling, I wish.

I had had action figures when I was a kid, but I sure beat up a lot of Barbie dolls and stuff like that, but you know, it was all wrestling and I think when all this fucking work happened, part of me could never believe it. that they would do that to me after how hard I worked for them and, you know, some of you come up like very Vader comes up to me about 20 minutes before my match, he says, they're going to screw you. In the game I know that and I said, "I know that, but what can you do?

All you have to do is go out there and try to stop it and not let it happen and maybe believe that they have

more

integrity than that, but you know." So after it happened, you know, I remember coming home on the plane even after everything happened and I remember the guy from the documentary who filmed the place where we were going, he was so happy that we understood, we have everything, you know? and I'm like you didn't understand any of that, like how could you put that together, how he celebrated it like a miracle, but I mean, he put the pieces together, but I was so angry I never thought anyone would know my side of the story. , I always thought he was, I knew in my heart that I would never work for him again for sure, so I left and went home, probably a pretty angry guy, um, it's hard to be too angry when you're going from, I passed from wwf and suddenly it was wcw where I would make

more

money than I ever knew what to do with in my life, I mean, I would have figured out ways to spend it, but uh, I had, I was making, I have a huge salary and like a jump in my salary, so I was making a lot of money and I was trying to know, I always get angry when people tell me that or I hear that like guys like Garrett Bishop say that.

I came to WCW with a broken spirit or no heart at all. You know, I didn't want to do it anymore and I thought that's not true. I would be very angry if he ever did. I wanted to shine or, you know, become what you know, really show how valuable I was to a company, WCW was. I came in there trying to let you know that you would make nothing but money for them and you would turn the tide for them and you would be this wrestling champion. that maybe they were always looking, I was going to give them one hundred percent and I gave one hundred percent every night I worked, but they really were a bunch of stupid idiots and I can't, I can't even describe how.

Stupid they were, they were like idiots, but anyway they did a lot to uh, you know, they did a lot to um, you know, the rain on my race also you know it wasn't what it should have been, not what it could have been and I think you can really look at Hulk Hogan for that, I mean I think Hulk Hogan was pulling Eric Bischoff's strings like a puppet and he was a real piece, yeah I did, I was always a Hulk Hogan guy, I did. I was everything. All the years I was in WWE, I mean, I would have done anything for Hulk, I was a big supporter of his and anything I could have done to help him, you know, including working hard on his cards and stuff, was a big deal. company. boy he was always stabbed what they should have done in wcw he put me with hulk

hogan

right like the first night I came and did a big PPV and I don't know I'm not saying I should have beat him or anything but we should had started a story, maybe we would have saved that company, but they were too stupid, and then, like when Bill Goldberg kicked me in the head and ended my career, it was so bad.

Way to go because I didn't know my career was over and when I got home it took me a year to find out my career was over and right around the time I found out I couldn't do it. It's like my doctors told me I would never be able to wrestle again, then WWE fired me and from the day I got hurt, my million dollar salary was cut every week, cut in half, and cut in half. and it was cut in half and they bit me and cut me in half until there was nothing left and then they just fired me, which was such lousy treatment that I had, you know, when I was in WWE, I had an insurance policy via Vince, I mean, I slipped in the shower.

I was fully covered, my contract was paid in full, but when I signed with wcw they gave me an insurance policy with Lloyd's in London and if you know anyone who is in London, they don't like paying anyone, they like the premiums they get. they like. You have to keep paying them, but when it comes time to settle and pay what they're supposed to do, they're total and they wouldn't pay me and I had to sue them and I had to go to court and I think. When I remember those moments, I had such a severe shock that I couldn't really digest that my career was over and in a way I understood that a part of me was like I was finally free.

I don't have to go anywhere this weekend and I can do it. I can be home and you like to be home, but when you have a concussion like I had, you know, I remember I couldn't watch TV. listen to music I couldn't um you know, I even had food I remember like my whole diet like everything I ate didn't have um like you could eat the best steak in the world and it tasted like liver and nothing really mattered Remember it's like, um, I remember that My doctor described it to me as all the places that make you happy in your brain, that's the part that took the hit, that's the part that got kicked really hard and you know, I didn't really understand it or take it all in at the time, but you know Goldberg hurt me and he never called me eight months after it happened and told me he was sorry, which was really irrelevant at the time, he never called me even once. after it happened or I don't think he ever understood or I don't know if he understands now or even cares that it literally cost me, honestly, it cost me 16 million dollars in like two seconds and it ended my career and when I heard about bill

goldberg

Going to Saudi Arabia making three million dollars for, you know, a 10-minute match in Saudi Arabia, I'm going, you know, you think he would have called me and said here, I'm going to send you something, you know?

You know, he's never thought about me once since he got hurt or since I got hurt and it bothers me a little to see all these guys fall in there and make huge sums of money for a couple minutes of work. I don't know, I have a lot of respect for Daniel Bryan. Say who he was not he. I don't know if he would have gone. I don't know if he wouldn't have done it. You know it was a lot of money. million dollars to a professional wrestler, especially Goldberg, who went there and wrestled for ten minutes and, you know, it's a big paycheck, so if that's the case, if someone had offered me the same thing, I don't know if I would have rejected or I would have accepted it, um, but anyway, I didn't really have a chance to digest much of what happened to me and I never had anything.

I was always very angry inside and then of course, I know everyone knows too much about my stroke, but I had my stroke about a year or two later, I was injured a little over a year and a half after I was injured with a concussion stroke, I suffered a stroke while biking in Calgary on a trail on a bike path and I think you know when I had the stroke it was definitely related to my concussion injury, but that for sure was the end of my career as if out like any thoughts of ever coming back or taking the ax to Vince or my concussion.

I'm slowly getting better enough to be able to have some kind of match or do something that was impossible at the time and that's what I believe, when I remember being in my hospital bed and in a wheelchair those first five or six days, it was like it really um, it really struck me powerfully how I will never, ever go out into the crowd of wrestlers with my hands outstretched and stuff like that, so I was very, um, I took all of that as very wrong, no, I didn't like it. that and I realized that when I had my stroke, I think there was a part of me that realized that no, it's no use to you, like I'm going to give advice to everyone, it was like when you suffer from something really something. really huge happens in your life in a negative way and you hate someone and you're so angry so it's no use to you to carry it all the time you know I carried it I liked to carry a big bag of rocks.

I thought every day I had to pick up these bags of rocks about how angry I am at Vince McMahon and the shitty job and you know you're carrying it every day. and then of course I had the stroke and I realized after I had the stroke after about a year, maybe the first year or maybe this coming in like a year later, it was just how lucky I was to be able to recover. . I had it and I learned the kind of things the hard way that it doesn't help to carry a lot of pain and hurt around here, so, um, the idea that, um, you know, of course, I would never go out in the ring.

I remember thinking I'll never do that again, you know, that'll never happen and, uh, when Vince, when I had my stroke, I don't know how Vince got my number exactly, but I had a phone in my room, I remember the day that They were plugging it in, they just plugged it into the wall in my hospital room and I remember thinking no one knew my number, no one had it yet and as soon as I plug the phone in, my phone rings and I go to say hello and it's Vince McMahon and it's Like I remember thinking that he was so angry and it was like um, I have to get a drink, press everyone's lock, I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do, forgive me.

I wanted to like him, you know really the anger was still there and the anger would be there for quite a while, but at the same time, I once had a pretty good relationship with Vince and in a lot of ways Vince was very To me he was like a father figure. , we were very confident and very confident, I think we were close friends for a long time and I appreciate all the things that Vince did, including giving me that first opportunity to be the champion. for him, so there was a part of me that wanted to make friends or get closer or at least accept him getting closer and there was another part of me that just wanted to close the phone and hang up on him and uh, then I remember talking to him and he said : You know, he said they were going to make another DVD about me if I wanted and I talked to him about my archive and my film, like my whole career, usually every time I'm done.

In a match in WWE, especially on PPV, I would always come back through the curtain and Vince would clap and he would slap me on the back and stuff like that and I would always tell him there's one for my file when they make the best of the DVD of Bret Hart someday that's going to be in that match and then I'm going to come in and say there's going to be one in it so there's got to be like 20 matches and then he'd say it's going to be three volumes and all that and it was like you know I had high hopes with Vince at one point and uh when he called me and told me that they would like to do all that stuff still. and then he told me they would like to put me in the hall of fame and then he asked me if he would do it and I told him I would and I knew he would do it.

I asked myself that question before he ever asked me I never asked myself it's like if they asked me to go to the hall of fame would I go and I remember that he would go, I deserve to go to you