Bret Hart is a
professional wrestler. He is part of the legendary Hart
wrestling family, one of
Stu Hart and
Helen Hart's many sons.
He has said that he wanted to be just about anything
other than a professional wrestler, but as with everyone else in the Hart family, he was sucked in. He was trained by his father Stu in the family basement--also known as
The Dungeon--and after finishing
school he went to work in the promotion owned and run by his father,
Calgary Stampede.
There, he honed his skills and first started wearing the
sunglasses that soon became his
trademark. He began wearing them, ironically enough, to hide his
stage fright. That quickly passed, but the sunglasses remained.
After working for Stampede for several years and touring
Japan's wrestling leagues for several more, he was picked up in the early 1980s by the
World Wrestling Federation. He started there as one half of a
tag team, the
Hart Foundation, alongside
Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart. A
heel team, they antagonized crowds to no end during their successful run capped by their lengthy run as the
WWF's
tag team champions.
The two eventually parted ways to facilitate Bret pursuing his singles career (now as a
babyface) in the late 1980s. Bret won the
WWF Intercontinental Championship in 1991 from
Mr. Perfect (
Curt Hennig) and proceeded to hold that belt for most of the following year.
Bret's
rise to fame didn't stop there, as he was pushed to the
main event in late 1992, winning the
WWF Championship for the first time on 10/12/92 from
Ric Flair. He would go on to have five runs as
WWF Champion between 1992 and 1997, never straying far from the top of the card.
He turned
heel for the first time in roughly six years at
Wrestlemania 13, executing a double turn with
Stone Cold Steve Austin. He said that American fans had turned their backs on
him by starting to boo such anti-heroes as Austin. He remained a
babyface in
Canada and
Europe, as he developed a pro-Canada schtick to go with his anti-America one.
Bret left the
WWF under very odd circumstances, having signed with
World Championship Wrestling and then legitimately screwed out of the
WWF Championship (a title he still held as his
contract with the
WWF expired) at
Survivor Series '97. For more information about that particular incident, see
The Montreal Incident. He debuted in
WCW soon after, but a combination of
nagging injuries and bad
booking ensured that Bret never really succeeded there--he switched between
babyface and
heel more times than I can even list. He last surfaced in late 1999 for a short run with the
nWo, but left soon after due to
chronic head inuries and has not been seen in a
squared circle since.
He still harbors an almost inhuman hatred towards
Vince McMahon because of what happened in
Montreal, bashing him at every single opportunity for betraying his trust and being a complete sleazeball. Bret has also gone so far as to blame McMahon for the death of his brother,
Owen Hart, who died in a
WWF ring in 1999.