Bret Hart was a part of many famous moments in WWE history. The Hitman is a two-time WWE Hall of Famer, and he fought hard to keep his spot in the company. Many fans see WrestleMania 13 as a massive turning point in Hart’s career, but it was also the start of an even bigger change for the pro wrestling business.
Setting Up WrestleMania 13
While speaking to Inside the Ropes, Bret Hart remembered his big feud against Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13. The Texas Rattlesnake was just getting momentum, and that was reflected by the changing audience at the time.
Bret Hart mentioned that he had a match with Steve Austin at the previous Survivor Series, and they wanted to take time building a rematch. Bret was originally scheduled to face HBK at WrestleMania, but Shawn Michaels went home to “find his smile,” and the match between Hart and Austin was put together at the last minute.
“The audiences were changing in that time period. Especially I remember particularly on the East Coast. I think that was probably due to ECW but the fans started to kind of find it was more fun to cheer the bad guys and piss the good guys off. So they were there to kind of make trouble at the shows lot of the times and they’d start chanting for all the bad guys. During that time period, I noticed that it really changed the atmosphere of the matches.”
“I remember a lot of the good guys having a lot of trouble getting reactions and the bad guys were getting, like Steve Austin was getting all the reaction in the world. You could sort of sense that he was gonna become a babyface, and guys like me would move over to the side. I just saw it as a chance ‘So I should just change styles. I’ll just wrestle like Bret the Hitman, the old Hart Foundation days.’ It wasn’t such a hard transfer for me. I could work heel or babyface pretty easy.”
The WrestleMania 13 Match
When it comes to building the match, Bret Hart stated that it was “pretty nice” how they went about it. Then, when they showed up for the match, there wasn’t much of a plan in place.
“So it was just building up pretty nice. I think my momentum was going pretty well. But when I showed up to wrestle Steve at WrestleMania 13. I don’t think either one of us had much of a plan for the match. I remember we started talking about it in the dressing room. I was like ‘So what are we doing?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t know, what do you want to do?’
“Me and Steve, we were just kind of trying to figure it out. We sat on the ring apron and we just started talking about it and I said ‘The way I see this fight or this match is like a school fight’ I was sort of the guy that was the cool guy in school. [I was] popular with everybody and I was maybe the quarterback on the football team kind of thing. Steve Austin was the new guy that came to school, [who] had a shaved head, was kind of a badass. The way I remember talking to Steve about it is like ‘So this should be like a school fight and all the fans are basically all the kids at the school watching this flight.’ That’s where we started kind of the psychology of the match and how we should build it.”
Steve Austin & Bret Hart’s Future In Pro Wrestling
Bret Hart hasn’t wrestled a match since he teamed with John Cena to beat Alberto Del Rio and Ricardo Rodriguez on September 12th, 2011 during an episode of WWE RAW. Hart didn’t do much in that match, but it still wrapped up his career in WWE.
Steve Austin, on the other hand, is not 100% retired from in-ring competition. You can never say never with him, although there are no reported plans for him to lace up his boots again any time soon. His match against Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 38 was proof that the Texas Rattlesnake can still go in the ring.
