Bret Hart

**Bret Hart**, also known as **Buddy Hart**, is a Canadian-American professional wrestler from the *WWE* and *WCW* promotions.

Reverently described as The "Excellence of Execution" and trained in the storied Hart Family Dungeon, Bret Hart is arguably the greatest technical wrestler in WWE history.

Hart found beauty in the wrestling simplicity. Clad in pink and black tights, he strode to ring against the whirr of an electric guitar, pausing only to gift his trademark shades to a small child waiting ringside. Inside the ring, he wasted no movement, systematically focusing on his opponents’ weaknesses until they were too tired to endure his patented Sharpshooter submission. He was also an innovator of offense and possessed an uncanny ability to create pinning combinations out of seemingly any predicament.

Hart emerged from Calgary's Stampede Wrestling, coming to WWE as a tag team with his brother-in-law, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart. Together, The Hart Foundation won the World Tag Team Titles twice and became one of the most popular pairings in WWE.

In the AWA fics, Bret is set to appear in a future AWA storyline.

## **Appearance**

In his prime, Bret has a muscular physique, he has a long messy black hair and has brown eyes. He wears a black & pink singlet with black trimming and hearts designs, and wears a white laced boots with pinkish highlights and black patches. He also wears a pair of shades, black elbow pads and pink arm bands.

## **Personality**

Bret once wrestled a match against Dino Bravo, which saw Bret get bumped a little too hard to the outside, where he broke his sternum on the steel guard rail. Despite Bret's nonverbal cues that something was wrong (i.e. he couldn't even *breathe*) the match kept going. Bret was supposed to win, but ended up losing by countout.

Bret would always give his glasses to a lucky child sitting in the front row during his entrance.

According to his book, he'd slept with many women during his first marriage and kept finding excuses to justify it even though he knew on some level that it wasn't ideal behavior. His biggest self-justification was that every wrestler needed to find ways to relieve the stress and boredom of spending 300 days a year on the road, and (in his mind) picking up women was far less harmful/destructive than using drugs and/or alcohol to cope with the stress like so many other wrestlers did. Honestly, considering how many wrestlers have died from drug overdoses compared with how many have gone Out with a Bang or died from venereal diseases, he might have at least *something* of a point.

## **Abilities**

He had a few that he used almost every single match: the Russian legsweep and the scoop slam were on top of this list. A fan commentary on Bret's matches from the newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling included this phrase, making Bret sort-of the Trope Namer. Hilariously, no one who has ever tried to mock Bret for this in their books (Ric Flair for instance) has ever gotten them right. They were the inverted atomic drop, Russian legsweep, pendulum backbreaker, pointed driving elbowdrop from the second rope, and Sharpshooter. More importantly, as a fan, generally the second Bret hit the Russian legsweep, you knew EXACTLY where he was headed in an excited Oooooh here we go! moment.

The Sharpshooter became his finisher for the rest of his career once he started using it. Prior to that he would use a piledriver or an abdominal stretch. As part of the Hart Foundation their finisher was the Hart Attack (Anvil would hold the opponent up by the waist while Bret would deliver a neckbreaker clothesline).

## **Trivia**

* What Bischoff said was probably true, that Hart was a broken man when he came to WCW. He considered WWF his home and Vince a father figure, and he felt betrayed. And truthfully, even if they did have an angle for him (which they didn't), and it was good, he would have still been unhappy. He was never the same after Montreal.
* After he split from the Hart Foundation, Bret was catapulted to the main event. Ironically, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart was initially considered to be the stronger performer. Bret's singles push came during the WWF's infamous steroid scandal, where McMahon wanted to push someone smaller.
* Pulled a power play to keep the WWE World Tag Team Titles on Owen and Bulldog at WrestleMania 13, which they had originally been scheduled to drop to Mankind and Vader, in order to set the up the Hart Foundation angle.

* Bret Hart was close to jumping to WCW in the early 90's, but declined at the 11th hour, because he didn't like WCW's then attendance numbers of their house shows. He also almost jumped in 1989, at the behest of Ric Flair, but was lowballed in an offer by Jim Herd.
* It's unknown how fast, or even *if*, Hart would have risen without it. But apparently, Vince McMahon actually started to push Hart after *SummerSlam 1992* because of his match with the British Bulldog. Allegedly, Hart had to drag his brother-in-law around the entire match because the latter *was coming down off a cocaine binge the previous night*.
* Had Hulk Hogan's ego not gotten in the way, causing Vince McMahon to change plans completely, we might have seen Bret Hart vs Hulk Hogan at *SummerSlam 1993.*
* Obviously, the *Survivor Series 1997* match. As Bret tells it, the original finish was a disqualification finish where the Hart Foundation and DX would brawl again, and Bret would've surrendered the belt on *Raw* the next night.
* Was originally considered to play Batman in *Batman Unchained* before production was canceled because *Batman & Robin* was a flop at the box-office and was panned by audiences and critics.