Listening to WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart recount the story behind his WrestleMania 13 match with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin feels like sitting fireside, trying to toast your marshmallow without melting your Hershey bar. Twenty-eight years after what may be considered the greatest match in WWE history—one iconic enough to be the recipient of WWE’s inaugural Immortal Moment Award at this year’s Hall of Fame ceremony—Hart still serves as camp counselor, effortlessly guiding us through the key moments before, during, and after the event.
Bret Hart was a prominent figure in the World Wrestling Federation at the time. In 1997, he was among the company’s top tier of performers, alongside Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker. At the previous WrestleMania, Michaels had elevated himself to the upper echelon of WWF talent, defeating Hart in a 60-minute Iron Man match to win his first WWF Championship. However, citing a knee injury, Michaels announced that he’d “lost his smile” before vacating the title.
This paved the way for the rise of Steve Austin, who’d flirted with the main-event scene, having stellar matches with Hart along the way. The two had tangled in singles competition in a no. 1 contender’s match for the WWF Championship at Survivor Series 1996. That contest saw Hart outsmarting Austin, reversing Austin’s Million Dollar Dream submission into a pinfall for the win. “We were really proud of that match,” Bret remembers, “but when it was over, it was like, ‘Well, I probably won’t wrestle Steve Austin until SummerSlam next year.’ We’ll leave each other alone for a while, and we’ll circle back when he’s a bona fide babyface and see where our story is then.” Michaels’s departure led to the In Your House: Final Four pay-per-view with Hart, Austin, Vader, and the Undertaker battling it out for the vacant championship. Hart won the title, but lost it the following night on Raw to Sycho Sid due to Austin’s interference.
In many ways, their feud mirrored Austin’s WCW battles with Ricky Steamboat. The long-established crowd favorite Steamboat would do everything possible to fend off the super-talented but brash Austin. Austin gained victories, but never broke through to the next level. The two major differences between that feud and his beef with Bret were with how their actions were framed: Austin showed up anywhere and everywhere to insult and attack Bret. Instead of being seen as low-down and dirty, Austin’s actions were presented as intense and a showcase of his desire to win. Hart’s common-sense framing of Austin’s actions as against the standard was treated as whining and cowardice. The diverging attitudes allowed the two to trade roles as hero and villain, and in turn, Austin would figuratively and literally shatter the glass ceiling, with their WrestleMania 13 encounter being the signature match in Austin’s rise to superstardom.
With all of the controversial finishes surrounding their previous matchups and the high tensions every time they shared the same air, the WrestleMania match was held under submission rules, where you could only win by making your opponent submit. WWE employed the services of UFC great and future Intercontinental champion, “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” Ken Shamrock, to maintain order as the special guest referee. “[Shamrock] was a very intricate part of it. He brought that UFC vibe to the match. He did a good job of playing it down the middle and in not being middled either, where one of us made him look weak,” Hart explains. “It was really important to have a super respected character where you’re not going to trifle with this guy. And even Steve had to respect Shamrock.” Austin came out first, with his entrance actually beginning backstage, showing off the “realism” of his attitude and outlook. A black glass frame reading “Austin 3:16” covered the entranceway and was dropped, shattering right before Austin entered the arena. He shrugged off attempts at handshakes from the fans, focused on the task at hand. Hart, meanwhile, was given his standard opening, only to be shown coming through the entranceway. He slapped a few hands and gave his signature shades to a kid at ringside.
They almost immediately started brawling, with Austin giving Hart a slight head tilt before taking him down by both legs. As they worked their way out of the ring and up to the press box, the cameras captured these perfect moments of freestyled warfare and unique visuals: Austin taking a moment mid-beatdown to drink a soda then throw it at Hart; Bret reversing a piledriver in the stairway in front of a guy wearing a bootleg nWo shirt; Shamrock being the only security personnel the fans actually moved for. It was extreme without looking cartoonish, hitting that sweet spot when you’re trying to make something in your control seem like it could go awry at any moment.
As they moved back to the ring, Hart employed one of his most visually impressive moves for the first time. He set up Austin in a figure-four leglock around the ringpost, with Bret applying it from outside of the ring, allowing him to lean back and use the ringside floor for additional leverage. “I’ve always loved how I put the figure-four on the post on Steve. I’d never done that before,” Bret shares. “I just tried to come up with at least one new move for a pay-per-view match, and I remember thinking up that move, and that was the first time we ever tried it.” The crowd went crazy for the spot, as Austin wailed and slapped the mat repeatedly, with his knee seemingly being wrenched right out of its socket. It became an ongoing signature move for “bad guy” Bret, as the hold was perfectly legal in a submission match, but violated the ring boundary rules of a standard match, so it could only be applied for a few seconds.
With neither man able to break the other’s will with the tools they usually brought to the table, it was time to dig deep into the shed. Hart and Austin arranged a callback for the moment that ultimately decided the match’s outcome. “I’ve always loved how I picked the bell up, and it’s like, ‘I’m going to beat his brains in with this,’” Bret fondly remembers. “And then I would take it. It’s like, ‘Wait a minute, maybe I’ll use a chair instead.’” Hart first grabbed a commemorative WrestleMania 13 chair, but with its excess padding on the seat and back support, he decided to grab an all-metal option. “And that little bit of delay there picking out a weapon to beat somebody is so important to the story,” Bret explains, “because the bell, I’m just saying, ‘they’ll forget all about the bell. Everybody will forget the bell.’”
During a break in action, Austin played possum, then attacked Bret with the harder chair. He’d basically abandoned the Million Dollar Dream as a submission, so he attempted a few different holds to get Hart to submit, to no avail. Bret then threw Austin towards the ringside announce crew, with Austin’s head getting viciously cut open in the process. The two weren’t given permission to bleed in the match, but both felt it was necessary to highlight the intensity and physicality of their encounter. They were so sure of its importance that they didn’t clue anyone in on it, not even Shamrock, leading to the necessity of a second match of sorts later on that night. “When something happens between two wrestlers and somebody gets hurt for real, busted open or injured or something, there’s usually an exchange of heated words back in the dressing room, and it’s like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Bret explains. “So when Steve and I came back[stage], we got into it and started getting in a heated exchange,” which Bret says Austin orchestrated so that they wouldn’t get fined. “We had to use our own discretion there and say, We’re going to break the rules because we have to in order to have this match be what we need it to be.”
The decision to have Austin, who’d been an unrelenting force with no regard for authority or order, show his humanity through bleeding was the right choice, as you could sense the tonal shift in Hart, who would in turn up the intensity. He’d repeatedly attack Austin’s knee with the chair to set him up for his patented Sharpshooter. Austin fought his way back into the match via eye poke, then floored Hart with a low blow, all the while bleeding profusely from the cut on his head. He went for the win in the most vicious of ways, going outside of the ring, grabbing an extension cord and wrapping it around Hart’s neck in an attempt to choke him out as he stood on the apron. Hart, remembering that perfectly placed bell, grabbed it and swung it over his shoulder into Austin’s head, incapacitating him in the middle of the ring. Hart then locked in the Sharpshooter, sending Austin through a range of emotions and expressions, yelling “NO!” at the top of his lungs while pounding the mat in frustration and rubbing his forearm across his head to try to maintain consciousness, not wanting to submit to Bret. With Shamrock begging him to respond, Austin produced one of the visuals that defined the “never say die” attitude he worked so hard to cultivate. With both palms on the mat, he’d give one last emotional plea, pushing up off the canvas, screaming, with the blood from his forehead leaking so heavily down his face that it started running into his mouth and down the middle of his teeth. He’d flip Hart over, leading the fans and commentators alike to wonder if he’d broken the hold that no one ever broke.
“I remember telling him, ‘This would be iconic when you’re in the Sharpshooter and you try to push out,’” Bret says. “Steve pushed and pushed and pushed and he tipped me over. And everybody thought, like, OK, he’s going to be the first guy to get out of the Sharpshooter.’ And then I pushed back, and that was when he lost. But that was the heartbreak.” And in that instance, Bret knew: “They hated me now. They loved Steve.” Hart, who had spent years as a babyface, kept his hands clasped and once more leaned back. Try as Austin might, the pain would be too much, and Shamrock called the match after Austin could no longer respond. He’d passed out from the pain. Even in a loss, Austin never gave up. Bret would still earn cheers, but the win wasn’t enough for him, causing him to attack Austin once more after the match. Shamrock, who had called the action as fair as possible, put a waist lock takedown on Hart, who briefly sized Shamrock up before leaving the ring. To further solidify their new shift in character, Hart wouldn’t slap any of the fans’ hands on the way out, and gave the finger to a fan who’d decide to greet him the same way. Austin hit a Stunner on a referee who was trying to help him, making his way back to the locker room on his own terms. They hadn’t only won over the arena, but their peers knew just how special what they’d just seen was. “When I came back to the dressing room,” Bret says, “I remember Undertaker [who was main-eventing the show] looked at me and he goes, ‘I’m never going to top that match.’ And he was working with Sid, I think, for the title. And he wasn’t mad. He had a big smile on his face. He really was proud of the match. It was like that match blew everybody away.”
Later that night, Hart went full-fledged heel, costing Sid the world title and setting the stage for his anti-American Hart Foundation. Austin would start his year-long build towards dethroning Michaels for the championship at WrestleMania 14, kicking off WWE’s Attitude Era in the feud that led to the infamous Montreal Screwjob. Something that was built on such short notice, not rooted in hold after hold or a stipulation for which huge prop pieces are necessary, getting down in the dirt, creating a war of not just men but their ideologies, proved to be special in a way that’s heralded all these years later. Bret Hart always wanted to put on the very best matches and stories, so for his WrestleMania 13 match to be the first inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, it’s a testament to his ability to create great moments in any situation.
During our conversation, Bret was appreciative of this match being a part of the WWE Hall of Fame. “I watched a lot of great wrestling as a kid, and I’ll put that match up against any match. I’m glad they picked it to be the very first entry into the Hall of Fame because I watched so many great wrestlers in my lifetime.” And while Bret knows that he’s had a number of stellar bouts, including facing Davey Boy Smith in Wembley Stadium at SummerSlam 1992, or his Iron Man match against Michaels, Bret says that “this one was the most special. I really do think it was the best match in my career.”
Cameron Hawkins
Cameron Hawkins writes about pro wrestling, ‘Blade II,’ and obscure ’90s sitcoms for Yahoo Sports’ Uncrowned and Complex.
