Wrestling Memories: Bret Hart vs Steve Austin

Wrestling Memories: Bret Hart vs Steve Austin

Now, this is my own personal opinion, but I legit believe that Bret Hart is one of the greatest in ring performers of all time. It did not matter who you put him in the ring with, he got at the very least a decent match out of them. He is one of my top five of all time and so is the other guy I am talking about today, Stone Cold Steve Austin. These two were just so much fun to watch in 1996-1997 and I want to talk about that a bit today.


Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels are my number 1 and 2 all time favorites so Bret Hart leaving after WrestleMania XII when he lost to Shawn Michaels sucked for me. I loved the New Generation Era, but Bret Hart was sorely missed during this time. I wondered how he would come back and when Stone Cold called him out on an episode of WWF Superstars I was like, hell yeah… before that was an actual thing.

Stone Cold trash-talking Bret Hart in 1996 was great stuff. While I wanted Bret to come back and kick his ass, I was of an age when Austin’s heel antics were cool to me and I would smile more often than not at the things he would say about Bret Hart. Still, when it was announced that the two would be wrestling at the 1996 Survivor Series, I was very excited for it. The match was a ton of fun and the two had a great wrestling match and I liked the way Bret Hart won in the same way that he defeated Roddy Piper a few years earlier. I will be honest and say that I kind of thought this was it and Bret Hart would go back to having an issue with Shawn Michaels.


Little did I know that things with him and Austin were going to go to a level I never thought I would see. When I think back about the feud that Bret Hart and Steve Austin had one of the things that always sticks in my mind is when Austin was actually trying to help Bret Hart win the title from Sid in the cage. This is one of the most underrated performances from Austin on an episode of RAW. You felt that him wanting Bret to win so he could take the title off him was 100 percent legit. That is one of the things I loved about Stone Cold, no matter how extreme he was you believed everything that he did. Him calling Bret a loser actually made me laugh and the way this rivalry just got hotter and hotter all the way to WrestleMania 13 was awesome. It was by a mile the real main event of that show not just in terms of the actual match quality, but the build-up as well.


Their match at WrestleMania 13 is one of the greatest that the event has ever had. I watched WrestleMania 13 at a strange time in my life. I was 16 years old and my parents had just separated and in a few days I was going to have to move away from all my friends, live somewhere new, start a new high school and in general my life was being turned upside down. When I started watching wrestling it was actually my grandfather who introduced it to me and I decided to go around to his house and see if he wanted to stay up till 3 AM to watch WrestleMania 13 with me. He said yes and it is an awesome memory that I have and it was great as it took my mind of what was going on in my own house at the time.


My grandfather always watched wrestling, but he was one of those folks who would “pretend” that he was not super into. The match with Bret Hart and Steve Austin though had him on the edge of his seat the whole time. It was one of the most amazing matches I had ever seen and while it is so easy to focus on the blood. Which by the way does add a lot to the match. I feel that these two told a perfect story in that ring and it took you through every inch of the emotion spectrum. Both guys played their role perfectly, it portrayed Steve Austin as the never say die badass and Bret Hart as the guy who has had enough of the BS and he is just going to do things his way. It was such a clever match in every regard.


These two would actually have a solid match the following month at In Your House Revenge of the Taker. It was not as intense as their match at WrestleMania 13, but it was still a really fun match. For me personally, we had moved by this point and we did not have Sky set up in our new house so I was not actually able to watch this match live which kind of drove me nuts. I had to wait until the following day to pick up the tape my grandfather recorded (which I prayed he did not screw up, he didn’t!) and watch the match then. When I went round to get the tape, he asked why I was so excited to get this event, when he heard that Austin and Hart were having a rematch that was all he needed to hear and he said I was watching it there and then and we were getting take out from the local pizza shop. This is another great memory of mine and when I think about this now as an adult. I have no doubt he wanted to watch these two tare the house down again, but I think he also wanted to make sure I was ok and through wrestling was the best way he knew how. People can say it is just a silly wrestling show, or it is not real. However, us fans know just how important this form of entertainment is and how much we connect with the characters we see on TV each week and the rivalry between Bret Hart and Steve Austin is certainly something that I loved sharing with my grandfather.


Anyway, after this Bret would get hurt and the feud between the two ended, even though we did get the epic Canadian Stampeded which as great as it was, Steve Austin stuck out like a sore thumb on that team. I often wonder had the Screwjob not happened what would have happened between Bret Hart and Steve Austin. Could they have teamed up to take on DX? Or would they have continued to tear the house down for years to come?


Thanks for taking the time to read this. You know I was going to just write about how much I loved these two and how badass their feud was. Then it all came flooding back about the way my life was back when this happened.


I would love to hear you guy's thoughts on the feud these two had. Not only that, but what theories do you have for these two had Bret Hart not left for WCW?