Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels is one of the most infamous rivalries of the wrestling world. What started as a kayfabe feud between two of WWE’s top stars, quickly turned into a shoot. It ultimately led to the Montreal Screwjob, which is still talked about to this day.
Michaels recently had an interview with 98.7 ESPN where he opened up about his feud with The Hitman. HBK first claimed that it was not fun for him before admitting that he was very immature at the time:
“Oh, well, I will say this. Going through it was absolutely no fun. Because even in the world of sports entertainment, there’s real life rivalries. Certainly Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels was real both on and off the screen. I was very young and very stupid, very immature. [I] was as cocky as the day is long and that did not get over well. Let’s just put it that way.”
‘Working Ourselves Into A Shoot’: Shawn Michaels
Shawn Michaels then explained how this on-screen feud led to real-life tensions between him and his greatest rival. The former world champion claimed that they were friendly at first. When they started feuding, they decided to make it feel real. However, before they knew it, Michaels and Hart had worked themselves into a shoot:
“So honestly, we started out I would say friendly. We never hung out. But when we were in tag teams, we worked really well with each other, admired one another. Bret and I both felt that one day that we would be able to go singles. I can remember Bret went singles, and I went singles shortly after that. I can remember him telling me one time. He’s like, ‘look, I see you being the guy that I could eventually drop this title to.’
I just think it came sooner than maybe he expected and certainly sooner than I expected. That’s honestly when it happened. It first started out as just sincerely us talking about just trying to make it feel real. It just slowly got to be that way to where I don’t know, I guess both of us were taking jabs that were real but we then started to really be offended by it. It’s a hard thing to describe, we call it working ourselves into a shoot.”
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