Bret Hart Wishes He and Owen Did Ladder Match Instead of Cage
On the latest edition of The Bump, Bret Hart discussed how he tried to convince Vince McMahon to let him do a ladder match in WWE in the early 90s (Hart had already done a ladder match in Stampede Wrestling prior to joining WWE), and that McMahon ultimately decided to let Bret Hart demonstrate the match to him and pick his own opponent. Hart picked Shawn Michaels, and the match ended up being a dark match at a WWE TV taping in Portland, Maine on July 21, 1992. Hart then wanted to have a ladder match with Owen Hart at Summerslam 1994, only to end up having the match be a cage match. He then claims that Shawn Michaels and Scott Hall stole his entire ladder match idea for their classic ladder match at WrestleMania X in 1995. His comments are below.
On pitching Vince McMahon on doing a ladder match and how Shawn Michaels ended up stealing the idea from him: “I was the one that had been trying to get Vince for years to let me have a ladder match, and somewhere back in the months earlier, he had me do a ladder match with Shawn Michaels. I could pick anyone, I picked Shawn. I went to Shawn, explained to him what a ladder match was, and they had us put on a match in, I think it was Portland, Maine. It was a TV taping but we had a dark match and we did this ladder match and it was all just to show Vince this match, what the concept was. Had I known at WrestleMania X that Shawn and Razor were gonna steal my ladder match idea, which they did, it was just a flat out theft, and I was always kind of disappointed by that because it was my match and I just wanted Shawn to demonstrate it.”
On how he wishes his Summerslam 1994 match with Owen Hart was a ladder match: “I would have loved to have the ladder match with Owen at Summerslam, and that would have been like, now we can do a ladder match. A ladder match would have been a much better concept than a cage match because a cage match is generally a gore fest, should be anyway. It’s usually a blood bath with a lot of blood and that’s what makes a cage match, but in going into a cage match with your own brother, I couldn’t fathom the concept of both of us bleeding or being in that kind of gorey kind of match. We were both wrestling wrestlers. So a cage match, as good as it was, I think it’s one of the better cage matches, at least most people tell me they think it was one of the great cage matches, but it should have been a ladder match.”
