10 Things We Learned From The WWE Documentary

Easily one of the best pro wrestling documentaries of all time, Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows follows the Canadian legend Bret Hart at a crucial point in his career. Viewers see what Hart was up to behind the scenes just as his WWE run was ending and before he jumped ship to the rival WCW, culminating with the infamous Montreal Screwjob incident.

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Director Paul Jay and his crew had unprecedented access to WWE’s backstage world, giving fans a rare glimpse behind the scenes that makes the film a must-watch. But Wrestling With Shadows also contains some fascinating revelations as well, so let’s take a look at 10 things viewers learn about from the film.

10 Defending The Family

As fans know, Hart hails from a big wrestling family, with the late Stu Hart as the patriarch who started it all. While to fans and wrestlers that followed, Hart and his 12 children were wrestling royalty, the kids certainly didn’t feel that way growing up. According to Bret Hart and his sisters, they were actually mocked by their peers for being a part of this weird family associated with a “fake” sport. At one point, Bret got fed up with a boy tormenting one of his sisters and actually beat him up.

9 Bret Hart Feared His Father

One of the big themes of Wrestling With Shadows is Bret Hart’s relationship with his father, whom the younger Hart legitimately feared. Stu Hart was notorious for his training style, which involved “stretching” his students with legitimate holds to the point of screaming in pain. The family could hear the screams emanating from the basement where they trained, and Bret and all his brothers all went through this process themselves. However, Bret Hart eventually began to respect his father and understand Stu’s point of view as he got older.

8 Stu Hart Got Stretched First

Stu Hart’s training practices have caused some to label them as sadistic and abusive, a fact supported by one of his sons noting that Stu particularly enjoyed stretching guys who fancied themselves tough guys. But that also came with a revelation in the film: that he experienced it himself at the hands of legitimate shooters when he was entering the business.

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Wrestling With Shadowsactually ventures into the Dungeon with Stu Hart to capture some of this training, as a 82-year-old Hart applies painful holds to some excited trainees — who end up begging him to stop.

7 Bret Hart Never Wanted To Be A Wrestler

Despite his reputation as one of the beloved, all-time greats, Bret Hart reveals in Wrestling With Shadows that he never actually wanted to enter the wrestling business — which is particularly shocking because every single one of the Hart brothers stepped into the ring at some point. Instead, Hart attended college at Mount Royal University to study film, while his father wanted him to become a legitimate wrestler and compete in the Olympics, a desire that Bret Hart writes off as his father’s dream, not his.

6 Loyalty To Vince McMahon

As the film documents Bret Hart’s contract negotiations with WWE and WCW, it becomes clear that the Hitman’s decision to jump ship was not an easy one. Spending 14 years with the promotion, Hart expressed in the film a feeling of loyalty to WWE boss Vince McMahon, who he viewed as a father figure akin to his own dad: an intimidating figure whose respect Hart tried to earn. While the WCW contract of $9 million over three years was nothing to sneeze at, Bret Hart didn’t want to hurt his relationship with McMahon, and simply wanted WWE to commit to him.

5 Worrying About Getting Hurt

In one interview segment, Bret Hart offers a unique view of how his priorities have changed in pro wrestling as he got older. In his younger days, he worried about messing up his moves in the ring, but at the time of the documentary when he was age 40, he was more worried about getting hurt. To underscore this, he shared an anecdote about breaking his sternum in a match with Dino Bravo in Toronto, and ended up returning to the ring earlier than he should have just because he was worried about the money he was losing out on.

4 Didn’t Want To Turn Heel, But Made It Work

One of the biggest takeaways from Wrestling With Shadows is just how devoted Bret Hart was to his babyface “Hitman” character. Hart was really proud of being a heroic role model and being true to his fans, so he was reluctant when Vince McMahon pitched him the concept of turning heel.

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Despite that, Bret Hart figured out a way to make it work for his character. Because the heel turn was facilitated by the rise in popularity of his rival Steve Austin, Hart played off of his real-life feelings of confusion about why the American fans would root for a violent psychopath like Austin, and not Hart.

3 Disliked The “Enema” Promo

One of Bret Hart’s most infamous promos delivered during his heel run happened at a Monday Night Raw in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he said that if America needed an enema, they would have to stick the hose in Pittsburgh. It was an amazing line that went down in history, but in Wrestling With Shadows Hart actually expressed some regret over the promo. In Bret Hart’s view, the promo was out-of-character for the Hitman to say, but joked that there were probably more appropriate towns in America to put the hose.

2 Felt Upstaged By Shawn Michaels

As many fans know, Bret Hart and his Montreal Screwjob opponent Shawn Michaels had legitimate beef with one another backstage, but Hart felt upstaged by Michaels for reasons that had nothing to do with winning or losing a championship. In the film, Hart can be seen discussing the SummerSlam 1997 match with The Undertaker where Michaels was a guest referee, wondering if Shawn’s heel turn during the match would take away his momentum as a bad guy. Before long, Bret Hart felt sore about giving up his spot as a top good guy only to lose his spot as the top bad guy.

1 Disappointed With WWE’s New Attitude

Around the time of the Montreal Screwjob in November of 1997, WWE had shifted its presentation from the family friendly product it had been pushing since the 1980s to a more edgy approach that would come to be known as the Attitude Era. Bret Hart disapproved of the crude sensibilities and sexual content, and began to get vocal about it in interviews. As presented in the film, WWE in response leaked the news that Hart was leaving for WCW, which resulted in many fans turning on Bret Hart with the requisite chants of “You sold out.”