Bret Hart Isn’t a Fan of Current Wrestling’s Leg Slaps Or Chops

Bret Hart takes issue with certain aspects of in-ring wrestling today, notably all of the leg slaps and chops to the chest. The WWE Hall of Famer spoke with HNLive for a new interview and talked about some of the things he doesn’t like about current wrestling trends, noting that he was “embarrassed” to see all the leg slapping being acknowledged by fans in the audience at Clash in the Castle. You can see a couple of highlights below, per Fightful:

On his issues with leg slapping: “I went to a show not too long ago in Cardiff, a pay-per-view, it was embarrassing to sit in the front row and watch all the kids in the audience slap their leg as the wrestlers slap their leg in these kick spots where they pretend to kick each other with shin pads and slap sounds over and over. To realize that the crowd is in on it, the entire floor is clapping and slapping their leg. I’m going, ‘we used to try and make it real, what happened?’ Everybody is in on it. It’s a big giant charade.

“I had a hard time feeling the fan part of me come to life. When I watched Dungeon Wrestling and I’m watching this young girl [Zoe Sager] wrestling, just watching her take someone over in a headlock and having a real headlock on was so much more than anything I saw in Cardiff with the wrestlers over there. It goes back to simple art. Wrestling is an art form. ‘All art is simple.’ Wrestling is a simple art that is really just storytelling or good vs. bad, most of the time, anyway, and it’s an easy story to tell. Wrestlers have been doing it for decades and wrestlers from 2005 up don’t know anything about telling stories or what headlocks are.”

On getting chopped in the chest: “When I see wrestlers today just slapping and the crowd going, ‘wooo’ and everyone keeps slapping, one after another and these guys have welts all over their chest and blisters and their chest hurt that night and they go, ‘Geez, I was an idiot tonight and let somebody slap me on the chest as hard as he could 500 times and my chest is killing me.’ That’s what they used to do to the jabronies back in the old days, they would chop them, beat them, and slap them. I would never let a guy slap me and chop me.

“Ric Flair is the only guy that ever chopped me. He usually got to me in the end where I would tell Ric, ‘you can give me one chop in the match to get it over with,’ but as far as the match goes, I’m not going to sit there and stick my chest out for some guy to slap me on the chest for an hour. That’s not what wrestling is. It’s not about hurting yourself. It’s not about coming back to the dressing room and feeling…everyone knows that it’s not real, right? They all know what’s going on. So why are you letting someone slap you and chop you and whip you across the chest and hurt you and you’re in pain all night and you wake up the next day with blisters all over your chest and then do it again the next night. It’s just stupid.”