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Eric Bischoff On Why Bret Hart & Hulk Hogan Didn’t Trust Each Other, Bret’s Lackluster WCW Music
On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about the weird finishes of Bret Hart vs. Hulk Hogan matches at house shows by WCW, Hart’s theme music and more. You can check out some highlights below:
On Bret Hart’s lackluster theme music: “Huge miss. Huge miss on my part. You asked the question, ‘How important is it?’ It’s critical. It sets the tone. I mean, how many great movies can you recall that it didn’t have an identifiable soundtrack with it? To this day, every time I hear ‘Danger Zone,’ I’m thinking back to Top Gun, the first one. It’s such an important part of a character. I’m struggling to try to remember why we didn’t have it. It’s not like it was intentional at that point. I was still very hopeful for our relationship with Bret and wanted this thing to work out, and I was excited about it. So it wasn’t like, ‘I’m just not going to give him any music because he’s a dick.’ It wasn’t that. But it was clearly a miss. There’s just no question about it. It changes things. There’s nobody that’s a major star in the sport today that doesn’t have identifiable music.”
On WCW not doing clean finishes in Bret Hart vs. Hulk Hogan matches at house shows: “There were issues obviously between Hogan and Bret. Managing them both, based on their own strongly held beliefs and perspectives, was a challenge. It was a compromise. Every one of those no contest finishes was a compromise. They were both deeply embedded in their positions, and it was hard to get him off of it. It was one of the reasons why we never really had the ultimate match with them that we wanted to have. And the buildup is the chemistry between them. Now, they could be around each other. They could work together in the same ring as you’ve outlined many times. But when it came to being in the main event for the title, man that was just tough chemistry. So it’s the only way I can say it, really.”
On Bret not trusting Hogan: “I don’t believe everything that I was told because I only heard one side of it. Well actually, I heard both sides of it. But Bret had a very strong belief that Hogan screwed him in WWE. Talked Vince out of an opportunity for Bret. And it’s my opinion, I could be wrong, but that feeling, that resentment, that distrust that Bret held for Hogan never went away. And the lack of respect when it came to business, the lack of respect, trust, that Hogan had for Bret was real. And again, you could get them to work together in the same ring. They could hang out, they could be together on the roster. There was no heat per se, visible, in terms of their ability to work together until and unless it came time to make it actually mean something. And that lack of trust, resentment, call it what you will from 1993 or whenever it happened or 92, I don’t know, I don’t remember the dates. But that initial opportunity and the way it was explained to me, from Hulk was that Vince McMahon made a lot of promises to Bret along the way. But [he] had a different conversation with Hulk at the same time. So when it came time to resolve the issue, because Bret was pushing that issue because of what he was told, as he should have. If indeed he was told by Vince McMahon that something was going to happen and kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, and not fully committing to it. Bret called it out. They finally ended up in a room together with Vince, and Vince basically denied it and went with Hogan.
“I wasn’t there. And I don’t necessarily believe 100% of what any one person tells me when there’s two or more people involved. Because everybody hears things differently. They have a different perspective, their emotions are at different levels. All of that affects what really happened. So it’s impossible for me to take 100% of anybody’s opinion about anything when there’s more than one person involved, or two people involved. But the way it was explained to me makes it easy for me to understand why Bret was as entrenched as Bret was when it came to Hogan, and still carried around some of that distrust and resentment. It’s also easy for me to understand from Hulk’s point of view why he didn’t really have a lot of respect for Bret in some regards professionally. Hulk obviously recognized what we all did, is that when it came to his work in the ring Bret was second to maybe only Ric Flair. And even that’s arguable, depending on your perspective at the time. But when it comes to doing business, which is s a wrestling way of saying trusting the guy you’re in there with. That was the issue. There was a lack of trust.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.