Final Week!

Well, for this being the final week's post, I figured I would cover the real reason that many people bought the book, "Heartbreak and Triumph". Moving on the the evening of November 9, 1997. The place...Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The home of the Montreal Expos, uncrowned World Series champions of 1994. Home of the Metallica/Guns n Roses riot. Yes, good old Montreal. Shawn actually started talking about this match in the very beginning of the book. Unfortunately, this match would be the most memorable moment of his career. Kind of sad when you think about all the other classic matches he had in his 25 years in the business. But this match would go down as the most real moment in all of sports entertainment and would change the course of the WWE for years to come.

For those who don't know about the night in Montreal, let me break it down for you. The WWE was in dire straits financially in 1996 and 1997. Their rival organization, World Championship Wrestling, was killing them in the ratings and was able to bring in guys from WWE for more money than WWE could pay them. Bret Hart was the biggest star that WWE had at the time but could no longer afford the contract he had signed a cuople years prior, so he was talking to WCW about a move there. When that was finalized, Bret had in his contract that he would have what is known as creative control during the last 30 days of his stay in WWE.

Now, there was a ton of friction between Bret and Shawn by this point. All the respect they had for each other prior to Wrestlemania 12, when they had the one hour Ironman match that is widely considered the greatest Wrestlemania match of all time, was gone by November of 1997. So Bret was not about to give up the belt to Shawn again, especially in his home country of Canada. This did not sit well with Vince McMahon as he had already been embarassed one time by Alundra Blayze who took her WWE women's title belt to WCW with her and dropped it into a trash can on national TV. So with all that being said, it left Vince in quite a precarious situation.

So after some conversations with Bret and Shawn regarding the PPV, it was devised that if Bret would not give up the title willingly, or as they say, do the job, then Vince would be forced to do the unthinkable: screw Bret out of the title. And that's what they planned on doing. From the way Shawn describes it in his book, nobody really wanted to do it. They all were hoping they could trust Bret to do the honorable thing and drop the belt to Shawn on his way out. That's the tradition and Bret was well-known for being a man of his word and a man that honored tradition. That is also part of the reason the events that transpired were so shocking to everyone watching.

Shawn did a great job, to me, describing the situation and how he felt during the time leading up to that fateful night and also what happened during the day and so forth. He talks about the emotions he felt during that day and how scared he was that they were actualyl going to take the belt from him the way they were. He compared it to a mafia hit. He even talks about a converstaion he had with Bret a couple hours before the show started and how awkward he felt and how bad he felt for Bret.

He also goes into detail about what happened after the match was over and he got back to the hotel. One thing he says that I found very interesting was how he didn't know if he would be able to have fun in the ring anymore. Also, how deep down he really wished that people would like him. The things he says here remind me of myself in some ways. I've always wanted people to like me but if I get the slightest inkling that they don't, then I get rebellious and just do things my way, instead of trying to repair what was wrong. I'm glad that I don't do that as much anymore. But nobody is perfect, we all just want to be and think we can be. And we want our heroes to be, as well.