Old School WWF Legend Stone Cold Steve Austin appeared on Chris Jericho’s weekly podcast ‘Talk Is Jericho’, where he opened up about his 1996-1997 rivalry with Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart.
The famous double-turn during their WrestleMania 13 submission match is still considered one of the greatest moments & matches in WWF history.
Here’s what The Rattlesnake had to say:
“It was really interesting because Bret had seen me coming in WCW as he always says, and I’ve been an admirer of Bret Hart’s work, I was big into Hart Foundation. Him and Anvil, I loved them as a tag team.
I’ve been watching Bret for a long time because he got to Vince before I did, and I remember he was going to get a surgery to get his hip cleaned up. And he needed an opponent for Survivor Series, and he told Vince, ‘Hey, I can make money with this guy,’ and I get a phone call from Bret. He wants to work with me, and so he hand-picked me to come back from his surgery.
And we would go out there, and it’s an old-school match. It’s kind of classic pro-wrestling style. We went out there and just turned in an instant classic, and Bret was coming back.
And if you go back, and you watch that match and you watch the finish with that gimmick roll up off a Million Dollar Dream, then as I roll out, because he’s outsmarted me, if you watch his face and it’s a shoot, he mouths ‘f**k’ because he’s dead-dog tired. And he was blown up because he’d been at the house healing up, and it was that grueling of a match.
Bret Hart is one of the greatest of all time so the fact that he hadn’t done a whole lot of in-ring work or none really and had to knock a little bit of ring rust off, he was gassed.
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