Earl Hebner Opens Up And Tells All About WWE's Infamous Montreal Screwjob In 1997
Recently, Earl Hebner opened up about his pivotal role in the "Montreal screwjob" on "Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw," and it wasn't the first time he has given his side of one of the most infamous moments in the history of professional wrestling. What made it unique, though, was that not only was he being interviewed by two former colleagues who were there that night at Survivor Series 1997, but one of them, then-road agent/producer Jerry Brisco, was another key player in Bret Hart being double-crossed on the planned finish to his WWE Championship match with Shawn Michaels. The result? A much more candid telling of what went down over 25 years ago in Montreal.
"When Brisco gave me the news ... I told my brother to get my s**t together [to put in our car]," Hebner recalled. "When Brisco was talking to me, he laid it out, and I go 'I don't know. I just don't know.' [On] this arm, Brisco grabbed me. 'What do you mean you don't know? He's got a $3 million contract down there [in WCW]. Is he gonna give you any of it? What are you gonna do?' I go 'I don't know, Jerry.'"
Co-host John "Bradshaw" Layfield specifically remembered seeing Dave Hebner getting his and Earl's belongings together and asking what was up, only to be told that they were just making efforts to beat the crowd out of the building at the end of the show. That was technically true, since the plan was for Dave to have his car waiting with the motor running and their belongings inside so Earl could run out of the building after the match, although Brisco added that the Hebners being the first ones out of the building was not at all out of the ordinary.
Hebner: 'I didn't count him out, if you go back and look!'
According to Hebner, Hart sensed that something was up and bought him a first-class flight upgrade on the trip to Montreal so they could talk on the way. "He goes 'You won't count me out?' I go 'No.' I didn't count him out, if you go back and look!"
Hart's version in his memoir — which it should be noted is sourced from his contemporaneous audio diaries and not his long-term memories years down the road — is different in a few notable ways, though. Hart placed their conversation in the locker room restroom the night before in Detroit, and did not limit the scope to "count[ing] me down," instead being centered on getting Hebner to promise not to "f**k" him on the Survivor Series finish. "I swear on my kids' heads, I won't do it," Hart recalled him saying. "I'll quit first! If they ask me to do that, I'll tell them to go f**k themselves, Bret, I swear!"
Hebner also appears to buy into the falsehood that Hart was going to appear on "WCW Nitro" the next night and throw the belt in the trash like Madusa had two years earlier, but Hart was still under contract to WWE for a few more weeks and, even after the screwjob, did not debut for WCW until after he was free and clear. "I felt like, honestly, after talking to you [Brisco] and you talking to me, he was robbing the roster," Hebner explained. "He didn't care about nobody, in a sense, from what he wanted to do and what he could have done, and he was hurting everybody."
Brisco: 'I came up with the Sharpshooter thing'
It's not entirely clear what Hebner and Brisco were privy to at the time as far as when Hart would actually be leaving WWE and/or how much their memories have been clouded by the passage of time. There was one thing that Hebner was clear on: It being Brisco who gave him the order made a big difference. "I don't think anybody [else] there could have told me what you told me and I'd have went along with it," he said. "Because truthfully, in my heart, you were the person that was picked for this, as far as making up my mind to do what I did, because any other agent? I don't think I would have taken it to heart to do it." Brisco then added that this was the first time that he and Hebner had ever really sat down and talked over what happened in Montreal, which Hebner affirmed.
For Brisco's part, he says that he found out what the plan was when Vince McMahon took him aside after a production meeting that included going over the "official" planned finish for Hart vs. Michaels, a disqualification due to outside interference. Brisco asked why he was the point person for the plan, to which he recalled McMahon saying that the agent/producer for the match, Pat Patterson, was too close a friend to Hart to be involved.
"I came up with the Sharpshooter thing, [but] it didn't take a genius to come up with that Sharpshooter thing, 'cause everyone in the business has taken credit for [that]," he explained. "Well, I hadn't talked to everyone in the business about it!" Two hours later, he prepped Michaels. "We worked out a couple little things," Brisco added. "Mostly for self-defense; it wasn't aggressive stuff or anything like that."
Brisco: It 'always really bothered me' to put Hebner on the spot
The morning of the show, Brisco asked McMahon who knew about the plan besides them and Michaels, with the response being that Kevin Dunn knew so as to be able to run the production truck as line producer and have all of the production elements in place. "Whether Shawn went and told his inner circle guys, I don't think he did, because nobody came up to me during the course of the day," Brisco explained. "Which if you know something, you're gonna come feel me out to see if I know something, [...] But Earl didn't know until the music was hit. It was something I don't think I would try to put myself through again today, or put anybody else through, especially a friend like Earl was."
Hebner added that he and Hart had long since buried the hatchet, with Brisco adding that he feels that he and Hart are the same way. But he felt that with Hebner being on the show and the two of them being such key players in what happened in Montreal on November 9, 1997, they had to discuss it.
"That always really bothered me, as a friend of yours, personally, that I had to put a friend in that position," Brisco concluded. "But that was our jobs, Earl. That was what we were paid to do. And we did our jobs to the best of our ability. But all through the years, it always kind of hit me up here that I put Earl in a really unfortunate position."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit ""Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.