Bret Hart Wanted A Different Stipulation In WWE SummerSlam '94 Match Vs. Brother Owen

The feud between Bret Hart and his little brother Owen is widely considered one of the greatest in wrestling history, and it all seemed to be coming to an end by the time the 1994 SummerSlam pay-per-view arrived. In an attempt to put an end to everything, the two brothers were locked inside a steel cage, producing one of the greatest matches in WWE history in the process, but it all could have been very different according to The Hitman.

"We never wanted to have a cage match," Hard said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. "The truth was, I would have liked to have had a ladder match against Owen. We couldn't do that because Shawn Michaels had used the idea at WrestleMania." 

Hart had a number of ladder matches during his formative years in Stampede Wrestling, and was even in the first ladder match in WWE history against Michaels in 1992. Part of the reason why Hart didn't want a cage match is because, in his mind, cage matches are violent, hardcore, and extremely bloody, which Hart wanted to stay away from. This led to him and his brother taking a different approach. 

"The way I described it in my book is a cage match without blood is a chocolate sundae without the chocolate sauce, but Owen and I never wanted the image of us bleeding on each other, so we went without blood," Hart explained. "We told the wrestlers' story. We wanted to tell the suspense of getting in and out of the cage, and we were proud of the match. I thought it was a beautiful story."

Please credit the original source when using quotes from this article, and thanks to Sports Illustrated for the transcription.