The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '97: The Last Time WWF Was Number Two

by Dave Meltzer

  The decision by McMahon to pave the way for Hart to leave, largely stemming from Hart’s huge salary and his refusal to renegotiate the terms, started the natural rumors about what the actual financial condition of Titan Sports is and why McMahon, in the middle of a wrestling war with only four true superstars, one of whom was mentally unstable and another of whom physical future was questionable, would want to hand one of the remaining two to his opposition. Stories have come out in regard to Titan Sports wanting to make its bottom line look better for the company to go public, or to sell a percentage of the company to outsiders, thus infusing new money into the company, while the McMahon family would retain the majority interest. Having in the last week talked with four different high-level executives in the company, all claim there is nothing to either scenario nor has there been any discussions at any time of either scenario.

  The idea that Hart’s salary was dumped as a way to open the door for a return of Hulk Hogan was discounted as a theory worthy of Oliver Stone. McMahon, in a controlled Internet discussion after the 11/17 Raw, responded to a similar question saying, “Yes, one day the WWF might go public but there are no current plans for that to happen.” From all accounts, the WWF has been operating deeply in the red for most of the past four years. According to one source, at the time McMahon offered Hart the huge contract last year, the company was losing about $135,000 per week. Theoretically if a piece of talent in any sports or entertainment business such as this isn’t worth the price he is asking, you don’t pay him that price and if someone else will, you let them. McMahon offered Hart the 20-year deal, at about $30,000 per week for the first three years as an active wrestler. Since his company was losing so much money, one would think he, when making the deal, felt that Hart was worth more to his company than what he was offering to pay him at the time he made the offer to him.

  The interesting thing about all this is that now, from all accounts, Titan Sports has turned the financial corner and is operating in the black. In other words, during the same time period that McMahon brought Hart back and was paying him the huge money and the period he told him he was going to breach his contract because he felt he wasn’t worth the money, Titan’s financial situation had greatly improved, not gotten worse. One could argue that is proof Hart was worth more than what he was being paid, although that isn’t necessarily the case. The biggest reason for the financial turnaround was from increasing the price of the In Your House PPV shows from $19.95 to $29.95 while maintaining (and in some cases even increasing) the number of buys, which over the course of a full year would add between $5 million and $6 million to company revenue, or almost by itself, wiping out that huge weekly deficit incurred throughout most of 1996. This is not a judgment on Hart’s value to the company financially, just a factual statement that from all accounts, the company could afford his salary today a whole lot more than it could at the time it made the deal in the first place.

  In examining whether Hart was worth the money, there are many ways to look at it. Based on the salary structure at Titan Sports right now, the answer would be no. Did Hart generate twice the revenue of Austin, Undertaker and Michaels? Probably not. Based on our new phrase for the week, time honored traditions of the business, he was greatly underpaid. If you figure Titan Sports will gross $80 million this year (that’s a rough estimate), well, in the old days of NWA champions, the champion’s cut was eight percent of the gross, which would mean by traditions of the business Hart would be worth $6.4 million.

  If you go by McMahon’s fathers’ standards with Bruno Sammartino, Sammartino earned six percent of the gross at house shows with the exception of Madison Square Garden, where he was to earn five percent. In the great traditions of the business, Sammartino never actually was paid nearly that much and ended up in court over being screwed on money, and McMahon Jr. settled out of court with him, but that’s another story that will be repeated in the future as well. But even at five percent, that’s still $4 million per year. If you argue with all the front office personnel that they didn’t have in the past, overhead, travel expenses, etc., and that the champion doesn’t stand alone above the competition as the NWA champs or Sammartino did in their day, even at two percent, which would always be considered a real bad payoff for a main eventer in the past, you are still talking about more money than Hart was earning.

  If you determine what somebody is worth as to be what his value is on the open market (how one values what a home being sold is worth in a free enterprise economy), then that figure was already established as the $2.8 million per year by WCW making the offer. But all those hypotheticals mean nothing. The fact is, he had a contract and the company is now operating in the black. They were not under any duress financially to remove the contract from the books at this point in time even if the company would like to claim otherwise. They wanted to remove him, or his contract, for other reasons. The contract did cause a salary structure argument internally, because no doubt people like Undertaker, Austin and Michaels, realizing what Hart was making, might feel in comparison they were underpaid and have a valid argument. One of the reasons Michaels himself wanted out earlier this year was because McMahon wouldn’t pay him what Hart made and what his buddies in Atlanta were making and what he felt his position in the business today was worth.

  I can understand a few months back Titan wanting to restructure Hart’s deal because the company wasn’t doing well at the time and his salary was huge. But right now, things had started to change and the problems now from an economic position make far less sense. One Titan official said that McMahon knew ultimately that either Hart or Michaels would have to go, perhaps even that Michaels demanded it as a condition for him to return after he walked out over the fight.

  When Hart returned from his knee injury, they felt his career was on its downslide and maybe he wasn’t the same performer and given the decision, Hart was 40, Michaels was 32 and Michaels was costing half as much money and not a threat to the salary structure in regards to the other headliners pointing at his salary and thinking they were underpaid, and that Hart had 19 years left to be paid and maybe only one good year left in the ring. Supposedly Hart himself had told other officials he thought he only had about 200 good matches left in his career, which may also have precipitated the decision in that direction.

  Michaels, in the Charleston Post and Courier before the PPV stated, “The world should know this—this is not Bret Hart leaving. This is Vince McMahon asking him to leave. For me, it’s only a good day in that people who are really somewhat intelligent will see who is really the guy behind the scenes who is causing Vince McMahon trouble. Vince asked him to leave, but he allowed him to take care of things here, and I think that says a lot for Vince McMahon. He simply didn’t feel Bret was giving what he was getting.”

  Exactly what was offered to Hart financially in regard to renegotiations is contradictory depending upon the source. Jim Ross, on the WWF hotline, claimed the WWF wanted to lessen his huge weekly guarantee, but increase the money he would earn from PPV events so that he would actually wind up earning basically the same amount of money per year, just that it would come in lump sums after Titan would get the cash flow influx from a PPV rather than every week when Titan’s cash flow was from house shows, or far less money coming in on those weeks. Hart’s claim is that they wanted to cut his weekly salary more than in half, but were going to make it up by increasing his salary in the latter 17 years of his contract when he was to earn far less since at that point he’d be retired from the ring. Another source said they wanted to spread the big money aspect of the contract over five years instead of three, thus cutting the weekly salary from $30,000 to $20,000 per week but extending it two more years.

  Probably more than one of these scenarios and possibly all were discussed at one time or another. Hart and his financial advisers turned that down, not wanting to risk getting screwed, another of pro wrestling’s time honored traditions, after he was no longer an active performer and had no leverage anywhere. Mc
Mahon on television portrayed Hart as not being worth what they were paying him and wanting to get rid of him for that reason, a story that contradicts the other versions.

  McMahon, on the 11/17 Raw, without actually using the words, tried to imply that Hart was unprofessional because he had refused to drop the title in the ring. The wording McMahon used is that Hart failed to honor a time-honored tradition of the business (you do jobs on the way out of a territory). For those with memories longer than two or three years, the realization is that any discussion of McMahon and time-honored traditions of the wrestling industry is worthy of not a chapter, but an entire book. The only true time honored tradition of this business is that everyone in power lies and manipulates to get people to do things that are often against their best interest, or top talent with leverage agrees to do jobs, then holds up promoters at the last minute to squeeze money or promises out on that end. And then everyone pretends to like each other, and that’s not a digression from the actual issue.

  Indeed, one could argue the core of the wrestling industry more than anything else was epitomized by this double-crossing on a finish that everyone involved had supposedly agreed upon. How many jobs did Hulk Hogan, Junkyard Dog, Jesse Ventura and all the rest do on the way out when they were leaving their territories in 1983-84? Zero. They cut interviews for one promotion and showed up the next day with the WWF, with the promoter lucky if he got a telegram of resignation after the fact. Just as people like Lex Luger, Curt Hennig and Rick Rude when they got the leverage, couldn’t wait to screw Vince McMahon, so did the wrestlers of the past feel about people like Verne Gagne and Bill Watts.

  But the reality is, Bret Hart got a finish changed on a television match to Hunter Hearst Helmsley from a pin to a count out; refused to do a job in a six-man tag in Toronto and instead had his brother-in-law Jim Neidhart do it; never refused to do a job in Detroit in the six-man although did refuse to put Michaels over for the title at that show as McMahon suggested as a compromise so Hart could lose the title to Michaels but not on Canadian soil before 11/10. To add to the problems, the front office believed he had also refused to do a job in the six-man in Detroit (in reality he was never asked because the agents running the show didn’t convey the plans made at a booking meeting two days earlier to him to avoid heat from him after he turned it down in Toronto, but then to avoid heat from the office, claimed he had once again been asked and refused, which unjustly intensified the heat between McMahon and Hart, going into Montreal the next day).

  During the 11/2 conversation between Hart and McMahon where he agreed to put anyone over as long as it was after 11/13, unlike what was reported here last week, “anyone” at that point did not include Michaels but did include basically everyone else and he even mentioned Steve Lombardi since he had a match scheduled against him on the 11/15 Madison Square Garden show. However, on 11/5, he finally agreed to put Michaels over as long as it occurred after 11/13 and thus not in Canada.

  McMahon’s portrayal to the fans, to the wrestlers, and to his own front office that Hart refused to drop the title in the ring has been vehemently denied by Hart and is also contradicted completely in documentation from Hart’s legal representatives to McMahon sent the day before the show. But it is true that Hart, all along, refused to do the job for Michaels on that specific night. It is also true that McMahon agreed to several different finishes for that match that didn’t involve a title switch during the week, would change them, and in the end on the last day supposedly everyone was on the same page with a finish, the same finish that was discussed at the production meeting the night before.

  This is not to justify the position of Bret Hart at all, because these are two items unrelated to Bret Hart, but related to Vince McMahon, and also to Shawn Michaels. If McMahon felt dropping the title in the ring was of such importance to the future of his company, why was the decision made to go to Michaels? No questioning his talent at all and not taking seriously his asshole television personality as anything more than a contrived work. Let’s even for the sake of the argument throw out that he won’t work full-time anymore and thus for house show business wouldn’t be as valuable as a champion as a wrestler on the road every night. He refused to drop not only the WWF title in the ring earlier this year which many in the company point directly to killing the buy rate at WrestleMania, but several other titles on numerous different occasions since 1993, one of which he had legitimate medical reasons for and three other times because he simply walked out while holding a belt, whether it be a WWF belt, an IC belt or a tag team title belt. He also had refused to do any jobs for anyone in the territory on numerous occasions, including to Davey Boy Smith in Birmingham, England.

  How was Michaels’ behavior, which certainly was not a romantic “time-honored tradition” of the business handled? By changing the finish in England and giving him the title to avoid a conflict. And a few weeks after that, by making the decision to give the WWF title belt to him once again. In 1993, when Hulk Hogan was WWF champion, McMahon wanted him to drop the belt to Bret Hart. Hogan, with the big guy mentality from the 80s, refused to lose to “little” Bret, basically hand-picked “big” Yokozuna to drop the belt to and quit the promotion over it, which for the most part created the heat with Hogan and McMahon and also for years between Hogan and Hart. Both Hogan and Hart have made statements in recent weeks about looking forward to working with one another, despite their heat from the past. WCW’s plan at present is for Hart’s first major match to likely be against Ric Flair, setting the stage for possible matches against Hogan or Sting.

  It appears the tension between McMahon and Hart grew a lot worse in the week leading to the event for a number of reasons. When the word got out, Hart was positioning his leaving as having something to do with the direction the WWF was going. While he was unhappy with the direction and with Shawn Michaels, neither was the prime reason for his decision. McMahon and others in the office were unhappy about that, and Ross on the 900 line, said that to say the prospective (since nobody was willing to publicly admit to the departure until after the show) departure was due to anything but financial reasons was ludicrous.

  Since Hart was leaving, the decision was made before the weekend shows in Toronto and Detroit that he should do the job for Austin in the six-mans, since it wasn’t for the title, that Austin was one of their top wrestlers and that Austin had put Hart over at WrestleMania and Hart had never given one back clean. Hart refused in Toronto, for reasons outlined last week. He was never asked in Detroit, and the agents told the office he had turned it down again, putting more heat into the fire.

  Bret Hart did not so much ask Earl Hebner to referee the match as much as know in advance that Hebner would be the referee when they had their conversation in Detroit the night before the show. Referees for the main event on PPV are assigned based on who the company considers to be their top official, and Hebner has been the referee in the main event virtually every show. If Hebner wasn’t the referee, it would have been a tip-off to Hart that something fishy was going down and he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be put into a compromising position. Hart was aware of the possibility of a double-cross the night before but when Hebner swore he’d quit first, somewhat relaxed his guard in regard to allowing compromising spots in the match. Officially, the referee assignments were made at the production meeting that was going on in Montreal at the same time Hart and Hebner were in Detroit, and as expected, Hebner was given the assignment for the title match.

  It has been insinuated here and portrayed elsewhere that the double-cross decision came at a meeting at the Montreal Marriott the night before the show. Such a meeting did take place as it does on Saturdays before every PPV show or Sundays before every Monday-Tuesday set of tapings. McMahon, Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, Pat Patterson and Michaels were all at the meeting as were several others including Bruce Prichard, Sgt. Slaughter and production people. The finish of the match and future scenarios in regard to the title belt were discussed at the meeting.

  What
was discussed was not a double-cross on Hart. The scenario discussed at the meeting and fine-tuned was the scenario McMahon, Hart and Michaels had all theoretically agreed upon. In Montreal, the finish would be that Hart would have the sharpshooter on Michaels when Rick Rude, Chyna and Hunter Hearst Helmsley would hit the ring. Rude would never get into the ring but his briefcase would be thrown into the ring. Hart would win on a DQ for the outside interference. They were trying to create an ending for one big pop at the end by the fans in Montreal, since the outside interference DQ would be a weak “groan” finish for such a highly anticipated PPV match. They appeared to have settled on Hart getting the briefcase in a struggle, and knocking out Chyna, who had yet to sell anything big in the WWF up to that point, and were debating the pros and cons of that finish.

  The next night on Raw, Jim Ross would interview Hart and point-blank ask him the question about him leaving, using the Canadian newspaper clippings on the screen, and Hart would reluctantly, or maybe not reluctantly, admit that he was going to WCW. Hart would say that he was going to remain in the WWF until the end of the month and work his final shows in the various arenas, and his final match would be the 12/7 PPV show in Springfield. They would push that fact as a way to build up a big buy rate for the traditionally weak December PPV show. Hart would say on his interview that he would defend the title against anyone in Springfield and wanted to leave the WWF with his head up and still the champion, since he would be doing the interview in Ottawa where he was the top babyface. At that point Slaughter would announce the final four match, with Hart, Undertaker, Ken Shamrock and Michaels and Hart would react as if double-crossed by the Americans again and put in a situation where he didn’t have to lose the fall to not retain the title.