Professional wrestling may have changed in 2020, but one thing remains the same. Bret Hart’s ability to tell a great story and cut right the bone whether people like what he has to say or not.
We’ve seen it in tales about Goldberg, Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, even when he spoke about who had the worst Sharpshooter and his 1997 heel turn. Now, ‘The Hitman’ has spoken out once again on arguably the most controversial rumour regarding his career – his relationship with Tammy Lynn Sytch, aka Sunny.
Rumours of a behind the scenes dalliance between the pair first came to light on the May 19, 1997, edition of Monday Night Raw when Shawn Michaels took it upon himself to deliver his now infamous, ‘Sunny Days’, speech which got tongues wagging.
As it would eventually turn out, it was Michaels who had the relationship with Sytch in 1996 and not Bret Hart.
On episode 29 of his Confessions Of The Hitman webseries, ‘The Excellence of Execution’ spoke on the non-existent relationship with Sunny when he was questioned about the biggest rumour surrounding his career:
“Probably the most ludicrous one is that same old one that comes up about Sunny all the time, which is kind of funny for me because I always got along well with not just Sunny, but all of the girls that were involved in [pro] wrestling. The one where they talked about me having a relationship with Sunny, I almost kind of wished I did, but the fact of the matter is that I never did and there was never any truth to those rumors ever. And I don’t know where they came from. I’ve never really been much bothered by that one. That’s probably the only one, to me, that really stands out.”
Moving on from Sunny, Bret Hart delved into the origins of his famous Sharpshooter and related a story of first seeing it done in Japan. According to Hart, when Vince McMahon notified him that he needed a finishing move for his singles push, he recalled what he’d seen in The Land of the Rising Sun:
“Well, The Scorpion Deathlock was something I first saw in Japan. It’s a bit of an intricate, complicated wrestling move that I had seen done before and I’ve had guys put it on me. It’s pretty [similar] in a lot of ways to a Boston Crab, but it’s a different way of twisting your legs. But anyway, when I really got launched as a singles competitor – a solo – Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson had a little meeting with me, and they said they wanted me to come up with a submission move. And I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but we came up with a couple of different options of something I could do, and The Scorpion Deathlock came up and Vince asked, ‘can you put the Scorpion Deathlock on?’ I said, ‘well, I’d have to check into it, or look into it and see how it works and everything. So I told Vince I would go see if any of the other [pro] wrestlers knows how to put it on.”
According to Bret Hart, he had little luck in finding anyone with the knowledge to show him how to apply the move. After searching high and low, a surprising figure emerged in Konnan:
“I went kind of to the dressing rooms and started checking with different guys, and you had to be a pretty knowledgeable wrestler to know how to put it on. I had it put on me lots of times but I never really put it on anyone ever. And anyway, I asked around and nobody knew. And finally, I remember it was Konnan, a Mexican wrestler I knew later on in WCW, he goes, ‘I know how to put it on.’ So I said, ‘okay, show me how it works!’ And we went in the shower because we needed some space to put it on. So anyway, he showed me and it was pretty simple. He showed it to me in the shower room, and I found Vince and I said, ‘okay, I know how to put it on.’ And the rest is history.”
Recalling the origins of his beloved finisher, Bret Hart told an amusing tale about how his late brother Owen Hart helped to spread the myth that their father Stu had taught the family the move:
“When Vince approved of it, we had to rename it, and I remember that I think I was the one that came up with The Sharpshooter [name]. And the funny thing about all that is they always think, the way the fans think of the history of it– ‘oh, Stu taught his son The Sharpshooter in the basement,’ kind of a thing. I think Owen even played that same sort of storyline – that my dad taught all of us those kinds of things. He taught us a lot of stuff, but he didn’t teach me The Sharpshooter. But it’s funny that I learned it from Konnan of all people.”
If you would like to listen to the full interview then you can subscribe to the Confessions Of The Hitman webseries now.
Credit for the interview: Confessions Of The Hitman
h/t for the transcription: Wrestling Inc.