Over the last few days Bret Hart has been touring the Canadian media to promote his upcoming WrestleMania match with Vince McMahon and unfortunately his interviews have been filled with some jawdropping amnesia and hypocrisy.
Firstly, he had this to say about his brother Owen's tragic death while working for the WWF to CTV: "Clearly, my brother Owen's death was just a bad accident. You can't hold Vince McMahon directly accountable for that. It was someone underneath who didn't know what they were doing."
Wow, I can't believe that Bret has forgotten the part of the story where Vince hired incompetent stunt coordinators because the professionals were too expensive and refused to do the stunt exactly as he wanted due to its inherent danger. So sorry Bret, but yes you can hold Vince McMahon directly accountable for that. Maybe Martha Hart was right after all when she called Owen "a white sheep in a black family".
Secondly, Bret was on Off The Record and had the gall to bash Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair for their recent returns to the ring: "Ric Flair, I feel sorry for him. You were talking about wrestlers saying, 'When is enough, enough? When do they ever give up and go home to their families and their real lives?' Ric is one of those guys who's a little ahead of me, but I remember a time knowing that I had to get out of wrestling and go home to my kids before they were grown up and gone or that I had no family life. I think wrestlers make this decision - and I'm sure Hogan is the same and different guys - where they decide they have to go home to their families or stay in the wrestling business and that becomes their family. Flair stayed in the wrestling business, forgot about his family, his family moved on and left him; the only thing Ric Flair knows is the dressing room, the airports, the bar after and drinking."
As much as I've taken shots at Ric Flair for his drunken carousing, even I can see that Bret Hart is the last person to be lecturing Flair about family and prioritising the wrestling business above all else. You just have to read Bret's autobiography to know that he's just as guilty as Flair of failing to put his family, particularly his wife, first, during his wrestling career. Bret may think he's the better man, but his decision to "go home" was made for him when he suffered a career ending injury. It probably also should be noted that there's a good chance that Bret hasn't seen much more of his children over the last decade than Flair has, given the amount of time he's spent living in Italy and Hawaii. It doesn't say much good about Bret's ability to adapt to real life that he got so bored with it he had to return to the ring. Simply put, Bret's a lot more like Flair than he'll ever realise or admit to.