Bret Hart is told his wrestling career is over, 25 years ago today - but you can't blame it all on Bill Goldberg
After 23 years, I didn’t want to go out like this. What would I do now?
#OnThisDayInWWE 25 years ago, Thursday 13 January 2000, Bret Hart is told by a leading sports medical physician that his career in the ring is over.
He is forced to relinquish his WCW Title, rather than compete - or even appear - at the Souled Out 2000 PPV at the weekend.
This is how he detailed in his autobiography what happened exactly a quarter of a century ago:
On Thursday, January 13, I sat in Dr. Meeuwisse's office in Calgary, telling him about Goldberg's ferocious kick to my neck while he felt around with his fingers.
I told him about taking the chokeslam and seeing silver dots.
He noticed that I was slurring my words and asked me if I thought I had a concussion. I told him maybe a slight one.
He probed me with questions and then recited some numbers and asked me to repeat them back to him backward. I couldn't.
Then he gave me five random words that he'd ask me to remember in a few minutes. I couldn't.
He studied me, then asked me again it I thought I had a concussion. I told him again, a slight one.
He asked me what I was taking for my headaches and when I told him, "Four Advils every three hours," he shook his head and told me they'd eat a hole in my stomach as he wrote me a proper script.
“I can feel a hole in the back of your neck the size of a quarter." He felt around the back of my skull. "This part here feels like hamburger.”"I have a pay-per-view on Sunday. I'm the main event."
With a dry smile, he said, "You're not going anywhere. The problem with people that have concussions is that you think you're okay, but you're not.”
He paused and crossed his arms, looking me in the eye. “I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but your career is probably over.”
"What happens if I don't stop?”
"The boxing world likes to pretend that Muhammad Ali's problems today are all related to Parkinson's disease, but the simple truth is Ali kept on boxing after being concussed. All those blows to the head cost him. You're no different than him, and I'm sure you don't want to end up like him.
“I don't want you doing anything. It could take up to a year before we can even determine how bad this is. No working out, no flying, no watching TV, no listening to loud music.”
"When I call WCW, what should I tell them?”
"You tell them your doctor has diagnosed you with a severe concussion.”
“Yeah, but who are you?" I meant, Why would WCW believe him?
"I'm the chairman of the NHL injury committee. Tell them to call me.”
Driving home, tears came to my eyes as I thought about calling J.J. Dillon with the news.
After twenty-three years, I didn't want to go out like this. What would I do now?
We all know Bret blames Goldberg for his career being finished due to Bill’s stiff kick to his head at Starrcade ‘99.
But you may not be aware that he continued to wrestle for another three weeks.
In reviewing the three weeks of Bret’s career that followed, it appears a combination of poor medical protocol at WCW and taking many heavy blows to his head, would have made Hart’s situation a lot worse.
Goldberg’s kick to Bret’s head at Starrcade
“Whatever you do out there, Bill, don't hurt me,” I said. I really wanted this to be a great match.
Goldberg by his own admission, was thrust to the very top of WCW with little in-ring experience or training: “I was green in the business.”
And yes, that resulted in some rough real life shots as he tried to look tough with every move.
Goldberg said “watch the kick” as he bounced Bret into the ropes - but the Hitman didn’t know what he was going to be hit with, so couldn’t protect himself properly.
Hart described how he felt immediately after the blow:
“It felt like someone chopped me with a hockey stick.
“It was an agonising blow that sent me crashing to the mat where I lay holding my neck just behind my right ear at the base of my skull.”
But rather than receive proper medical attention backstage, he revealed he was only “offered a few packets of Advil [ibuprofen]” by the trainer.
Even though he was slurring his words on the drive to the hotel and staggered to his room Bret declined a plea by his assistant Marcy Engelstein to get checked out by a doctor: “I’d thought I’d take it slow and see how I felt in the morning.”
‘It was ingrained in my nature just to keep on going’
Despite what happened the night before at Starrcade, Hart turned up the night for Nitro for another match with Goldberg, to set up his heel turn and form the nWo 2000 - only for it to be “a flat ending”:
“It was ingrained in my nature just to keep on going, so I showed up at the building in Baltimore, still too out of it to know how out of it I really was.”
Two nights after his concussion, Bret nearly crashes a car - as Goldberg nearly loses an arm
We all remember the moment Goldberg severed a tendon in his arm as he smashed the windows of the nWo limo - but Bret narrowly escaped a serious accident just moments before.
The night after Nitro was the Thunder taping - where Bret wrestled again:
“I told Russo that I was badly hurt from Goldberg's kick and that I thought I might have a concussion. He still wanted me to work a match with Benoit.”
He agreed, admitting “all I could think about was getting home for Christmas”.
He said the Rabid Wolverine “did his best to take it easy” - but that doesn’t sound like a walk in the park.
And that wasn’t the end of the action that night:
When Goldberg speared Jeff [Jarrett], I ran down the aisle, jumped in my car and floored it out the back ramp just as Goldberg caught up and pounded furiously on my car windows.
What nobody noticed was that as I pulled out, my car hit the icy pavement and I skidded out of control, having had no time to put on a seat belt, so there I was with a concussion; barrelling head-on toward a huge TV production truck!
I thought of Owen in that instant.
What would the world think if I got killed ploughing my car into a TV truck for some stupid stunt?
People would say, "You'd think Owen's stupid brother would know better than that!"
Then the Hitman hits his head in a hardcore match
Surviving a scary miss, Bret, the proud champion, still soldiered on.
And there couldn’t be a worse-sounding match for someone with an undiagnosed severe concussion: a hardcore match with Terry Funk.
“I also knew that I could trust Terry with my body a helluva lot more I could trust the other WCW wrestlers”, asserted Bret in his book.
Although “Terry did all he could to go easy on my head”, things went very wrong when Funk tipped Bret into a laundry cart that was (naturally) at ringside:
With my legs hanging over the sides, I couldn't pull myself up into a better position.
Terry spun it around and pushed it hard toward the ring. I braced myself by wrapping my arms around my head, but when I spilled out I whacked the back of my head on the heavy wooden lid of the cart, which made a sound like a dropped watermelon.
After the match, Terry felt terrible, but it wasn't his fault — I shouldn't have been in a hard-core match with a concussion in the first place.
I gulped down another handful of Advils and didn't give it another thought, but I sure wished my horrible headaches would go away
The Sid slams that left Bret seeing stars
This is when Bret knew he had to seek medical help.
Even before this match on Nitro, Hart continued to wrestle on house shows, filling in for Kevin Nash, who of all things had a concussion:
“Each night I took a chokeslam and a powerbomb. Sid did everything he could to set me down as lightly as he could, but it was nearly impossible. I took my lumps with little complaint.”
With Big Sexy better, the nWo 2000 teammates were forced to face each other by WCW Commissioner Terry Funk on 10 January.
Не рrоtected me as best he could.
I chopped him down at the knees, and we let Russo's silly storyline unfold; it wasn't long before Kevin dropped me hard with a punishing sidewalk slam.
I was rocked, and the next thing I saw was Arn Anderson on the floor cracking Kevin across the back with a rubber lead pipe, which was my cue.
I forced myself up to fend Arn off with a steel chair, when suddenly Sycho Sid was behind me.
As I turned, he mistimed his frontal kick, but somehow I still managed to clunk myself on the head with the chair anyway.
Sid snatched me by the throat, hoisted me up over his head with one hand and held me, then drove me down into the mat with a chokeslam.
He pulled me right back up and proceeded to give me his powerbomb.
I tucked my chin to protect myself as I floated to the mat in slow motion, but I landed flat and hard.
Lying on my back staring up at the lights, I saw millions of tiny silver dots everywhere, a galaxy of stars.
Like a TV falling from a high shelf, my tube smashed and I lay there not moving.
I couldn't help but think, ‘This must be what you see in the seconds before you die.’
I thought of Owen and tears filled my eyes.
Three days later, he finally got his medical assessment.
No rest for fear of being fired
During this time where he should have been at home resting and recovering, the Hitman continued to do promotional work for WCW - partly “to keep myself busy” but also because he wanted to avoid being sacked.
Hart claims that his contract stated that “they could fire me any time after six weeks if I couldn't wrestle.”
But the longer he was out of the ring, the less he was paid - from half his salary to then a quarter of what he was due.
So Bret continues to appear occasionally on WCW TV and even did in-ring appearances during shows in Germany in February, where he was much loved.
He revealed Dr. Meeuwisse “reluctantly” gave him medical clearance to make the trip “mostly because I was afraid I’d be fired if I didn’t.”
Shockingly, he noted that he “couldn't help but see that most of the other wrestlers didn't believe I was hurt.
“When I slurred my words, they grinned at me like I was putting them on, which hurt because I had never faked an injury in my ‘real’ life or missed a match on purpose.
“But there were so many worked injuries in WCW that when somebody got hurt for real, hardly anybody believed it.”
Over the next few months, Bret was flown in for spots with Hulk Hogan and Goldberg: “It made little sense to me, or anyone else”.
A hug from Goldberg - and then told ‘you’ll never wrestle again’
Bret said he called Bill after his near career-ending arm injury, but his attempt at reaching out when unanswered.
Then at Nitro on 28 August, they see each other in person for the first time:
“He hugged me and told me how sorry he was about my concussion.
”I had no doubt about that —Bill was a good man. Unfortunately, he'd been pushed too fast and didn't understand his brute strength.”
That night, Hart was seen burying Goldberg alive in a desert - but later that evening he was told his wrestling career was dead:
“It was official: I'd never wrestle again.”
Yet the next week, WCW “reduced my very real concussion into a silly storyline when they had me go face-to-face with Goldberg in the middle of the ring.”
Hart reflected:
“Despite my best efforts, it became more clear to me every day that I'd evolved into a wrestling tragedy, just as I'd feared. Thank God I had thought to take out an insurance policy from Lloyds of London to cover me.”
Fired by FedEx
Since being hurt, I had done everything WCW asked of me, yet they'd cut my pay, then cut it again. Now, like a limping circus pony, I waited for the end.
On 19 October, came confirmation from JJ Dillon on the phone. Then came the FedEx, in what had become a WCW cliché:
“Based on your wrestling incapacity WCW is exercising its right to terminate your independent contractor agreement effective October 20, 2000.
“Your contributions to the wrestling business are highly regarded and we wish you only the best in the future.”
How Goldberg helped Hart after his retirement
We know how Hart talks about “Bill Goldberg” and his animosity and disdain for him for “ending my career”. It’s become a running joke.
But you have to admit, as Bret said in his Inside the Ropes show in London 2019: “It’s such a lousy way to go”.
However, on reflection, it is more complicated than that: Bret continued to take heavy blows night after night for three weeks, and with seemingly no care or concern from WCW, who were desperate to try to claw back some pride in the long-lost Monday Night War.
And Bret put the business ahead of his health - and paid the price. He feels especially bitter about how Goldberg “cost me $16 million in two seconds”, given the payments WWE legends apparently receive for doing short matches in Saudi Arabia.
Recently, Goldberg hit back at the Hitman, telling Chris Van Vliet how he “couldn’t care less” nowadays about Hart’s attacks. Insisting it was an accident, he tells Chris how he helped Bret with work after his retirement.
“He must forget about that', he must forget about those conversations”, he added.
But judging by the photo below from 2023, he still has a sense of humour about it all.
