Bret Hart Describes Modern Wrestling As “Pathetic” And “Too Phony” With Leg Slapping

Dungeon Wrestling is a new wrestling promotion in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Bret Hart’s sons will host “Dungeon Wrestling: Unfinished Business” on April 7th and a pay-per-view stream will be available on hnlive.ca. To promote the show, Bret was interviewed by the HN Live YouTube channel.

Bret discussed Dungeon Wrestling:

“When I say it’s a throwback to the old Stampede days is that I think wrestling has kind of lost its way a little bit today. It’s all more about the glitz, the introduction and going out to the ring and going on a ramp, lights and fireworks. All that’s great and I love all that stuff too and it’s almost like a different world than the wrestling that my dad used to put on. It was very black and white in the sense it was just good guys and bad guys.”

“I just think the old kind of wrestling is sorely missed by a lot of people. It’s like, you know, if the old wrestling was around, like my dad’s wrestling, we’d come see it kind of thing. I’m trying to advise my son Dallas and help him deliver the kind of wrestling show that I would enjoy watching more, you know, where the wrestler actually knows what a headlock is rather than sort of doing this scripted ballet of leaping and twirling and dancing around like a bunch of ballet dancers. I don’t really enjoy today’s wrestling for those reasons.”

“They’ve lost a lot of steps towards the reality or credibility of wrestling. Wrestling always, in my opinion, needs to pretend to be real. It needs to pretend really hard to be real, always has pretended really hard almost to the point that you believe it is real. I think wrestling is so far-fetched today.”

“When I think of WWE, for example, and I see 20 wrestlers crowd together outside on the floor of the ring and some guy runs over and dives over the top rope and knocks them all down like bowling pins, I really roll my eyes at how pathetic wrestling is today. From top to bottom, all the top wrestlers and all the middle and bottom wrestlers in WWF and AEW all slapping on their legs on every punch and every slap, it’s to the point now where I can’t watch wrestling today. Sadly, It’s getting too phony. I really question the direction that the people that are in charge.”

“AEW has kind of gone in a bad direction, I think, with all the violence and gore. I watched some episodes. You know, I watched Marta Hart do her big press conference for AEW here in Calgary. I’m watching AEW, and I’m watching, who used to be Dean Ambrose, sticking a fork in somebody’s head for like five minutes with a close up on TV. This isn’t wrestling either. I would recommend turning all that off. I don’t watch that stuff anymore. It’s not very good. Wrestling is going in some bad directions because people don’t know what wrestling is or wrestling was.”

You can check out the complete interview below:


(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)