BRET "THE HITMAN" HART
 

By Bob Leonard

This famous son of a famous father will be honored by his peers at the Wednesday evening main event of CAC’s 44th annual reunion, June 9 to 11, 2008 at the newly-sparkling Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.  All former Iron Mike Award recipients attending – Don Leo Jonathan, Harley Race, Maurice Vachon, Tom Drake, Dick Beyer and Gene LeBell are expected – will take to the stage to celebrate Bret joining their number, in the traditional rousing finale to the evening.

This year’s award to Bret is doubly unique; in fact, it may never happen again.  His father, Stu Hart, received the Iron Mike Award in 2001 after a lifetime of achievement.  When Bret steps to the podium, it will mark the sole occasion on which the Club’s major recognition has gone to a   father and son.

“I know how proud my father was of his Mazurki Award, and what it meant to him to come down to the reunion,” says Bret.  “It’s going to be a nice feeling, and I sort of think my father will be watching over my shoulder a little bit.”

Bret was raised in wrestling, entirely comfortable within a household frequently peopled with midgets, giants and every size and shape of wrestler in between.  His first trip to Calgary’s Victoria Pavilion came when he was four, and for the next dozen years he drew lucky ticket numbers, sold programs, and worked security.

Stu spent hours in the infamous “dungeon” with Bret and his seven other sons, teaching them the rudiments of the shoot wrestling style he’d been schooled in by Jack Taylor and others, back in the 1930's.  Bret began amateur wrestling in junior high school, and at 16 captured the City of Calgary title in his weight class.  A couple of years later, he captured the Alberta provincial championship.  Pro wrestling came into the picture then, as he began refereeing around the far-flung Stampede Wrestling territory.  And after several months on ‘the loop’, Bret started intensive training with seasoned Japanese pros Kazuo Sakurada and Katsuji Adachi, respectively Mr. Sakurada and Mr. Hito on Stampede cards.

Bret relates that the pair schooled him in basics in their sessions in the dungeon, and bred in him a strong ethic of ensuring that whatever he did, he injure neither his opponent nor himself.  Since the dungeon had no ring or ropes, just a thin wall-to-wall padding, beyond that point it was learn as you go.  That’s what Bret did, wrestling in Japan, Germany, the U.K., New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Atlanta, Amarillo....and of course between tours, Stampede, where he turned in ever-better matches as his skills increased.

In mid-1984, WWF came calling, and the rest is well-known history.  Bret struck out on a 13-year journey through the biggest arenas in the world, often carrying the WWF’s tag team or Intercontinental title and ultimately, on five occasions, the big gold belt of their Heavyweight Championship.  That relationship ended in sad and tumultuous circumstances, but showing that never-say-die attitude that was so characteristic of Stu, Bret pressed on.  He spent two years with WCW, carrying their world title twice, but was forced into an earlier-than-planned retirement in 1999 by the effects of a severe concussion.

Despite a subsequent stroke suffered in 2002, Bret hasn’t backed away from living a full and busy life.  He has continued to be in steady demand for personal appearances in the U.S., his native Canada and abroad.  That demand has grown over the past couple of months, since the October launch of his best-selling autobiography, “Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling”.  Since the book’s release, he’s done as many as six signings in six different cities each week.  There won’t be any slowdown next year either, as the 573-page volume is slated for U.S. release in spring and the signing schedule should only increase.

“After everything else that’s gone on in my life, and now having finished my book, my memoirs, this is a completely fitting cap-off to what’s been a really remarkable and memorable experience in wrestling,”  Bret states. 

He’s especially honored by the nature of CAC’s membership, containing as it does so many of the greats of the sport.  Bret says it best himself: “....to receive this award in front of that caliber of peers – my elders, really, who take the time and effort to salute me – makes the Mazurki award a very special thing.”

The Cauliflower Alley Club is proud and pleased to present its premier honor, the Iron Mike Award to "The best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be," Bret Hart.

Visit the Bret Hart photo album here.