[quote name='Scorch']what. the.

!!!!!
http://www.tmz.com/2011/03/07/snooki-wwe-monday-night-raw-wrestling-fighting-jersey-shore/
!@*#&$^*&!@^$(*!&@^#$(
*&!^@*#$&^@*!&^*^$[/QUOTE]
Ugh. It was almost literally a week ago that someone brought up the TNA/Jersey Shore stuff to me at work. They, though, thought it was WWE. My entire rant was making sure they knew the difference between the two companies and that it wasn't WWE. This development is unhelpful.
Still, nothing says 'we're on the road to WrestleMania' like Snooki.
It's like I don't think my interest in the product can get any lower, but they manage to find new and exciting ways to lower that bar every single week.
[quote name='davo1224']I don't really get people saying Bret was wrong in that situation. Never have and never will. He wasn't the dick in that situation and not in anything leading up to it. I always assume it's people who are only familiar with the Vince McMahon whitewash which probably is the case.
* Bret had signed a 20 year contract the year before so that he could come back and fight Austin and retire with the WWF ala Slaughter, Garea, Patterson, etc. Vince was the one who broke the contract because he said he couldn't afford to pay it since WCW had almost unlimited money to offer.
* Up to that point, Bret had never been uncooperative.
* Bret's contract didn't end until December 7, 1997. That's almost a month after Survivor Series and actually the date of their next PPV which featured a lame duck main event because of what happened.
* Bret said he would drop the title and has been quoted by other wrestlers as saying so
* Bret's BS excuse about not wanting to drop it in Canada (while making sense from a storyline perspective) was directly in response to Shawn's past year of on-air BS
* Shawn Michaels faking an injury because he didn't want to drop the title to Bret made it so that WrestleMania 13 is the only WrestleMania EVER to get a worse buyrate than SummerSlam and even Survivor Series
If we're talking about Hogan level BS, Shawn Michaels is dead second to him. I mean hell, Undertaker had to physically threaten him to drop the title to Austin without any funny business at WrestleMania 14 because of everything he did in 1997.[/QUOTE]
The problem is that Hart never presented it that way. Regardless, I don't think it was so much Hart being in the wrong, more so *everyone* being in the wrong.
Should McMahon have reneged on the contract? No, that was just bad business. Should McMahon have just trusted Bret to not take the belt? Possibly, but it's tough to discount the fact that whether Hart and McMahon had the relationship that Hart claims, McMahon viewed himself as fighting a war. As a result, he wasn't going to even remotely chance a repeat of the Alundra Blayze incident, no matter who the wrestler was and how long he'd been with the WWF.
My issue with Hart is that he was acting more like someone retiring than someone going to the competition. I get that he felt like WWF was his home, and that ultimately Vince gave him no choice but to leave. He wanted to go out the conquering hero riding off into the sunset, which... well, he just wasn't. He was a top star leaving for a company that was currently beating WWF in the ratings. Asking him to drop the belt at Survivor Series was, in my opinion, a totally reasonable request. When I hear things like 'I'll forfeit the title the next night' or 'I'll drop it on live TV', it just doesn't make sense to me. Outside of Bret's own feelings, there was no reason to not drop the belt that night.
That being said, it's not as if McMahon went about this in the right way, either. He forced the situation, and I imagine to McMahon's mind, the constant stalling of dropping the title could mean that Bischoff had gotten to him. Remember that we're dealing with, quite possibly, the most desperate and paranoid Vince McMahon that has ever been. Do I think that McMahon should've given him the benefit of the doubt? Probably... but viewing it through the lens of that time period, I understand why he went with the kneejerk reaction.
So, really, I blame both parties equally, as McMahon was blinded completely by his desire to not be embarrassed by WCW again, and Hart couldn't come to grips with the fact that he was in the process of becoming 'the enemy' and that none of his history meant anything. A bad situation all-around, made worse by the massive egos involved.