It’s a little hard to believe, but 20 years have passed since the company then known as WWF broadcast the November 9, 1997 Survivor Series on pay-per-view. The undercard of that show was spectacularly forgettable save for Steve Austin winning the Intercontinental Championship from Owen Hart. But perhaps it only seems like the undercard was forgettable because the main event ended in one of the most infamous events in pro wrestling history, the Montreal Screwjob.
(On the other hand, one of the matches on the undercard was the Truth Commission versus the Disciples of Apocalypse, so it was probably pretty forgettable on its own.)
The Montreal Screwjob shaped modern professional wrestling perhaps more than any other single event, and it even has its own Wikipedia page. If you’re reading this post, you likely already know most of the events that happened on that night, and the resulting fallout. So we won’t be rehashing most of it, just providing you with some videos and a helpful, guided trip down memory lane.
It’s really hard to overstate just how much modern pro wrestling was shaped by the Screwjob. It introduced the world to Mr. McMahon the character, led to a lot of people jumping ship to WCW and a lot of much, much worse bad blood between the two companies, and was the defining moment in pulling back the curtain and eventually leading to “the death of kayfabe” and the status quo as we know it, vis a vis suspension of disbelief in pro wrestling.
On a personal note, this also helped shape my personal fandom and relationship with pro wrestling, as I was deeply invested in Hart retaining his title, and rushing to a friend’s house after work to log into an AOL chatroom and find out the result of Survivor Series 1997 was my first experience with the internet wrestling community. (Don’t worry; no one on AOL seemed to know exactly what had gone down, either, only that Shawn had won the match.)
The Screwjob also a huge, pervasive, ubiquitous part of pro wrestling culture, and pop culture in general. You know, to the point where Brazzers made a porn parody of the Montreal Screwjob. And from Survivor Series 1998 onward, WWE has gone to the “reference the Montreal Screwjob” well time and time and time again.
The Screwjob itself had its roots in the very, very real animosity between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels behind the scenes in WWF, and it was clear they would not have been able to coexist in the same company any longer. Not just in the traditional WWE “can they coexist” tag team partner sense, but in the “they hate each other’s guts and might very well beat the crap out of one another in real life” sense.
It eventually took over a decade for Hart to patch up his relationship with WWE and with Shawn Michaels, and even longer for him to patch up his differences with referee Earl Hebner.
One of the main events of WrestleMania XXVI is still viewed by fans as one of the most regrettable major matches in recent memory, as Hart and Vince McMahon had an extremely long street fight. You can refresh your memory of that match below, or you can just skip right over it. It’s fine. No one will blame you.
In my opinion, the very best thing to come out of the Screwjob was the amazing Wrestling With Shadows documentary, as Bret Hart somehow had lined up a documentary team and gotten them complete backstage access to film his life as WWF Champion while all of this stuff was falling apart. They managed to film all of it, including a groggy Vince McMahon leaving the locker room after being supposedly knocked out by Hart following the Screwjob.
If you’ve never seen it before, this is a documentary that is worth 100 percent of your time. And it’s on YouTube in its entirety!
Somehow, there are still truthers and conspiracy enthusiasts who still think there’s something deeper at work here, like maybe Bret Hart was in on the whole thing, and/or that Vince McMahon knew this could potentially tank WCW for good, but we tend to take it at face value (and what HBK and Hart and McMahon have owned up to at this point): Michaels and McMahon conspired to take the title off Hart without his knowledge, for fear that he might take it to the competition and pull an Alundra Blayze.
And you really don’t need any conspiracy theories beyond that. It was a shocking, simply unbelievable event that changed the course of pro wrestling, and we’ll likely be talking about it for another 20 years.
