Bruce Hart is a member of the legendary Hart wrestling dynasty and is brother to the more famous Bret and Owen Hart. While he may have been forgotten by mainstream wrestling, Bruce Hart has acquired quite the reputation over the years which can be described as less than flattering.
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Bruce Hart’s Beginnings
Bruce Hart was trained to wrestle in the legendary Hart Dungeon with his father Stu Hart, as were most of the Hart Brothers. Bruce’s wrestling debut came in his father’s promotion Stampede Wrestling, a promotion he would end up booking some time later (quite controversially, some would say). Bruce did make it to WWE alongside his brothers Bret and Owen, but he had nowhere near the success they did.
Bruce made his first appearance in WWE on August 16, 1992, siding with Davey Boy Smith and would team with his brothers Owen, Bret, and Keith at Survivor Series 93 to face Shawn Michaels and his Knights. Bruce made more appearances in WWE alongside family members but never achieved solo success in the company. Not for the want of trying though, Bruce was routinely doing everything he could to get in front of the camera, forcing himself into the Bret/Owen confrontation at Survivor Series 93, when Bret and Owen alone would have been a better story.
Tyson Kidd tells the story on Talk is Jericho that Bruce Hart wasn’t ready for his role in the Bret Hart vs. Vince McMahon match at WrestleMania 26, with Billy Kidman even having to give Bruce his jacket seconds before the Hart’s walked through the curtain. Bruce was also said to be pitching storylines for himself that would go through to Summerslam when it really wasn’t his place to be doing so.
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Why Does Everybody Hate Bruce?
While Bruce was a mainstay in Stampede Wrestling, many believed the breaks he got in the business were not through talent and hard work but simply because he was his mother’s favorite.
Bruce wasn’t as good a wrestler as Bret or Owen, he didn’t really have a particularly good look, and he wasn’t the best booker, though Bruce Hart is a prime example of someone being the star of their own story. If you listen to Bruce Hart speak, you would think he is a revolutionary in the wrestling business. In an interview with The Fight Club Chicago, he calls his own brother Bret Hart a mark for himself, in spite of having just a fraction of Bret’s success. Also, notice how he casually takes credit for Bret’s success at the beginning of the quote?
"I have the utmost respect for Bret as a worker. I've actually done a lot for Bret, and I'm not taking any bows for any of his credits for whatever he has achieved. I think truth be known, Bret's a bit of a mark for himself. It's something some people become. He was more for himself than anyone else, which is fine I guess. In the wrestling business in a way, it's a team thing. Everyone benefits from the guys there you're working with. You can't do it all by yourself... I think sometimes, Bret lost sight of that. Even with Montreal, I felt that both Bret and Vince, neither one of them did the wrestling business justice with the way they handled it. Bret was disenchanted with my take on that. I have a lot of respect for Bret, but he's sometimes more for himself than anyone else. That's probably his biggest fault."
There have been many unflattering stories about Bruce Hart over the years, some even coming from his own family members, with Bret Hart and Diana Hart both painting less than flattering pictures of him in their respective autobiographies. Diana’s book, Under the Mat: Inside Wrestling's Greatest Family, is particularly scandalous, noting her brother Bruce had an affair with a 15-year-old student and got her pregnant before eventually marrying her.
In a shoot interview with Title Match Network in 2005, Bad News Brown said that when Bad News was leaving Calgary, Stu Hart had told him that he wishes Bruce would leave as well, saying, "I wish somebody would take that little **** ***hole Bruce Hart off to their territory and maybe put him in the first match every night and just beat the **** out of him, and after they beat the **** out of him just go and pee on him every night, that little *******.”
Whatever Bruce Hart’s legacy in wrestling is, he is hated by a lot of his peers, many wrestling historians don’t treat him kindly and even his own family members take shots at him in their own autobiographies. That is quite a legacy for somebody who is more or less forgotten about in modern wrestling.
