It's been well documented that Bret Hart blames Bill Goldberg for ending his in-ring career, and even though the two have since buried the hatchet (well, supposedly), it's clear that the legendary WWE Hall of Famer still holds grudge.
Hart and Goldberg faced off in the main event of WCW Starcade 1999, and during the match, Bill hit Bret with a stiff mule kick to the head as he was coming off the ropes. Hart finished the bout with a severe concussion, and the injury would ultimately result in him retiring less than a year later.
Hart has spoken about this incident in the past, but he would go into much more detail during his Confessions of the Hitman poscast.
“[Goldberg] was a gorilla. [Goldberg] was a guy that nobody seemed to have taught how wrestling really works. He seemed to think he could just pick a guy up and just slam him through the mat as hard as you could and that was good wrestling. But I always liked Bill as a person. His wrestling, his workrate was 0/10.
Like, everything he did hurt – everything! He could tie up with you and hurt you. He’d tie up with himself and hurt himself! The kick was the work of a total– like, somebody who had absolutely no skill at all. He literally threw me into the ropes and tried to kick my head off my shoulders. Like, there was no working aspect to it. There’s no way you can do it without hurting somebody, and the thing with Bill was that all the ‘I’m sorries’ in the world don’t mean anything when you hurt somebody for real.”
Goldberg has apologized publicly, but Hart says it took him a while, and that he was initially dismissive of what happened.
You might think Bret is being a little too bitter about something that happened over 20 years ago, but this was far from an isolated incident. Goldberg has been called "unsafe" by many other people, and you only have to watch his recent match debacle with The Undertaker to see that it's a fair assessment.
What do you guys make of Hart's comments?