If Vince McMahon had consulted with The Undertaker, the Montreal Screwjob might never have happened.
Whether that’s a good thing is debatable. As ugly as the episode was for WWE (then WWF) it ultimately begot an enormous business boon at a time when rival WCW was winning the so-called Monday Night War. Nevertheless, Undertaker believes he could’ve stepped in for Shawn Michaels in a match with then-champion Bret Hart and end things smoothly for all parties as Hart left for WCW after a contract dispute. Hart didn’t want to drop the title to Michaels, with whom Hart had real-life animosity, in his native Canada.
“I was pissed,” Undertaker, real name Mark Calaway, said of the Montreal Screwjob on “The Bill Simmons Podcast.” “I was pissed about the whole thing because I felt like there, I possibly could’ve been used to get what we needed. Take Shawn out of this, let me do it, and then I’ll do business on the other side, and I think Bret probably would’ve went for that.
“There was such disdain at that time between the two of them, and Bret was leaving. But I was just kind of, at that point I was like, if … it’s (McMahon’s) company and he did what he thought was best, but I was like, ‘Dude, I think I could’ve helped this whole thing out. I’m right here and you know I’m gonna do business.’ But it happened, and I was real pissed.”
Hart has said over the years that Undertaker was the one who banged on McMahon’s door after the Nov. 9, 1997 incident to order the WWE CEO to explain himself to Hart — who then punched McMahon in the face.
But Undertaker saved his longer talk with McMahon for the next day at “Monday Night Raw.” Wrestlers are supposed to show up around noon on television days, Undertaker says, but he showed up around 5 p.m. and was ready to explode. Undertaker was worried about what might happen, so he tried calming himself down before confronting McMahon to hear his side of the story.
“‘If this kind of s–t happens again, you’ve got to involve me here, because it doesn’t have to go down like this,’” Undertaker says he told McMahon. “And he agreed. I guess it all worked out. It was sad. I’m really tight with Bret. Bret could’ve done some things differently; Shawn could’ve done things differently; Vince could’ve done things differently. But … that’s one of the great wrestling stories of that era and that decade, the Montreal Screwjob.”