The Shadow of Shawn and Bret: What Happens When All Elite Wrestling Stops Being Polite and Gets a Little Too Real?

Bret Hart came out of the schmozz with a handful of human hair, carrying Shawn Michaels’ long locks like victory totems, frizzy symbols of his triumph.

It was June 9, 1997.

It was a long time coming.

For months he and Michaels had gone back-and-forth behind-the-scenes, two very different but all too similar men battling for a single position at the top of the pecking order. Sometimes it’s obvious who the top star in a promotion is—Hogan, Dusty, Sammartino, Verne—and everyone else simply gets in line and tries to either work with or against them.

In this case, the position was wide open, with both men desperate to fill it.

Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had left for the competition, Steve Austin was still finding his way as a main event act and the Rock hadn’t yet started his meteoric rise to the top. Michaels and Hart had both failed once as the guy. Both were willing to do just about anything for another shot, with wrestling on the cusp of monumental change you could almost feel crackling in the air.

This time, Michaels had gone too far, drunkenly suggesting on live television that Bret had been having some “Sunny days.” Hardcore fans had no trouble parsing the not-so-subtle reference to the WWE’s most famous diva. Neither, unfortunately, had Bret’s wife watching at home in Calgary. Things had gone too far for either to back down. They were two 230-pound locomotives on a collision course that was impossible to divert.

In truth, it wasn’t much of a fight.

“No teeth were lost, no noses busted,” iconic announcer Jim Ross once told me. “The only thing really hurt were feelings.”

Pat Patterson, the legendary bump machine of yester-year and certified wrestling genius, got the worst of it, toppling in the fray as his two proteges were pulled, cursing and snarling, away from each other. Jerry Lawler, his peaceful locker-room dump interrupted, pulled up his tights, hopped off his throne and did his best to keep the dueling meal tickets apart. In this battle of egos and ideology, there were no winners and dignity was the loser all around.

Michaels, citing unsafe working conditions, wouldn’t return to the ring for more than two months. Hart, upset at the content of the new storylines and edgy direction that seemed to point towards an ascendent Michaels, would soon depart for WCW. Two of the best wrestlers of their generation, seemingly on the cusp of a main event program that would put their names in the same breath as Brisco vs. Funk and Flair vs. Steamboat, instead met a single time in the ring—to infamous results at Survivor Series 1997 in Montreal when the corporate machine colluded to cost Bret his championship belt in the most famous double cross in all of wrestling history.

The feud has become legend and lore now, romanticized to this day by people who may have missed the broader point. Incorporating real life grudges into their art didn’t lead to bigger business for Michaels and Hart. Bret’s career would never recover. Michaels would continue his perhaps inevitable plummet to an early, unhappy retirement.

Their flameout cleared the runway for Austin and Vince McMahon to fly as high as anyone ever has, obliterating box office and television records with nary a shoot reference to be heard.

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I’m thinking of Shawn and Bret today, of course, in the wake of All Elite Wrestling’s implosion, victim of Hurricane CM Punk. Such was the power of Montreal—any real life beef is analyzed and considered in the shadow of that fateful night.

If you haven’t seen it, following Punk’s title win at AEW All Out, he was sent out to meet the press and delivered what can only be described as an unhinged rant, furiously attacking his former friend Colt Cabana (SCOTT COLTON in this case, as shoot names were surely uttered) regarding a years old lawsuit.

“He shares a bank account with his mother,” Punk said. “That tells you all you need to know about what kind of character that is.”

Not content with that glimpse into real life, he proceeded to shush AEW owner Tony Khan and viciously attack Kenny Omega, Adam Page and the Young Bucks (the wrestlers upon whom the whole promotion was built) as dirtsheet leakers, fools, and men incapable of managing a Target store, let alone a wrestling promotion. Angry at an honestly indecipherable Page promo from months ago that he believed referenced Colton, Punk fired both barrels with little concern for collateral damage.

“There’s people who call themselves EVPs that should have fucking known better. This shit was none of their business,” Punk said. “I understand sticking up for your fucking friends. I fucking get it. I stuck up for that guy [Colton] more than anybody. I paid his bills until I didn’t and it was my decision not to.

“When somebody [Page] who hasn’t done a damn thing in this business jeopardizes the first million-dollar house that this company has ever drawn off of my back and goes on national television and does that, it’s a disgrace to this industry. It’s a disgrace to this company. Now, we’re far beyond apologies. I gave him a fucking chance. It did not get handled and you saw what I had to do, which is very regrettable, lowering myself to his fucking level, but that’s where we’re at right now. And I’ll still walk up and down this hallway and say ‘if you have a fucking problem with me, take it up with me.’ Let’s fucking go.”

According to backstage scuttlebutt, the Young Bucks and Omega did just that. Things escalated quickly. The Wrestling Observer reported:

there was a fight backstage afterward with Punk allegedly starting things by swinging fists at the Bucks' Matt Jackson. Punk trainer/friend and AEW producer Steel (part of the storyline that got Punk into Sunday's Jon Moxley match) threw a chair that hit the Bucks' Nick Jackson in the eye and blackened it. Steel (Chris Guy) allegedly bit Omega and grabbed his hair.

In the aftermath, no one was talking about the return of MJF, the likely centerpiece for the actual television program Warner Media is trying to sell advertisers, which is kind of the whole point if you’re AEW owner Tony Khan.

The biggest and most profitable feuds in wrestling history didn’t happen between mortal, behind-the-scenes enemies. They were a product of cooperative narrative story-telling. Ideally the scraps people care about are the ones happening in front of the camera. If the most interesting fights are the ones happening in whisper campaigns and backstage dustups, there are real issues.

What happens now is anyone’s guess. In the wacky world of wrestling, it’s unclear how much of this is even true. Or, honestly, what truth even means in a world built on lies. But one thing we know if past is prologue—whatever this is, it won’t likely lead to good business for Punk, the Elite or AEW.