Montreal Screwjob

The Montreal Screwjob (also called the Montreal Incident) was an infamous unscripted professional wrestling incident that occurred on November 9, 1997, at the Survivor Series pay-per-view produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in Montreal. During the WWF Championship match between Shawn Michaels and champion Bret Hart, WWF owner Vince McMahon and select WWF employees covertly manipulated the predetermined outcome of the match in favor of Michaels; the screwjob occurred without Hart's knowledge, causing him to lose the championship. Hart had been WWF Champion since August 1997. A week prior to Survivor Series, Hart, who performed for the WWF since 1984, agreed to join rival wrestling promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from December 1997. McMahon sought to prevent Hart from leaving WWF as champion, but Hart was unwilling to lose to Michaels – with whom he had a legitimate feud – at Survivor Series, as it was taking place in his home country of Canada. The match was planned to end in disqualification, causing Hart to retain the title, and then losing or forfeiting it at a later date. Instead, under McMahon's direction, referee Earl Hebner ended the match as Michaels held Hart in the sharpshooter submission hold (Hart's signature move); although Hart did not submit, Michaels was declared the winner by submission and became WWF Champion. As a result of the screwjob, McMahon and Michaels elicited angry responses from Canadian audiences for many years; McMahon was viewed by many fans to have betrayed Hart, who was one of the WWF's longest-tenured and popular performers at the time. The screwjob caused several changes and impacts to the professional wrestling industry: according to WWE, the incident is considered the beginning of the Attitude Era, leading to McMahon featuring as a villainous on-screen character on WWF television, and has been used as a theme in matches and storylines across the wrestling industry. It was also partly chronicled in the documentary film Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows (1998).

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Montreal Screwjob