Bret Hart has dismissed suggestions that he and Jim Neidhart deliberately ruined The Rockers’ planned WWE Tag Team Championship victory, calling Shawn Michaels’ comments a “cheap-shot remark”.

Speaking to Inside The Ropes, Hart recalled how a broken top rope derailed a match the two teams had spent all day preparing. Michaels and Marty Jannetty were booked to win the titles, and Hart believed they were about to deliver something special.

“I remember going, ‘This is going to be the best tag match ever.’ Like, it was going to be a five-star match, and the Rockers were super pumped up.”

Those hopes fell apart when Neidhart hit the turnbuckle and the top rope broke. Hart said he and Michaels urged referee Freddie Sparta to stop the match for repairs, but were repeatedly told to finish.

“I remember holding Shawn in a headlock, and I’m going, ‘Freddy, you got to fix the rope because we can’t do any of our moves. I can’t even do the Hart Attack without a top rope. I need a top rope.’”

With their planned moves disrupted, the match quickly unravelled.

“I was really frustrated. I started screwing up my moves and screwing up spots. We tripped. I remember it was like, ‘This match has turned out from being the greatest tag match we’re ever going to do to the worst match I’ve ever had in my life.’”

The Rockers still won the belts, but Hart said he later asked Vince McMahon not to broadcast the match because of its quality. He insisted neither he nor Neidhart had a problem with losing the titles.

“And it had nothing to do with the belts at all. I mean, me and Jim were happy to drop the belts to the Rockers.”

According to Hart, McMahon subsequently scrapped the title change, wiping out The Rockers’ victory.

“And I think it was a day later, Vince came up and said, ‘We’re just going to scratch the whole thing. It’s off.’”

What still bothers Hart is Michaels’ later suggestion that the Hart Foundation caused the problem deliberately.

“I know Shawn made comments years later that he thought we did it on purpose, which I thought was pretty cheap because I think he knows that we didn’t. I think it was just a cheap-shot remark out of Shawn when he was Shawn, you know.”

Hart’s position remains clear: both teams wanted the title change, but a broken rope and the failure to stop for repairs wrecked the match.

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