True Story Of Bret Hart Vs. British Bulldog At WWE SummerSlam 1992

When fans compile their top SummerSlam matches of all time, there's always one bit of majesty that inevitably rests at or near the top of the heap. On Saturday, August 29, 1992, before a reported 80,000 strong at London's Wembley Stadium, The British Bulldog outlasted Intercontinental Champion, and brother-in-law, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, to capture the title. 

The epic 25-plus minute struggle received universal acclaim, and Hart, no stranger to engineering legendary battles, considers the title bout to be his greatest match ever. While the memories of the British Bulldog's triumph are fond, the match itself faced many challenges - some prior to it happening, and some during.

Bret Hart and Davey Boy Smith first crossed paths more than 11 years prior. The 18-year-old future "British Bulldog" arrived in Calgary from his native England in May of 1981, joining cousin Tom "Dynamite Kid" Billington in the Hart family's Stampede Wrestling. Within weeks of settling into the territory, Smith was teaming with Bret in tag bouts against Dynamite and the other assorted villains of the circuit.

Though the two were frequent partners, they could also be opponents. Hart defended the Stampede North American Heavyweight Title against Smith a handful of times in 1983, and the two also squared off in New Japan's Junior Heavyweight Tag League at the onset of 1984.

Once Vince McMahon bought out Stampede Wrestling later that year (the same year in which Smith married Bret's sister, Diana), WWE took on both men, along with Dynamite, plus fellow in-law Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart. None of the quartet were steadily teaming with each other at the time, but by 1985, the virtuous British Bulldogs and villainous Hart Foundation were bringing much-needed speed, science, and deftness to a slower-moving World Wrestling Federation, oftentimes against each other.

It was in January of 1987 that the Harts defeated Smith and a badly-ailing Dynamite in a brief TV match to become WWE World Tag Team Champions, ending their in-laws' 10-month stranglehold on the belts.

By 1992, so much had changed for all four men. Dynamite finally called it a career due to his body breaking down, hanging up the boots around his 33rd birthday. Neidhart had been fired from WWE in February for refusing to take a drug test. Smith, who had left WWE in 1988 along with his cousin, returned two years later as a singles act. Referred to singularly as "The British Bulldog", Smith looked the part of an English Superman, and was featured prominently on WWE cards across the pond.

As for "The Hitman", his own singles push began after splitting from Neidhart in 1991, following six years as a dependable duo. At that year's SummerSlam, Hart upended Mr. Perfect to capture the Intercontinental Title for the first time. Amid a sea of heavyweights, the lighter Hart was presented as a "workhorse" champion, the gritty technician that didn't require high-volume bluster to be a hero for millions. Hart proved to be a formidable star in Europe, particularly (like Smith) in the United Kingdom.

Hart's push as a featured player showed no signs of slowing down, as evidenced by his clean win over the rarely-defeated Rowdy Roddy Piper at WrestleMania 8 to win back the Intercontinental Title. But as Hart geared up for another strong run with the the strap, who would "The Hitman" work with at SummerSlam and where would the event even take place?

Up until the end of May, the event had been scheduled for Monday, August 31, at the Capital Centre, in the Washington DC suburb of Landover, Maryland. Then suddenly, WWE pivoted, choosing London's Wembley Stadium for the venue, opting to hold the show two days earlier, and then broadcast it on tape delay in the United States on the 31st.

The change made perfect sense, as the wrestling business was tanking badly in the United States. Although WrestleMania drew more than 45,000 paid fans to Indianapolis' Hoosier Dome, Mania was a flower among the weeds, as houses were way down otherwise, all the while the company dealt with a handful of troubling scandals, and fans continued tuning out.

Conversely, WWE business was booming across Europe. A tour of the continent just after WrestleMania proved successful - London's Wembley Arena sold out for back-to-back shows, drawing six-figure gates for each night. Although the Capital Centre was pencilled in for SummerSlam, London remained very much under consideration due to the rampant popularity of WWE in the UK, and by the end of May, the company elected to take SummerSlam overseas.

Tickets went on sale later in June and it was abundantly clear that WWE had made the right call - more than 60,000 seats were sold within the first week, according to Wembley officials.

The change in venue also meant a change in booking. Early plans for SummerSlam were for Hart to drop the IC Title to another old tag team rival of his - Shawn Michaels. In fact, the bout would've potentially been a Ladder Match, per Hart's suggestion. Though the two did demonstrate the ladder gimmick at a TV taping later that summer, the decision had been made long before then to go with Bulldog as Hart's dethroner.

Since returning at the end of 1990, Davey Boy Smith had been a featured attraction on the company's major UK cards, whether it was one of the Rampage cards in the spring, or, famously, winning the Royal Albert Hall battle royal in October of 1991. He even pinned Ric Flair on one of the aforementioned Wembley Arena cards in 1992. Thus, slotting Bulldog into a main event slot to outlast Hart to capture the IC Title sounded like a wise play.

In making the choice to go with Bulldog, however, WWE was also assuming a risk. The promotion was now under heavier scrutiny when it came to steroids and other substances, and at the end of April, the Bulldog had been suspended for the better part of six weeks for flunking a drug test. He'd be back on the road regularly by mid-June, though, and knowing this, Hart pitched losing to his brother-in-law at Wembley, back when Vince was still deciding between DC and London.

To build the SummerSlam match between the sworn babyface allies, interviews were conducted with Hart family members, including parents Stu and Helen, as well as several of Bret's siblings (chiefly Diana). Most of the comments affirmed support for their loved ones, while also underscoring the fear that the match had the potential to create a serious rift among the entire family.

Hart wanted to use the occasion to put Bulldog over in grand fashion, to give the local hero a monumental coronation at the end of a gruelling competition between comrades. However, six weeks out from the card, Bret had become concerned that his muscular brother-in-law might be arriving in London in less-than-mint condition.

At a TV taping in Binghamton, New York at the end of June, the two wrestled something akin to an untelevised "practice match", during which Smith apparently broke his nose. Three weeks later, the toll was much more severe when Smith was sent home from the mid-July tapings with a serious knee injury.

The British Bulldog was being kept off the road until SummerSlam, replaced in advertised house show bookings by everyone from Crush, to Road Warrior Animal, to Bushwhacker Luke, to a truly random showing from former AWA Tag Team Champion Doug Somers who took on Repo Man one night in Augusta, Georgia in Davey's stead. The problems didn't end there.

According to Bret, he constantly reached out to Smith at his Florida home, only for Diana to vaguely tell him that he was out somewhere with Neidhart. According to Hart's memoirs, he finally got a hold of The Anvil just hours before he left for England and his former partner, who had taken the Smiths to the airport, dropped a rather startling bombshell. As Bret wrote, “Davey was high as a kite when he caught his flight, Jim said, because he'd been up all night smoking crack with him!”

After confidently giving McMahon his word that he and Davey would deliver mightily in the final match of the night, Hart was now having doubts about what awaited him across the ocean.

Upon arrival in London, Hart was unable to track Bulldog down until the night before SummerSlam, during the entrance rehearsal. When he confronted Smith over why he hadn't returned his calls in the preceding weeks, the Bulldog reportedly confirmed the stories of him and Neidhart's shared indulgences. Determined to make sure that the match wasn't a disaster, Hart claims he sat Bulldog down and began going over the structure of their main event match, going so far as to make Bulldog repeat the spots back to him, to show that he was comprehending and committing.

To make matters potentially more daunting, McMahon would be seated ringside on commentary with Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, and during the show, there would be one glaring instance of a wrestler performing in less than prime condition. Road Warrior Hawk had openly taken several sedatives before he and partner Animal's match with Money Inc. While Animal, Ted DiBiase, and IRS held the match together well enough, Animal claimed McMahon had noticed Hawk's lethargic state, and was livid. The last thing SummerSlam 1992 needed was a second superstar to be too messed up to do their job.

Alas, Smith entered first, led by heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, who waved the Union Jack high over his head. Reigning champion Hart followed, understanding full well that he was the de facto heel in this contest, but that was fine - he was all about putting over the Bulldog strong in his homeland, making him into an even bigger hero to his countrymen if that were even possible.

With Diana Hart-Smith watching from among the dizzying sea of humanity, champion and challenger opened the match with a few simple spots that made Bulldog out to be a hair stronger than his opponent. But when Hart spun Smith to the mat with a headlock takeover, his confidante reportedly told him, “Bret, I'm fooked. I can't remember anything!”

From that point on, for the 23 or so minutes that followed, Hart remembers "calling out every single high spot for Davey, sometimes even the necessary facial expressions, helping him conserve what little stamina he had." Hart even remembers going up as light as possible on every lifting manoeuvre, to keep things easy on Smith so that he didn't run out of gas.

To Hart's credit, nobody outside of him, Bulldog, and referee Joey Marella were any the wiser, given how seamlessly the rest of the match came together. When the time came for Smith to make the preordained babyface comeback, Hart continued calling the spots. Running powerslams, German suplexes, superplexes, along with the dramatic near-falls, led to an even more thrilling finishing sequence.

After both men laid each other out with a stereo clothesline, Hart slid on his back to where Smith's legs were. Quickly, he twisted the Bulldog's limbs into a grapevine, and then rolled onto their collective stomachs before hoisting up into the Sharpshooter. According to Bret, he'd actually devised the move in the middle of the night one night. In his moment of inspiration, he woke wife Julie up and asked her to play along, as he experimented with the unorthodox Sharpshooter application.

Entrenched in the hold, Smith dramatically dragged Hart with him toward the ropes in order to force the break. From there, all that was really left was the pinfall sequence, which began with Hart attempting a sunset flip. Bulldog countered by hooking both the Hitman's legs, falling forward to execute his own pin, and triggering an explosive crowd reaction from inside Wembley.

Smith celebrated with wife Diana, playing to the crowd before Bret, after letting disappointment briefly mar his sense of sportsmanship, walked over and shook Bulldog's hand. It was the capper to a match that was already in the process of cementing itself into SummerSlam lore.

The title bout may have been an instant classic, and might still hold up today as a genuine all-timer, but from a business standpoint, the response was somewhat mixed. On the one hand, a reported crowd of over 80,000 accounted for a hefty sum of $2.7 million at the box office, according to Dave Meltzer. However, on pay-per-view, the event was only good for 280,000 buys, down from the 405,000 that bought the previous year's event. At the time, it marked the fifth least-bought Big Four pay-per-view in WWE history, out of 18 events up to that point.

The match pretty much represented the peak of Davey Boy Smith in professional wrestling. Curiously, he was kept off of a brief tour of the UK a month later, instead working against Shawn Michaels on the American live event loop, while Hart and others hit up Sheffield and Birmingham.

The Bulldog never got to defend the championship in his native region. Two months after capturing the gold, he dropped it to Michaels on an episode of Saturday Night's Main Event that aired shortly before Survivor Series. That match was taped in late October, and on November 8, Smith worked his final WWE date for nearly two years, defeating Papa Shango at a house show in Portland, Maine.

Though he was scheduled to wrestle The Mountie at that year's Survivor Series, Smith was fired from the company, along with The Ultimate Warrior, roughly one week before the pay-per-view, on account of both men receiving shipments of growth hormone from the United Kingdom. Smith went on to briefly wrestle in a fledgling ECW, and later WCW, before returning to WWE in the summer of 1994.

As for Hart, the title loss at SummerSlam only freed him up to capture the big one. On October 12, at a TV taping in Saskatoon, Hart defeated Ric Flair to win the WWE Championship for the first of five occasions. With Hulk Hogan gone, previous champion Randy Savage phased down, and WWE suddenly shifting its focus toward guys not known for having unrealistic physiques, the popular, reliable, and earnest "Hitman" became the ideal choice for flag bearer.

By the time Hart leapfrogged Smith on the championship depth chart, SummerSlam felt more and more like a distant memory, and once Smith and Warrior (the challengers in SummerSlam's singles title matches) were fired, it was positively ancient.

However, the match endures to this day, regarded as one of the most extraordinary matches in WWE's long history. Without knowing the story, Hart vs. Smith was extraordinary for the performances we saw. But knowing what we know now, the word "extraordinary" still applies, and takes on a whole other meaning.