Montreal Screwjob

The Montreal Screwjob, also called the Montreal Incident, was a notorious professional wrestling incident where the outcome of a major match was changed, without one of the wrestlers being informed, in order to "screw over" Bret Hart, who was in bitter conflict with his employer, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) owner Vince McMahon at the time. It occurred on November 9, 1997, at the Survivor Series pay-per-view event produced by the WWF in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. During the WWF Championship match between Shawn Michaels and champion Hart, McMahon, who was in charge of matches and storylines, and producer of the show – and a small number of WWF employees, most significantly the referee – covertly changed the predetermined outcome of the match in favor of Michaels; the screwjob occurred without Hart's knowledge, causing him to lose the championship. Hart took the incident as a personal insult because he did not wish to lose the title to Michaels after he had told him that he would never do the same for him. With this event, the term "screwjob" came into wrestling parlance.

Hart had been WWF Champion since SummerSlam 1997. A week prior to Survivor Series, Hart, who had 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 the WWF as champion; Hart was unwilling to lose to Michaels – with whom he had a legitimate feud – at Survivor Series due to Michaels telling him to his face that he would never do the same for him if the positions were reversed. The match was originally planned to end in disqualification, causing Hart to retain the title, and then losing or forfeiting it at a later date. Instead, as the match approached the 20th minute (a standard length for a televised WWF title match), under McMahon's direction, referee Earl Hebner ended the contest as Michaels held Hart in the Sharpshooter (a submission hold and Hart's signature move); although Hart did not submit, Michaels was declared the winner by submission and became WWF Champion. Michaels and other officials left the arena in a scramble, after which were several altercations backstage involving the pair and a number of other WWE superstars and staff, including McMahon being punched in the face and knocked unconscious by Hart.

As a result of the screwjob, McMahon and Michaels elicited angry responses from Canadian audiences and others for many years, with McMahon viewed by many fans to have betrayed Hart, who was one of the WWF's longest-tenured and most popular performers at the time. The incident is considered one of the beginnings of the Attitude Era, and unintentionally led to the creation of McMahon's villainous (heel) on-screen character, "Mr. McMahon", on WWF television broadcasts. The Montreal Screwjob garnered a notorious legacy; accounts differ as to who exactly was involved in the plan and the extent of their involvement, while some wrestling fans, performers and bookers believe the incident was an elaborate work executed in collaboration with Hart, which he denies. Hart did not return to the WWE until his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in April 2006. Later legitimately reconciling with McMahon and Michaels, Hart returned in January 2010 for his first live appearance on WWE programming since the incident, with the screwjob used in a storyline between McMahon and Hart, leading to a match at WrestleMania XXVI. Longtime industry writer Mike Johnson referred to the screwjob as "arguably the most talked-about [event] in the history of professional wrestling". The incident was partly chronicled in the documentary film Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows (1998).