Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret Hitman Hart’s match at WrestleMania 13 was a masterpiece. It would be hard to book a better double turn than what happened that night in Chicago. Each man gave their all and the images from the match and the course of history it changed afterward are still remembered to this day for being some of the biggest milestones in pro wrestling history.
In a recent episode of Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard, they went into all things WrestleMania 13. Needless to say, Bruce had an interesting revelation about Bret and Steve’s blood bath of a match-up.
Earlier on in the podcast, Conrad said Steve Austin wrote in his book that he was nervous about bleeding at WrestleMania against Bret Hart so he asked Hitman to “zip him” during the match. Bret cut Stone Cold’s forehead with a razor and the images of Stone Cold pushing up from the Sharpshooter with his own blood running down his face and into his mouth were immortalized.
However, Bruce Prichard says they did it all without permission.
“Well, first of all nobody knew anybody was ‘zipping’ anybody […] No one knew they were getting color” Bruce said meaning nobody in WWE knew Austin and Hart were planning on drawing blood during their match except for the two wrestlers involved. “No, they did not have approval of getting color in the match and no one knew.”
Conrad asked if Bruce was ribbing him, “No I’m not ribbing you” Prichard replied. “Vince was livid. Vince wasn’t only livid for the fact they got color without permission, he was livid about the fact that they f—– up the mat for the rest of the show.”
Bruce says Hart and Austin thought it would add to the match, so they did it without permission. Even though they bled without permission, the cameras still shot the pools of blood during the contest. Bruce says the production truck probably thought it was part of the match so they just went along with it.
“[Bret] felt that the match needed it” Bruce said. “That was just something that he did and Vince was pissed off about it and talked to him about it. I don’t know what else he did about it, but no — I didn’t know, Vince didn’t know, the agent didn’t know. But Vince was pissed. Vince was pissed on a lot of different levels. Not knowing they were gonna do it and f—— up the mat.”
Bruce said Vince talked about fining Bret Hart and Steve Austin, but he doesn’t know if McMahon did it. But one thing is for sure, Vince McMahon was not happy about it. Prichard said McMahon “chewed all of our asses out like we knew, and we’re all looking at each other. Nobody knew. We thought watching it live that it was hard-way.”
If you use any of the quotes from this article please credit Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription.
