Bret Hart says Vince McMahon ‘used wrestling as a backdrop for all of his evil’

Bret Hart believes that money may have turned Vince McMahon into a bad person.

The two-time WWE Hall of Famer was a guest on The Rise Guys podcast on Sunday and was asked about the possibility of McMahon returning to the wrestling business.

“Only if he buys another business. He’s got enough money. I heard something about him and Hulk Hogan might open up some kind of wrestling company or something. But I mean, I don’t have a lot of faith in that matchup,” Hart responded.

Asked whether McMahon had a great mind for wrestling, Hart said:

“From what I gather, talking to young wrestlers that are in WWE today, that Vince became a big obstacle to getting things done at the end. He became almost too much of a tyrant. He seemed to be unhappy with everything everybody was doing, and so would scrub ideas midway through the show. I had a lot of people tell me that since the day he left, it’s been tranquil and business has been better and everyone has a better attitude. So I mean, Vince may have just burned himself out after a while.”

Regarding the allegations of sexual misconduct levied against McMahon and former WWE executive John Laurinaitis, Hart said:

“Shame on all of them. I mean, that’s just terrible. I’ve had ups and downs with Vince McMahon, and in a lot of ways I have a lot of respect for him, but at the same time I find what happened there inexcusable. There’s no place for that. I think Vince McMahon became a predator and used wrestling as his backdrop for all of his, sort of, evil. And it just tells me that too much money can turn you into a bad person.”

Earlier in the conversation, Hart discussed some of the wrestlers he was influenced by before beginning his career in 1978. Hart mentioned Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Nick Bockwinkel, and Archie Gouldie.

“Nick Bockwinkel from the AWA up in Minneapolis was as good a wrestler as there ever was,” Hart said. “I don’t think anybody, you take all the classic champions like Dory Funk and Terry Funk and Harley Race, and there was nobody, none of those guys were better than Nick Bockwinkel.”

“I grew up with a guy named Archie ‘The Stomper’ Gouldie, who was a big villain in my dad’s territory. To me, he was one of the greatest wrestlers to ever put on a pair of boots. He was such a great villain, such a great worker,” he continued.

Gouldie received 43 votes for the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 2024, just staying above the 10 percent needed to remain on the ballot. The others Hart mentioned, Bockwinkel, Fujinami, and Inoki, were all selected as part of the WON HOF first class of inductees in 1996.

Hart’s full appearance on The Rise Guys podcast is available below: