The Montreal Screwjob remains perhaps the greatest controversy and scandal in the history of the WWF. On Nov. 9, 1997, a dark cloud hovered over Vince McMahon and his business after Bret 'The Hitman' Hart left the WWF following bizarre circumstances.
That night, Hart faced arch-rival Shawn Michaels for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship at the Survivor Series pay-per-view in Montreal. Hart was about to reluctantly leave for the Rival WCW promotion, but McMahon agreed to let him leave the WWF as World Champion in his home country.
But behind the scenes, Vince conspired with HBK, Triple H and other officials to legitimately screw over Hart. During the match, Michaels put The Hitman in his very own iconic Sharpshooter submission hold.
Hart never tapped out, but McMahon ordered referee Earl Hebner to ring the bell. Dismayed and shocked, Hart spat on Vince, destroyed company equipment and punched out the WWF chairman backstage. It left a major blemish on the wrestling world, and is still thoroughly discussed two decades later.
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And Hart was far from the only superstar who was infuriated. The Undertaker reportedly went over to McMahon's office and demanded he apologize. On top of that, both 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin and Edge feared for their jobs The two men dove into further detail on The Steve Austin Show (h/t WrestlingInc.com).
Here's what Edge said after the controversy took place:
"That just happened to the flagship guy, so how does the locker room have any trust now? If you're going to do that to Bret Hart, what are the chances of that happening to everybody else? Obviously, there's more that goes into that.
There [are] different sides to the story and all of those things, but I remember thinking, 'yeah, this is where I want to be, but this might be a weird place to be for a long time if there's still a place to be.'"
Here's Austin's side of the story:
"It was weird, man, because Davy 'Boy' [Smith] was going crazy. Owen was going crazy. That whole backstage thing..It was just weird coming off of that because, man, what is going to happen to this company? I mean, Bret was out world champion.
I was a huge Shawn [Michaels] fan, but Bret was the guy at that time, and so I was thinking, 'this is going downhill! You can't fire your world champion.' Dude, it was still like a shoot. I mean, we've all known it's a work, but at that level, it's a shoot. And, man, I didn't know what was going to happen. I thought the territory was going to go down."
Luckily, Vince was able to restore order, and the WWF would begin defeating WCW in the Monday Night Wars. Though Hart obviously got screwed in this scandal, he and Vince later made peace. The Hitman was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006, and he defeated Vince in a revenge match at WrestleMania XXVI.
Hart and Michaels - who were long-time rivals in the '90s - have since made amends and are now friends. Thankfully, this horrible scandal had a very happy ending for all parties involved.