The Context 

Here we have Rick Martel in a shoot talking about Bret Hart. He said that the Hart Foundation wasn’t happy dropping the tag titles to Strike Force in 1987, but he wasn’t entirely sure why. He said he never took it personally because it was just business. When he was getting ready to leave the WWF in 1994, Martel was asked to put Bret over on a European tour. He didn’t want to, and he let the office know, but JJ Dillon pulled him aside, and he eventually put over Bret. 

There’s also a story mixed in about Georgia, Jim Barnett, and Gary Hart, with Martel saying Gary liked Martel in Georgia and helped get him into World Class later. 

Analysis 

When Martel says the Hart Foundation was upset dropping the straps, I’m sure he means Bret. They held the titles for just over nine months by that point, and Strike Force did catch on with the crowd as a new babyface tag team after Tom Zenk quit the promotion. I love Bret, but there were only three tag teams that had longer reigns than the Hart Foundation in the entire decade of the 1980s, so it was probably time. Martel says he liked Bret, but I’m also wondering why he didn’t want to initially put him over on a non-televised show in Europe if that was the case. Bret was a much bigger name than Martel in 1994, but who knows for certain? 

The Clip