It’s Bret Hart’s turn on WWE’s Most Wanted Treasures, as hosts Booker T, Mick Foley, Lita, along with guests Natalya and Hart himself, seek out some of the most memorable accessories from Hart’s career. In truth, there are really only two things that stand out: Hart’s entrance jackets and the sunglasses he would give away to fans, but that’ll do for an hour-long episode such as this.
As is custom, the show opens with a look back at the career of the wrestler in focus, with all three hosts rightly praising Hart’s technical prowess and commitment to his matches — though Booker T stretches the truth a bit to say that Hart was also a master at showmanship. He then speaks with Hart to talk about what they would most like to find, and it comes down to the ring jacket that Hart wore into his match against Roddy Piper at WrestleMania VIII (valued between $10 and $15K), one of Jim Neidhart’s jackets from their time together as the Hart Foundation ($5-$10K), and finally the glasses that Hart gave away before the 1997 Survivor Series main event against Shawn Michaels ($1K-$2K).
Most wrestlers on this series admit to having lost or sold a lot of the memorabilia that now exists in the wild, but not Hart. He says that many of his things were stolen from him over the years which, let’s be honest, fits the Hitman’s narrative perfectly. It’s something that the show aims to fix, as we’ll see in the end.
The journey kicks off with Foley picking up Hart and taking him to the WWE warehouse in Stamford, CT. Booker T meets them and reminds us that there was a little more to Hart than a jacket and sunglasses, and lets Bret first get his hands on his crown and robe from his 1993 King of the Ring victory, then on a large trophy he was given for being named Superstar of the Year, also in 1993.
Natalya joins them and brings along her dad’s ring jacket, and after they reminisce some more about the Hart Foundation, Foley asks her if she’d loan it to their collection. After a tense moment (not really), she agrees, and the episode has their first pick-up.
Bret has to go (off to a comic-con, it seems), but Natalya goes along with Foley to find the next two pieces. First up is a meeting with Tim Jamison in Indiana, who Mick had met in the first season to obtain his original Mankind shirt. Now they’re back, and Jamison says he knew as soon as he saw Nattie they were after Bret’s merch.
And Jamison has a lot of it. Hart is his favourite wrestler, and his basement is full of Hart and Hart Foundation memorabilia — too bad Bret couldn’t personally make the trip for him. Natalya finds the jacket they’re looking for, but Tim immediately refutes Foley’s overtures to buy it. Foley’s next play is to reveal to Jamison that after the WWE has their time to display it, the jacket will be returned to Hart (something that Mick says he wasn’t actually supposed to reveal), and that changes Tim’s perspective. He suggests a trade for some of Hart’s artwork, and Natalya says she’ll reach out to Bret and is sure she can make that happen — along with the $10,000.
Now there’s just one thing left as Natalya is on the move again, meeting Lita in New York City to find the “Screwjob Sunglasses,” as Lita calls them. They’re meeting Peter Rosenberg, who has the glasses they’re looking for. He tells how he was doing an interview with a vintage sunglasses collector in Montreal and ended up obtaining the glasses — though Lita says they have to verify that these are the right glasses, since thousands of them were handed out. Very quickly, after checking video of the match, they all realize they are legit Bret Hart glasses, but not the ones he wore into the Montreal match. Rosenberg is crushed, yet also glad that he gets to keep his glasses.
Back in Stamford, Bret meets up with the crew again to hear about their hits and misses. He’s thrilled to see the jacket, and even more so to hear how it will be going back to him. He promises an illustration of the Hart Foundation for Tim, and thanks the crew.
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RELATED LINKS
- Slam Wrestling’s Bret Hart story archive
- Slam Wrestling’s WWE on A&E archive