Podcast on a Pole is a monthly episodic podcast, looking back at wrestling’s Monday Night War, through the eyes of one’s of its biggest influences, Vince Russo. As the head-writer as both the WWE and WCW, Russo was involved with some of wrestling’s most famous segments, featuring the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, DX, Bret Hart, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Goldberg, the NWO and more.

On this episode of Podcast on a Pole, we take an in depth look at July 1997, as Vince Russo verbalises his unforgettable experience of travelling to Canada to witness the building shaking Canadian Stampede PPV— which saw Bret Hart’s Hart Foundation return to Calgary and receive a Prophet-like response, as they overcame a Stone Cold lead Team USA, in front of the entire Hart family and a rabid hometown crowd. The entrances alone are incredible to watch, as the Saddledome fans erupted for the Hart Foundation, for one of the most “sustained reactions” in WWE history. Meanwhile, Team USA— Austin, Shamrock, Goldust, and LOD, were savagely booed. Canadian Stampede would sadly be the last great moment of the legendary Hart family’s WWF legacy. 

July was a crucial month in the USA vs Hart Foundation storyline. For those of you joining us late in the proceedings, the WWE was changing in the spring/summer of 1997.

Stone Cold Steve Austin – who in any other year before would have been a dastardly heel – was becoming the company’s hottest babyface, while Bret Hart – a longtime good guy in WWE – was being rejected by the modern fans, and decided to turn heel. shortly thereafter, Bret reunited with his brother Owen, brothers-in-law The British Bulldog and Jim Neidhart, and longtime family friend Brian Pillman, to form The new Hart Foundation. This was debatably Bret’s finest year in the WWF, as But Hart’s transition to heel alone, was a groundbreaking storyline, but when you factor the twist that The Hart Foundation bashed America every week on TV - and were booed as heels in the US - but we’re cheered as babyfaces everywhere else on the planet, this really was an unforgettable and groundbreaking period in WWF history, that you’ll never experience ever again. You’ll also never see it covered more extensively, on a month to month basis, than right here on Podcast on a Pole— from the man responsible for writing it.

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