Bret Hart, the legendary wrestler and author of the fantastic book Hitman joined John Kline for a 25-minute interview on Elevation Radio Friday night. Joining Kline live from the island paradise of Hawaii with birds chirping in the background and sunshine raining down, Bret spoke about many topics including the process he used to recall information for his book, his experiences as a young wrestler in hostile Puerto Rico, his fantastic in-ring chemistry with the likes of Curt Hennig, the Undertaker and Steve Austin, his current relationship with Vince McMahon, his thoughts on today’s WWE product, and whether he would ever be willing to talk to Shawn Michaels again. Bret spoke about how the reason his book is more accurate than most other wrestlers’ accounts is because throughout his career he recorded a collection of audio tapes in order to document what exactly happened during his career and to keep all of facts straight. He cites Tom Billington’s book as an example of an account with glowing inaccuracies: “Some of these wrestlers books, you read these stories and I can assure you they’re really wrong……I can cite way too many examples in Dynamite Kid’s book for example where you go ‘that’s not even close to what really happened like the real stories and stuff, he was just so muddled at the end that he just had stories mixed together…..but in my case I can say when you’re reading a lot of the little stories in there and a lot of the little incidents that happened when I tell you who was in the room, that’s exactly who was in the room, because that’s exactly what I would have told myself, like that’s the reason I made the tapes, to be really accurate.”

Bret discussed his time in the original Hart Foundation and how being paired with Jim Neidhart helped save his career and helped the Hitman launch into super stardom: “I don’t think I would have made it, if it hadn’t been for Jim Neidhart. I think I would have never gotten a chance…..to show what my talents were. Being tagged up with Jim allowed me to almost sort of hide behind him and get my foot in the door and work with a lot of big guys who weren’t always so cooperative to work with,……in many ways the tag of me and Jim being mixed together was perfect. And it gave me a chance to grow and get my confidence.”

Bret discussed his current relationship and whether he has any sort of communication with Vince McMahon today: “Generally we’re not in contact with one another, but if either one of us is trying to get ahold of each other we can do it easy enough. The last time I spoke to Vince we were more than cordial. He was really quite grateful that I spoke up a little bit about Chris Benoit and what happened there. …..I don’t know for sure how he liked my book or not . . .I wasn’t especially worried about how it affected Vince or offended Shawn (HBK) or offended (Hulk) Hogan. All these people said enough about me and it was time to tell how it was from my perspective. I think Vince is OK with me, but who knows?”