I feel as though there are some things the layman is not quite caught up on.

You just saw me what? Kissing the Puro Providence Champion? I cannot confirm nor deny this.

(I confirm it because I know how all this turns out. Heh heh.)

But there is still a key part missing. Faye could do it herself, but she is a bit…biased in this story.

So today, sit upon Tio Tiburon’s knee and let me tutor you in the most infamous wrestling event of all time: The Montreal Screwjob.

If there is anything Thessaly may have taught me, it is the adolescent need to make things dirty. Screwjob is a very dirty word, but get your heads out of the gutter. No mal.

First things first – pro wrestling is about dramatics. So it’s a bit…staged. Cue the collective gasp. Fifty years ago, I would have been flogged and had my masked ripped off in shame, but today, this is par the course. But make no mistake – what we do takes genuine skill and ability. It is choreographed, yes, but it can hardly ever be called that ugly ‘f’ word. Now that you have all eaten that fruit of knowledge, we can proceed since we’re all out of Eden.

Now, Tio Tibby shall teach you some vocabulary that gets you all up behind that barred curtain. Your first word is ‘shoot.’ When something in wrestling is a ‘shoot,’ it means something is not going according to plan and is very, very real. Unusually, it is someone going off the script very deliberately. Second word: screwjob. Giggle as you may. Anyway, it is an action that means that at least one participant in a match is left out of the loop. They make think they’re winning but, oh my, it is not to be so. It is an indirect shoot because someone is very really locked out of the result until it’s all done.

Your third word is ‘kayfabe.’ The most important word of all. Think of kayfabe as the fourth wall. The true story. The canon. Basically, it is wrestling’s version of suspension of belief. Accept what is before you is real. As I said before, this was once so sacred that wrestlers would go to extremes to uphold it, such as remain in character out of the ring. But with the advent and rise of things like the entire Internet, that’s gotten quite difficult.

Now you know the terms, let’s look at the players. Oh, where did I put those? I had an old friend try making miniatures for playing Dungeons & Dragons. He started out on making tiny wrestling figures. Where did I…? AH! Here they are, yes.

This one here, the older man in the three-piece whose face looks like someone stretched it over their knee and has all his energy in his, well, guavos? This is Vince McMahon, Owner of the then World Wrestling Federation. But that was behind the scenes. On camera? Everyone just knew him as some dorky ringside commentator.

This one, the man with the long dark hair, the kickass sunglasses, donned in his signature black-and-pink wrestling tights and his even more iconic leather jacket? Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart. The Excellence of Execution. The top star in the WWF at the time. He is forever the measuring stick that technical wrestlers – like Faye, even – are held against. He was the WWF Champion going into November 1997. He was hailed as a hero in his native Canada. THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT.

And this final little one. You have heard of him already, I think. The small, but well-build man with the long brown hair, looks like a prick, and the hearts all over his tights. Senior Shawn Michaels. But, mind, this was Shawn before he got clean, before he found Christ, and was the frontman of wrestling’s Congress. He was the head of the backstage political game. And he used and abused that power with fervor.

So here we go.

Bret Hart, the biggest star in wrestling, was on his way out the door, going to a rival promotion. Problem? He still held the title. His last big match was supposed to be in Montreal. You’re supposed to ‘go out on your back’ in wrestling. That means if you have some gold, you should give it up and make someone else look good on your way out. That’s all good and well except, well….remember I said Michaels looked like a prick? He was a prick. And he pricked all over the Canadian flag one night.

The Hitman was not amused. So he refuses to drop the title to Shawn in Canada. Mr. McMahon is terrified Bret will leave for his competitors still holding his company’s most prized possession. And so, a screwjob is concocted. In the middle of the main event, Michaels locks Bret in his own finishing move, the submission hold known as The Sharpshooter. Even though Bret never taps out, Vince McMahan says he did. The ref rings the bell.

Shawn Michaels gets what he wanted. Vince McMahon gets what he wanted. Bret Hart is disgraced. On live TV, right there, kayfabe was essentially killed. All the dirty politics were presented right before us.

It was never about who was the better man. It was always about who pulled the most strings. An all too familiar narrative, I think. In the end, the Montreal Screwjob can be summed up in one word:

Betrayal.

Keep these notes in a safe place por favor. You’ll most definitely be tested on it later.