What are the issues between Martha and Bret Hart?

Bret Hart is one of the greatest wrestlers to have ever stepped foot in a ring. He's someone who changed the business for good and raised the standards in the industry.

The Bret Hart name commands respect in every wrestling circle. However, he also managed to clash with some people, one of them being his sister-in-law Martha Hart, the wife of his late brother Owen Hart.

Owen is a wrestling all-timer who passed away tragically at Over The Edge 1999. He was supposed to descend to the ring using a harness but triggered the quick release and fell 78 feet. It was one of the saddest days in wrestling, enough to cause a rift between Bret and Martha. If you wonder about the reason for Bret and Martha's frosty relationship, we have the answer.

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Bret and Martha don't have a relationship at this moment in time. Owen's widow is on bad terms with the entire Hart family. It stems from what Bret did during the lawsuit against WWE, patching things up with the company and Vince McMahon.

In an interview, Martha revealed how her brother-in-law prioritized himself over her departed husband while negotiating with WWE, fracturing their relationship beyond repair:

“With Bret, what happened was, throughout the lawsuit he was very supportive, but he was battling at the time with Vince. And so he wanted us to include his footage in our settlement agreement. So he didn't have access to his wrestling footage because Vince, you know, so he had this agenda that that's what he wanted included in our settlement agreement."

“He was helping me, but I had to say to him ‘this isn't about your wrestling footage,’ but when we weren't able to obtain that for him, he got very angry and that's when he then went back and confronted Vince McMahon and then got his footage and stuff like that. So that was disappointing for me and that sort created a rift between us but then he seemed to really flip flop and he really embraced Vince all of a sudden. And then he was disrespecting me—and before he sort of hated Vince McMahon — and then he turned that hate towards me. And then he was saying things all the time in the media about me disrespecting Owen's memory and that I hadn't done anything that I should let him be in the WWE Hall of Fame.”

Bret Hart's thoughts on the feud

Bret Hart commented on his frosty relationship with Martha Hart and revealed it wasn't just because of what the latter said. He explained that there were multiple reasons for the feud, and he didn't want to reopen the wounds.

“While I am not interested in engaging in any more media mudslinging between Martha and myself, especially in light of a global pandemic, I will say that our fallout is multifaceted. To say that it only involved being able to access and use my WWE footage and photos for future projects would merely be an oversimplification and inaccurate. I will not comment any further on the matter.” (H/T: Wrestling Inc)