PrinceWatercress plays WWF Royal Rumble (Super NES/Genesis) - Part 16 of 16

For the final video, we send this off with an explanation of the Montreal Screwjob, which ended the New Generation Era at last and properly ushered in the Attitude Era, dragging wrestling out of the 1980s kicking and screaming.

Here, I talk about the Montreal Screwjob as best as I can. Here's where I got my explanation, by the way.

Here's the explanation courtesy of reddit user Johnny_Holiday, in case you don't feel like clicking the link:

Bret gets a contract from WCW who will pay him much more than WWF at the time. Bret went to Vince and told him that he would resign with WWF if they made him any offer. Vince didn't make one. Bret was the champion at the time and Vince asked him to drop the title to Shawn on his way out at Survivor Series. Bret's contract expired that Sunday at midnight so it was the last chance to get it off of him. Bret says that he doesn't want to lose the title in Montreal but is willing to sign a one day extention to drop it the next night on RAW.

Vince and Bret went back and forth about it all the way up to a few hours before the main event started. Eventually they agreed to a finish: HBK would apply the sharpshooter while the ref was out. Bret would then reverse it (which had never been seen from that position at the time) into his own sharpshooter. The ref comes to and sees HBK submitting (this wasa time before tapping out was a thing, that's very important). Bret then drops it the next night on Raw.

At this point, Vince has had so many people jumping to WCW and screwing him over in the process. Alundra Blayze had left the WWF with the women's title and dropped it in the trash on WCW. Vince of course was parinoid that Bischoff might try something like that with the WWF title and Bret, so of course he wasn't going to allow it to happen.

What went down: The match goes as planned. Earl gets knocked out and HBK applies the sharpshooter. Vince comes out and is the visual cue for Earl to get up. Earl looks at HBK and Bret, pretends to ask Bret if he gives up and immediately calls for the bell saying it was a submission. You can see Bret about to reverse the hold when the bell rings. Vince even shouts at the time keeper to ring the bell because no one knew that it was going to happen.

They cut the PPV quickly after that but Bret spits on Vinces face and destroys the commentary table. He then spells out WCW with his finger and walks out. He goes backstage and punches Vince in the face. The next night on RAW, Vince gives the famous "Bret screwed Bret" interview while sporting a black eye.

And with that, this video series - and blog series - comes to a close. This one was amazing to do, and maybe one of these days I'll do something with this sort of presentation again with one of the other LJN games. Until then...