re: Was the Montreal Screwjob A Work or A Shoot?

I've never watched more than a combined 10 minutes of professional wrestling in my life, but I just awared myself of the Montreal Screwjob on da wikipedias.

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The Montreal Screwjob (also called the Montreal Incident;[1][2][3] French: Le Coup Tordu de Montréal) was an infamous and controversial legitimate professional wrestling incident in which World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now World Wrestling Entertainment/WWE) owner Vince McMahon and WWF employees covertly manipulated the pre-determined outcome of the match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels at the 1997 Survivor Series. The pay-per-view (PPV) event was held on November 9, 1997, at the Molson Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The manipulation – a "shoot screwjob" in professional wrestling parlance – occurred without Hart's knowledge and resulted in Hart, the reigning WWF World Heavyweight Champion, losing the title to Michaels in Hart's last match with the WWF before departing for rival promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW). The "screwjob" is generally believed to be an off-screen betrayal of Hart, who was one of the WWF's longest-tenured and most popular performers at the time.

Hart won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam in August 1997. A week prior to Survivor Series, Hart, who had performed for the WWF since 1984, signed a contract to perform with WCW beginning in December 1997. McMahon sought to prevent Hart from leaving the company as the champion, but Hart was unwilling to lose the title to Michaels – with whom he had a long feud both on-screen and off – at Survivor Series in his home country. Hart, Michaels, and McMahon came to an agreement where the Survivor Series match would end with a disqualification, which under normal rules would result in Hart retaining the title. Hart would then lose or forfeit the title at a later date. However, McMahon decided without Hart's knowledge that Michaels would win the title at Survivor Series. Accounts differ as to who exactly was involved in the plan and the extent of their involvement. The plan was executed when match referee Earl Hebner, on direct order from McMahon, ended the match as Michaels held Hart in the Sharpshooter submission hold, Hart's signature finishing move, even though Hart had not submitted. Michaels was declared the victor by submission and crowned as the new WWF World Heavyweight Champion.

The Montreal Screwjob has garnered a notorious legacy both on-screen and off, and was partly chronicled in the documentary film Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows (1998). The far-reaching impact of the incident led to its adoption as a theme in matches and storylines of the WWF's "Attitude Era" and the creation of the character, "Mr. McMahon", the evil boss. Many wrestling fans, and several within the business, believe the entire incident was an elaborate work executed in collaboration with Hart. Nonetheless, Hart was ostracized from the WWF while McMahon and Michaels continued to receive angry responses from audiences for many years in Hart's home country of Canada. Hart and McMahon later reconciled, and Hart was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame on April 1, 2006. On the January 4, 2010 episode of WWE Raw, Hart, in his first appearance on live WWE television since the Montreal Screwjob, had a lengthy on-screen discussion with Michaels about the Montreal Screwjob and other events in their past, and agreed to call a truce, bringing closure to the incident after more than 12 years.[4][5] Both men sat side-by-side and discussed the incident in detail for a 2011 WWE Home Video release.[6] Longtime industry writer Mike Johnson referred to their 1997 Survivor Series bout as "arguably the most talked-about match in the history of professional wrestling".[7]

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Shoot that started out as a work.

It was a shoot. Sad thing is it didn't have to come down to that if Bret would've just agreed to drop the title at Survivor Series or before that. Vince was afraid, and for good reason, that Bret would show up on Nitro with the WWF belt.

Apparently Triple H had a big part in it as well

It was a work that Brett Hart was unaware of.

The older I get, the more I think it was a work. It was such a win/win situation for everyone involved.

You like wrestling and C2C. You my people.. It was a shoot.

Rumour and innuendo

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You like wrestling and C2C. You my people.. 

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I think it was partly because he'd been played up so heavily as a Canadian hero by Vince for so many years and partly because of his outright disdain for Michael's character and personality at that time. Brett thought he and Vince were on the same page but Vince was looking out for business. He seems to be pretty good at that and its served him and his company well.

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yea and the industry was changing. WCW, with the backing of a major tv network, began their attempts at hording top talent. They were giving huge contracts, guaranteed ones at that, and weren't requiring their talent to be on the road 200 days/year performing at house shows like WWE was.

Vince knew he couldn't keep up and couldn't afford to pay talent like WCW was starting to so he wished Bret good luck but needed him to do a job.

I don't blame Bret for leaving nor do I blame him for not liking the idea of dropping the belt in Canada before he left but Bret should have done the job and done what was best for business. Though you could probably argue that the screwjob angle ended up being best for business although I don't think it was planned that way.