Frustrated with WCW's creative team, Bret Hart decided to test their competence by pitching a bad idea on purpose just to see if they would go for it.

Bret Hart’s WCW career can be seen as something of a disappointment. No disrespect to Bret of course, Bret himself will tell you it was a nightmare from day 1. Coming off the Montreal Screwjob, Bret Hart was one of the hottest acts in wrestling but unfortunately, like many things in WCW, nothing really worked out the way it was supposed to.

With WCW’s creative team as disorganized as ever, Bret Hart was becoming more and more frustrated with his creative plans. By 1999 Hart had lost complete respect for WCW’s creative team, and so he once knowingly pitched an idea so bad just to test WCW’s creative team. Would WCW take the bait? Would they actually go for his stupid idea or would they rightfully shoot it down?

The idea was that Bret Hart would be accompanied to the ring by a cat. Not Earnest “The Cat” Miller, a literal cat called Smokey. Main Eventer, World Championship level Bret Hart, accompanied to the ring by a cat…

RELATED: Bret Hart: Was He Better As A Face Or A Heel?

It all started when Bret was scheduled to cut a promo on Nitro, though as creative was so bad at that time, Bret had no real material to work with in the promo, and so he just started talking about his cat, Smokey. Talking with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, Bret explained the promo, “I had nothing to talk about. I’m going out and I’m ranting about WCW fans, they have no respect,” I’m sitting there going, ‘What else do I got to say? I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know who I’m fighting or where I’m going, what I’m doing.’ I remember I got really frustrated, I went out and talked about my cat. I talked about my cat was my only fan, Smokey the cat. My cat was named Smokey. But, I remember it was the stupidest interview ‘cause I had nothing to talk about. It was almost sarcastic to make it clear to Bischoff in the back, ‘I don’t have anything to talk about.’ The best I can come up with is my cat. I just remember when I came back to the dressing room, Eric Bischoff goes, ‘I loved the part about the cat.’ He goes, ‘I loved it.’ I remember scratching my head and thinking, ‘For the money these guys are paying me, they’ve sure got some stupid people here.”

RELATED: The Best Bret Hart Match Every Year Of The 1990s

Having clearly given up on the talents of the creative team, Bret Hart decided to take the pitch further, intrigued at how far WCW would take the obviously terrible idea. Bret pitched a whole storyline to Eric Bischoff based around Smokey the cat. Bret continued to Fightful, “I actually remember giving him an idea about the cat, putting the cat carrier and having the cat in my corner all the time. He said he loved it. It never went anywhere, like everything in WCW. Yeah. I actually had an idea where the cat, I’d have a real cat all the time in my corner, and then for one of the matches I would put a stuffed toy cat in my cat carrier and I would have a zipper on it. I would stick the insides of the cat with a brick and then when I was in peril in the match I would reach in, say, a Boston crab or something like that, or some kind of a hold where I’m in jeopardy. I would open my cage door, reach through, grab the cat by the tail, swing it and hit the wrestler over the head with the brick, and win the match with a stuffed cat with a brick. But, I remember it was almost like a rib to see if they would just do it. Actually, to be honest, it would have been better than anything they did have me do at that time. Anyway, that never came to fruition. Sometimes you gotta just make up stuff on the go all the time.”

Like many pitches in WCW, good or bad, the idea never made it to TV, although goodness knows it would have been incredible to watch Bret Hart running wild on his opponents while swinging a brick/cat over his head!

The idea was obviously terrible, though WCW did produce a number of terrible storylines during this time, were all of them just wrestlers pitching bad ideas on purpose just to see if WCW would go for it? It would kind of explain a lot.

Martin is a writer from Wigan, England and has followed wrestling religiously since 2006. Follow him on Twitter @_M_J_Dickinson