Don Callis: Bret Hart Really Broke The Barrier For A Lot Of Canadian Independent Wrestlers

Don Callis says Bret Hart opened the door for Canadian wrestling.

Today’s wrestling landscape is littered with a number of talents that were born in or grew up in Canada. The country even has a healthy independent scene that is highlighted by performers like Brent Banks and El Reverso.

Chatting with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview, Don Callis talked about the difficulty that Canadian indie wrestlers faced back in the day..

“I was telling Kyle Fletcher this not so long ago, back then it was a hard thing to be a Canadian indie guy. There wasn’t a path to getting a break in WCW at the time or WWF at the time. It was incredibly difficult. Really the guy who broke that open was Bret Hart. He had Adam Copeland and Jay Reso and Glenn Kulka and others training at his house. I remember being an indie guy in Winnipeg and on the come and people going, ‘This is the guy, this is the next guy,’ but I couldn’t get a break. I remember I had sent my tape to one Carl De Marco. Carl brought me to the office. He said like, ‘Let’s watch this tape of yours,’ and he watched two minutes of my tape. He says, ‘I have some advice for you.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ He goes, ‘You need to look more like Ultimate Warrior.’ I go, ‘You mean like tassels?’ He goes, ‘No, like muscles. You need muscles like Ultimate Warrior.’ I’m like, ‘This guy’s never been in a gym. It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m never looking like this guy.’”

Callis continued by praising Bret Hart for getting him booked.

“But Bret Hart ended up seeing that tape and came to Winnipeg, he was World Champion at the time, and told me, ‘I think you can be like another Roddy Piper. You need to come in here.’ So Bret was the guy who also got me booked and I was going to go to his house, but he goes, ‘You’re polished. You don’t need it.’ So you think about it, Bret Hart really broke the barrier for a lot of Canadian independent wrestlers who heretofore had no way in. There was no developmental. They weren’t scouting people. It was like, ‘I know a guy in Memphis,’ and everyone was 240. I remember being 6’2 and 215 and in shape and told I was too skinny to be a wrestler. It’s such a different world now. Now I, probably at 6’2, 215, I’d be a pretty healthy size in today’s business, but the business has evolved so much. One of the ways it’s evolved is they’re letting smaller guys like I was have opportunities, which I think is cool.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Callis talked about fans dressing like him at live shows. Check out his full comments by clicking here.

Fans can check out Fightful’s full interview with Don Callis in the video linked at the top of this article.