WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart recently sat down with ESPN.com to discuss WWE’s new “Legends of WrestleMania” video game. During the interview, the Hitman discusses a number of topics, including the rocky atmosphere in the WWE during early 1990’s, his favorite WrestleMania match, his beef with Shawn Michaels and more. It’s a long interview, but one that’s worth reading.

Bret said things changed drastically in the WWE when they started drug testing in 1992 and made the transition from muscle heads (e.g. Hogan, Warrior, Legion of Doom) to the “workers” (Bret, Shawn Michaels, Marty Janetty). When asked whether he was upset that Hulk Hogan never gave him a match at WrestleMania, he replied:

Bret Hart: I just thought that somebody preempted my run. For somebody like Hulk Hogan, when he was on his run, nobody preempted it. Everyone was happy to make him. But when I needed some of the bigger guys to make me, especially some of the bigger names like Jake Roberts or Ultimate Warrior or Hogan, when it came to passing the torch down and doing me a favor…I had always been loyal, working my ass off on their undercards and I was always respectful of those guys and paid my dues, but I always felt short changed by some of those guys who didn’t do anything to help me. And that was a critical time in the business. The wrestling business back then was kind of like the stock market right now. There were some tough times business-wise, and everyone was fearful of the future, especially after they implemented the drug testing. But they handed me the ball, and back then I was only six feet tall, I wasn’t a giant, I didn’t have 24-inch arms, and I wasn’t a good interview. Then all of a sudden I found myself carrying the torch at a tough time and trying my hardest.

Hart continued, “If you look at wrestling when I started to get my big break back in 1992, I changed wrestling from the cartoons of Hulk Hogan and Iron Sheik and the matches with the leg drop and the hand behind the ear and the playing to the crowd. They were just cartoon characters if you ask me. Hogan had the same match every night for years and so did Warrior. They didn’t tell great stories, to be honest. I went out there and had those matches with Piper and Perfect and the match with Davey at Wembley. I went out there and tried to have great matches all the time, and it wasn’t about Bret Hart, it was about these matches. I think I changed the style of wrestling, and even today, there’s not another Hulk Hogan out there, it’s guys like Edge, and it’s all about work rate. When you see Bret Hart versus Steve Austin, it just seemed so much more real than Hulk Hogan versus Sgt. Slaughter. All of the storylines started to be more realistic and the belt started to mean more. I made the belt seem like the world to me and to my fans. I kind of pat myself on the back today and think that I did more good for professional wrestling than people realize.”

Bret Hart was interviewed this week by Alfonso Castillo of Newsday’s Steel Cage blog. Throughout the interview, I just got the impression Bret’s got one heck of an ego. What else is new coming from a guy wearing pink spandex right? Anyway, moving on.

Hit the jump for some of the highlights:

His New Autobiography: “I wanted them to at least look and put themselves in my shoes and put themselves in the dressing room and asked themselves if they had been me, what would they have done? Would they have had – for the lack of a better word – would they have had the balls to get up and knock him out? To stand up and do something about it? I could sense that day that it was kind of like everybody, or a lot of people, would have expected me to just blow it off and maybe say a few words to him and tell him he was a real jerk or something like that – slam the door and walk out.

The Montreal Screwjob:”I think that’s what Vince (McMahon) was looking for. That’s all anybody ever does. Everyone is so job scared. But for me it was different. I grew up with wrestling, like Vince did. It was my whole life, and my whole family had given so much for the industry. And I thought about how much it would hurt my father at home and my kids were watching. I thought what I did and how I handled things was a defining moment for me and my character – not my wrestling character, but my own character as a human being. I always thought it was the best thing I ever did.”

Working With Ric Flair: “People always talk about who the best wrestlers are. I actually go to maybe too much of an explanation about someone like Ric Flair for example. They rave about Ric Flair about being this great, great wrestler. And he was a great wrestler in many ways. But, in a lot of ways, like working with him in the ring, he was not so great. And for someone to contest that with me or argue with me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, things like that drive me crazy. Because it’s not true. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I know. I’ve worked with some of the greatest wrestlers of all time.”