Ever since it was announced that Finn Balor had been injured in his match with Seth Rollins at SummerSlam I started getting a lot of tweets from fans asking what WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart thought about it. I formally co-hosted Bret’s weekly podcasts and on the show Bret had been outspoken about Cena and Sting being injured in matches with Seth.

I reached out to Bret for a comment yesterday and he sent me back the following statement just now:

I take no great pleasure in saying “I told you so,” but if you’re a professional wrestler and you keep hurting opponents and or yourself, clearly you’re doing it wrong. I wrestled a very realistic and physical style and not once in 23 yrs did I ever hurt one opponent ever. Seth Rollins needs to improve his technique and become the safest wrestler in the business. I have great respect for Seth. I believe he’ll improve and hopefully stop hurting the talent before someone gets killed. Wrestlers have to trust one another. If a wrestler holds the life of another wrestler in his hands for the sake of his family, wife or children you plain and simply cannot drop it!

Bret went on to say:

I saw this coming, if anything WWE producers are negligent for not speaking up about it to him already, instead they’re probably gushing with joy, slapping him on the back telling him “great job!” Bill Goldberg was similar. When I think of Samoa Joe nearly killing Tyson Kidd, then see him continuing to use that deadly finish of his, I just shake my head. It’s not real, it’s only supposed to look real, wrestlers are not crash test dummies!

Related: Bret Hart Responds To Seth Rollins’ Comments About Bret’s Criticisms Of Rollins Breaking Cena’s Nose

In an episode of The Sharpshooter Podcast back in June of this year Bret had the following to say about Seth being upset over some of his comments:

I am a really big fan of Seth’s. I think he’s one of the best young wrestlers in the world today. That’s why I think I made such a strong criticism. It’s meant to make him think. It’s not a personal attack. It’s a professional criticism of his work a few months ago. I think there’s a little bit of an onus here not to own up to what he did. You can watch it back. I watched it back just a minute ago. He clearly knees John Cena as hard as he can in the face. It’s not John Cena’s fault. If you watch it it’s not John Cena leaning in it’s Seth Rollins’ pulling his head down and kneeing him as hard as he can in the face. It’s bullshit. Everything I said is true. If he’s got hurt feelings, well, it’s better to have hurt feelings than a broken, shattered face. My whole gripe with that kind of stuff is that you can’t get injured. The wrestler can’t afford getting hurt. There’s a huge onus on the two wrestlers to protect each other at all costs. If you can’t protect the guy you are working with, if you can’t be more careful than that, then you need to go back to the drawing board. It’s a good criticism. All of those agents in WWE, I don’t know who they are that are schooling these guys and telling them what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. They should all be chastised for not speaking up too. Including Vince. Including Triple H. What he did was totally wrong. Totally unprofessional. It’s true and it’s not a personal attack. It just means, “Be more careful.” You can’t be hurting guys like that all the time.

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You can listen to the full archives from Bret Hart’s former podcast on WrestleZone Radio, The Sharpshooter Show w/ Bret “The Hitman” Hart, in the embedded audio player below: