Viktor Recalls Tough Training In The Hart Family Dungeon
The Hart Dungeon is one of the most infamous training grounds in wrestling history. Legend has it that you can still hear the screams of Bret Hart being stretched by Stu if you enter the family dungeon today.
One of the less famous names to come out of The Dungeon training school is Viktor of The Ascension, who was trained by Bruce Hart. Speaking to Lewis Nicholls on the Lewis Nicholls Show, Viktor discussed his time in the dungeon.
“My first year there, I can’t believe how many people I saw come and go. They’d pay their money, would be there a month, and then be like, ‘No way, fuck this, I’m out of here.’ Bruce [Hart] had a really good way of weeding people out. The wrestling business is tough. I had so many good guys around me who I started with and not too many kept wrestling because it’s super hard, and coming from up there, there wasn’t Internet and social media. It left us in a weird frozen corner of Canada, trying to wrestle. You really had to stick through it.”
He continued, “Every day when I started. It felt really tough. I had to take a bus for an hour — the bus ride was an hour, not including the amount of time you spent in the cold waiting to get there because the house was on a hill. I would hurt so bad. The Dungeon mats were usually coming apart and we’d be running drills and right in the middle where you’d take a fall, it would come apart, but I would have so much fun when I’d have good days, riding the bus back, and I never had as much money in my life that I gave to Bruce Hart to wrestle. So, I wasn’t going to quit.”
Viktor noted that Ross Hart was one of the best teachers and that he met Bret after his concussion suffered in WCW. Viktor began working for Stampede Wrestling in 2001, winning the North American Heavyweight Championship and International Tag Team Championship.
Elsewhere during the interview, Viktor discussed being released by WWE. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
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