Bret Hart Reveals Where The Hart Foundation’s Pink & Black Came From

Bret Hart had Dylan Post (aka Hornswoggle) on the latest episode of the Sharpshooter Podcast and answered a question about the origin of his famous black and pink color scheme. Post asked him what caused him to initially choose the colors, to which Bret said it wasn’t intentional.

“Well, the pink came pretty much by fluke,” Hart said. “We were trying in those days to mostly wear gear with sort of an alternate stripe. We wore light blue with a white stripe. The we had black with a light blue stripe. We had a couple of different sets of gear with stripes down the side. In the end we had every color that we could think of. Except for green which, for some reason, I never liked. Or orange.”

He continued on, saying, “I remember the lady that used to make our gear. She was a girl named Judy over at K&H Wrestling Wear in Ohio. Every wrestler that ever started in the 70s or the 80s would know Judy from K&H. Anyway, she called and I talked to her about getting some wrestling gear for the Saturday Night Main Event. She goes, “I got a really nice hot pink.” I remember covering up the phone and asking Neidhart if he wanted hot pink and he goes, “Naw, I’m not gonna wear hot pink. Are you kidding me?” I told her, “Call back in a couple weeks. We’ll have to think about what we can use for color. Maybe another one.” So, I called her another month later and Saturday Night Main Event was getting closer. We had a couple of months notice on it. I called her again because our gear was falling apart and we had to order some new gear. She ran the pink by me again and I said, “Naw, I don’t think so.” I asked Neidhart again if he wanted the pink stripe down the side and he goes, “Let’s go for it!” It was kind of more of a laugh. I had kind of caught Jim at one of those moments where he thought it would be funny to wrap a pink stripe down the side. Whereas a month before he was very definitive that he did not want it. That’s how Jim was. Kind of fickle. One day he would just change his mind. So, we went with the pink. It looked really good. I liked the black with the pink stripe. I thought it looked really cool. Then we made the big decision to go with the pink tights with the black stripe. That took some nerve. We were bright hot pink. We looked like bubble gum when we walked in. We certainly got everyone’s attention. That was the story. The true story is that at the Saturday Night Main Event when we were at catering Vince came in with Dick Ebersol and he just about did a back flip. He came over to me and walked around me about three times and he said, “Don’t move.” He was just walking around me. Circling around me. Vince is circling around me and he goes, “That is what you guys have been missing! That’s what you guys haven’t had since you got here! You can work and you can do this and you can do that but you never had any color.” He goes, “From now on don’t ever change that color and don’t ever change those. I want you to wear those all the time.” So we always wore pink tights after that. The pink and black. That’s where it all started.”