| Building | Hart House |
|---|---|
| Location | Calgary, Alberta |
| Country | Canada |
| Purpose | Training facility |
| Named for | Stu Hart |
TheHart Dungeon orHart Family Dungeon, otherwise known simply asThe Dungeon, was the gym and wrestling school located in the basement of theHart mansion. The school was created byStu Hart, patriarch of theHart wrestling family and is known for having produced some of the greatest and most successful professional wrestlers of all time.[1][2]
The room was located in the Hart family mansion basement and had a very low ceiling. For most of the duration of the room being used as training hall there was a wrestling mat located on the floor without any ropes which would be used for training students.
Hart acquired the former army hospital mansion in 1951 and transformed its basement into his personal training centre shortly thereafter.[3] This was done because Hart needed a training facility after the founding of his first wrestling promotion in 1948. Although, the nickname itself developed over time whenStampede Wrestling became world famous.[4]
Aside fromprofessional wrestlers, the Dungeon provided training grounds for various athletes fromstrongmen tofootball players. The majority of Hart's sons trained in the Dungeon and went on to become involved in the wrestling world includingBret andOwen Hart. Other famous Dungeon graduates includeBilly Graham,Greg Valentine,Bad News Brown,Davey Boy Smith,Brian Pillman,Jushin Thunder Liger,Ricky Fuji,Chris Jericho,Lance Storm,Chris Benoit,Justin Credible,Edge,Christian andMark Henry.[5][6]
As a teenager,Rhonda Sing approached members of theHart wrestling family and asked to be trained, but she was rejected as they did not train women wrestlers at the time.[7]Bret Hart, however, claims it had more to do with scheduling conflicts.[8]Nattie "Natalya" Neidhart, daughter ofJim Neidhart and granddaughter of Stu, was ultimately the first woman to graduate from the Dungeon.[9]
I take a lot of pride in being one of the last guys that had the hands-on training from Stu Hart when I went to the Hart family to train ... It was a good experience just to be there, to imagine all the people that had been through there, and all the blood, sweat, and tears that had been paid ... Going to the Hart family for training was kind of like, if you're a very religious person, going to theVatican.
One of the first televised acknowledgements of the nickname "Dungeon" was by thenWWFcolor commentatorJesse Ventura. Its first significant exposure was in thedocumentaryHitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows. In it, the Dungeon was moderately filmed for the first time and Stu Hart is shown demonstratingwrestling holds on a pupil. Bret also discusses being trained by his father and having submission holds applied to himself, often with graphic descriptions from his father of the holds' impact. A bonus feature onBret's DVD set also shows him discussing the Dungeon.
Various activities took place in the Dungeon, ranging fromweight lifting toCatch wrestling. Bret Hart has described the Dungeon in interviews as having holes in the walls and ceiling from bodies being driven into them. He also noted that practices could, at times, be as intense asMMA styled fighting. In July 1998, the WWF filmed a match between Owen Hart andKen Shamrock in the Dungeon for theFully Loaded pay-per-view.
During the period when Stu Hart was regularly training individuals at the school, it held a reputation for being one of the harshest wrestling schools in the world. Graduating from it was considered very impressive and something which would be brought up on air on televised wrestling shows. Hart himself also garnered a reputation for being borderline sadistic in his training techniques, and was known to torture his pupils with legitimate submission wrestling holds he had learned as a sports wrestler.[10][11][12][13][14][15]Buddy Roberts described the place as "like a torture chamber".[16] In contrast to his descendants, Stu never took money for his training services and did it mostly for the love of the artform of professional wrestling.[17][18]
In modern-day being trained in the Dungeon carries a level of status and there have been many attempts to recreate and recapture its glory. In 2005 a documentary directed by Blake Norton (who trained at the school) namedSurviving the Dungeon: The Legacy of Stu Hart was released.[41][42][43][44]
After their father's retirement some of the Hart brothers managed the school by themselves under the nameHart Brothers Training Camp which was also known by the nicknameSchool of Hart Knocks.[45][46][47] Leading up to the Hart House's sale in 2003, the Hart Brothers Training Camp run by Bruce, Keith and Ross was still running three times a week in the basement of the Hart mansion.[48] A very similar training camp remains today at the family's gym, although none of the Hart brothers are involved.
Teddy Hart, Stu Hart's oldest grandson ran a training camp in Texas namedTexas Hart Dungeon from around 2012 to 2015. Smith Hart, Stu's oldest son founded a new wrestling school in 2015 namedDungeon Discipline Professional Wrestling School which is run out of Calgary and Berrie in Alberta, after Smith's passing in 2017 the training is mostly handled by Smith's sonMatthew.[49]
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