Dean regularly filled in as a referee for his older brother Wayne when Wayne was sick, Dean portrayed his character as a less traditional sympathetic light than Wayne, being more a competent, strict and fair judge as opposed to a heroic one, to differentiate their characters more as Wayne was Stampede's main "babyface" referee. On one occasion in 1988, Hart was forced to judge a match alone without a partner as Jurgen Hermann, who was meant to be the main referee of the match, was absent from the show for unknown reasons, and Wayne was out with a knee injury. The match was a Stampede British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Championship match between Chris Benoit and Johnny Smith. Hart ended up accidentally botching the finish of the match, leading to Benoit regaining the title from Smith. This was not meant to happen as Dean was supposed to notice that Benoit's manager had thrown in an object for him to use in the ring to cheat, but Hart did not know this part of the match as he had not been told about it so he failed to disqualify him and Benoit won the title. This resulted in the promotion having to issue a rematch on 6/24 in Calgary.