While Bane has long boasted that he was successful in breaking Batman after he literally broke his back during the DC Comics storyline Knightfall, he really never broke Batman. A new Batman comic that takes place before the events of Knightfall, Bane reveals that he actually doesn’t deserve credit for breaking Batman because, based on his own belief system, he admitted that Batman was never truly broken to begin with.
In Detective Comics #1053 “House of Gotham” Chapter 7 by Matthew Rosenberg, Mariko Tamaki, Fernando Blanco, and Max Raynor, Bane has taken it upon himself to break every inmate out of Arkham Asylum. When Bane encounters a child who refuses to escape since he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, Bane gives him a piece of life advice that is completely contradictory to his later gloat that he was the one who ‘broke the bat.’
When it is clear the child is too afraid to escape from Arkham Asylum, Bane tells him, “All things that break can heal again… stronger, reborn anew, if given the chance.” Moments later, Bane puts the boy through a test of will and perseverance by pitting him against the villain Victor Zsasz, a test that he hoped would make him stronger and more ready to go out into the world and carve his own path. However, the seasoned murderer quickly becomes too much for the boy to handle alone, so Bane breaks up the fight after it's clear the child is about to be killed. Rather than scolding, Bane offers the bot words of encouragement, saying, “If you can get up… your enemies have never truly won.” These statements directly contradict the idea that Bane broke Batman, especially after Batman heals and rises from his failure to bring about justice once again after Bane broke his spine.
Bane claims to have broken the bat after the events of Batman #497 by Doug Moench and Jim Aparo. In the issue, Bane discovers that Batman is actually the local billionaire Bruce Wayne and breaks into his manor, taking him off guard. Bane and Batman then engage in brutal combat which leads to Bane lifting Batman over his head and slamming his back into his knee, breaking his spine in the process. While Bane claims to have broken the bat after this issue, his sentiment in Detective Comics #1053 proves that he didn’t, and that he knows he didn’t.
Bane says himself that if one can recover no matter how serious the injury, then their enemy was the one who truly lost. In that scenario, Bane is the real loser between him and Batman as the Caped Crusader was able to rise up from the ashes of his defeat even stronger than before he fell. While Bane may have temporarily broken his nemesis, the fact that Batman was able to come back full force meant Bane was the one who really lost their conflict and gave the villain no right to say that he ever ‘broke the bat’ from that point on, proving that even Bane knows he doesn’t deserve credit for breaking Batman.