divasmusings

With all the wrestling deaths that have occurred recently - be it due to drug use or health problems - it should be interesting to note that one of the most tragic deaths was not even health-related. True, it did have to do with wrestling - however, it was a stunt gone wrong. The basic premise: a “superhero” flying from the rafters in the dark into the ring. The event: Over The Edge. The date: Sunday, May 23, 1999. The place: The Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri. The performer: wrestling superstar/prodigy, Owen Hart.

Perhaps “prodigy” is a strong word, but to note, Owen was the last of twelve children born in Alberta, Canada, to legendary wrestler and coach Stu, and his wife Helen. This was in his blood, and in his thirty-four years of life, he always worked hard to perfect his craft, something which I feel is not greatly encouraged today - with wrestling or anything else. What we also often miss because of the constant focus on entertainment is that even though Owen did love his fans and did love to entertain them, he was truly a family man at heart. He wanted to retire from the business so he could spend more time with his wife Martha, and their children Oje and Athena. His son and daughter are now teenagers, and it’s a shame that he didn’t get to see them grow up.

Anybody who was there or even knows what happened that night because they watched the event on Pay-Per-View won’t need the explanation. However, I received the news while getting ready for school Monday morning. I was fifteen years old at the time. My mother, who along with my father never understood my fascination with wrestling at the time, was watching the news when she called out to me.

“Do you know of Hart?” she asked.

“Who?” I obviously had no idea what she was talking about.

“Hart. Owen Hart,” she clarified.

“Yeah, why?”

“He’s dead.”

To be cliche, the news hit me like a ton of bricks. Through her brief explanation and the news report on NBC, he was dressed up as The Blue Blazer, this sort of bizarre superhero which “flies” down from the rafters into the ring and fights his opponents. It was a stunt rehearsed only a few times, as successful as the night before. Apparently, he was being lowered into the ring and something went wrong as he was in the harness. The mechanism somehow loosened, causing him to plunge more than 70 feet and hit his chest on the top rope of the ring near the turnbuckle. Ring announcer Jim Ross tried to explain to the viewing audience that this was not a stunt and that indeed, Owen was seriously injured. Jim Ross would later announce that he had been pronounced dead. That night, the owner of the WWF (as it was known at the time), Vince McMahon, gave the other wrestlers a chance to not continue out of respect for Owen, but just about everyone decided to take part in their respective matches, and the show went on. It would turn out to be the same the following night, as the roster was polled and the choice was echoed. These were controversial decisions that would reverberate in the company for years to come.

With the whole thing weighing on my mind at school, I knew there was going to be a tribute. My mom came home from work and decided to take me and my sister out to dinner out of town. I put in a video tape and set my VCR to record it just in case I wasn’t home in time (There was no DVR in 1999.) When we did return, it was eleven minutes after nine. The recording was successful.

I finished watching the rest of the program, then rewound it to the very beginning because I missed it. I watched all the staff descend onto the ramp, the TitanTron that would later show Owen’s face looming above them. It was horrible to watch all these people grieving. There were so many wrestlers sobbing, and even with the matches that went on, there were no angles. How could there be? There was a lot of solidarity that night. His ring manager Debra McMichael’s tearful tribute really stood out for me, even today, because she said, “I still can’t believe you’re gone and you’re not with us anymore. I keep thinkin’… I keep lookin’ for you.” Jeff Jarrett, who was also his partner in the ring, made a very touching comment: “In this business, I guess you got a lot of acquaintances, but very few friends… and Owen, he was one of those friends.” At the end of the program, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin took two cans of beer as he stood in the ring and toasted Owen’s picture on the TitanTron before leaving one of the cans in the ring as a heartfelt and symbolic gesture of friendship and love.

Perhaps one of the saddest things to come out of this story - apart from the fact that someone extremely important was lost unnecessarily - was the preponderance of lawsuits, not just from Owen’s family - including wife Martha, brother Bret, and parents Stu and Helen - against the WWF, but also ones against Kansas City - specifically the arena that hosted the fatal accident - from the company. There was a lot of talk about faulty equipment, that someone had to be blamed for what happened, that wrestling had gone too far to provide entertainment and employed “shock value” gimmickry. As for the event itself, Over The Edge - a tragically ironic title - no longer exists. But in the end, nothing really matters. Ten years later (and I always remember the date because - trivial as it sounds - Susan Lucci won her very first Daytime Emmy two days before after nineteen nominations, and both stories were featured in People magazine), we still mourn the loss because it didn’t have to happen, and he was such a decent human being, a prankster…just an all-around good guy. To quote Vince McMahon, in a spoken tribute made to him on the RAW special, “If the legacy of a man’s life is measured by the lives he’s touched and how much he is loved, then a big piece of Owen Hart will live on in all of us.”

So, with fondest remembrance, Owen Hart, we still love and miss you very much. Rest in peace.