How Has Owen Hart’s Death Changed Wrestling?

Looking Back – How Has Owen Hart’s Death Changed Wrestling?

Ten years ago, during a live pay-per-view called Over the Edge, Owen Hart plummeted to his death. Before we look at the effects of Owen’s death on professional wrestling, let’s review the facts of what happened.

Owen, in his guise as the Blue Blazer, was scheduled to take on the Godfather for the Intercontinental title. The Blazer had been portrayed as a buffoon (who was definitely taking shots at Hulk Hogan when he urged his fans to say their prayer, take their vitamins, and drink their milk).

The plan was that the Blazer would descend from the ceiling and, when he got close enough, fall from the line and land flat in front of the Godfather. In order for the pratfall to work properly, instead of a normal harness, the riggers substituted a clip which was designed for sailboat use. In his book Hitman, Bret Hart notes that the clip was designed to release when eight pounds of pressure were applied to it.

What happened next is unknown – only the effects. Bret’s book notes that the riggers turned away for a moment while a hype video for the Blazer’s match was playing and something went wrong. While Owen was still nearly 80 feet above the ring, the substitute clip released. Bret hypothesized that Owen’s deep breaths to prepare for the descent may have caused the release. It’s also possible that Owen may have moved the wrong way, or perhaps his cape somehow triggered the release.

Whatever the cause, the outcome was certain. Owen fell and landed in the ring. Paramedics rushed to the ring, as did Jerry Lawler. In Hitman, Bret states that the impact of Owen’s landing cracked every beam in the ring and loosened the ropes. As paramedics worked feverishly to save Owen, Jim Ross tried to keep talking at the commentary table while the cameras showed only Ross and wide views of the arena. No footage of Owen lying in the ring aired.

Owen was wheeled to the back on a stretcher, and Vince McMahon decided that the show had to go on (to paraphrase Freddy Mercury). The next wrestler on the card? Jeff Jarrett – Owen’s tag team partner, traveling companion, and arguably best friend.

Owen was not the first wrestler to die in the ring, nor would he be the last. The last before Owen’s death had been Iron Mike DiBiase, the adopted father of Ted DiBiase. On July 2, 1969 while wrestling Man Mountain Mike, a wrestler who stood 6’4” and weighed over 600 pounds, DiBiase collapsed.

In his book Every Man Has His Price, Ted recounts the night his father died. Dory Funk’s wife Dorothy came to the house and took his mother to the hospital. Later, Harley Race arrived. Race gave Ted his father’s wrestling bag and explained how he’d suspected that Mike was having a heart attack when he collapsed. Race had performed CPR and gotten a weak pulse when the paramedics arrived, but Iron Mike was dead by the time that the ambulance arrived at the hospital.

It would not be another 30 years before another wrestler died in the ring. It would not even be 30 months.

The next in-ring death occurred on January 7, 2000. Gary Albright, a man who’d gotten his start in Stampede Wrestling as Vokhan Singh, had begun wrestling mainly in Japan. On that date he was competing on a World Xtreme Wrestling show against a wrestler named Lucifer Grimm. During the match the 350-pound Albright collapsed. Grimm, knowing something was wrong, quickly covered him to end the match and the ring crew began trying to resuscitate him. Albright was dead moments after he was moved from the ring.

Gary Albright and Mike DiBiase’s deaths were vastly different from Owen’s. DiBiase died of a heart attack likely caused by high cholesterol. Albright died of a heart attack, but the autopsy also revealed an enlarged heart, diabetes, and arterial blockage. Owen died from sheer blunt trauma from striking the ring after his fall.

The main difference between Albright, DiBiase, and Owen’s deaths is simple. Albright and DiBiase were wrestling when they were stricken. Owen was performing a stunt that he had minimal training for.

Has this changed following Owen’s death? To some point – although the WWE’s recent shift toward a more “family friendly” product may have contributed to it.

To start with, no one entered from the ceiling anymore. This had been the norm for Sting for months, yet after Owen’s death he only did it once more. Even Jerry Lawler once talked of a similar entrance back in the early 1980’s in the Mid-South Coliseum. The WWF itself had even done a similar stunt five years earlier. Following the Undertaker’s defeat by Yokozuna in a casket match, the casket exploded and someone in the Undertaker’s gear (reportedly Marty Jannetty) was raised to the ceiling.

Although the ceiling entrances were finished, neither the WWF or WCW were afraid of heights. At the 2000 Summerslam Shane McMahon, who was battling Steve Blackman for the Hardcore title, fell a reported forty feet from the Titantron. Of course, he landed on an area that was rigged for the landing. Another example of the improved safety was at that year’s Armageddon. The Undertaker chokeslammed Rikishi off the top of the Cell – and into the hay-filled bed of a truck that Vince McMahon had “coincidentally” driven out earlier.

WCW, however, had a stunt months later that raised ire from fans. At the 2000 Slamboree, Diamond Dallas Page was fighting Jeff Jarrett and David Arquette for the WCW World title in the triple cage from the Ready to Rumble movie. Suddenly Mike Awesome came out of the back and attacked Page. Page’s ally Chris Kanyon came out to help and wound up getting thrown off the top of the cage through the ramp by Awesome.

The worst thing about this stunt wasn’t the height (as the WWE continues to this day taking falls from that height in the annual Money in the Bank matches) – it was the fact that they chose to do this in Kemper Arena.

WCW wasn’t done yet. One month later at the Great American Bash Sting was fighting Vampiro in a Human Torch match, where the objective was to light your opponent on fire. The two wound up brawling to the top of the Turnertron, where “Sting” (a stunt double) was lit on fire and pitched off the top of the Tron to crash through the set below. This time at least WCW had the wisdom to know that if they wanted a stunt, they needed to use a stuntman.

Today, the stunts in the WWE and TNA have died down significantly. However, there are reasons other than Owen’s death that have caused this – one example for the WWE is their new “family friendly” product.

The WWE did learn from Owen’s death, just like it did from the deaths of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit. Guerrero’s death resulted in the formation of the WWE’s Wellness Program – a program that, while it has its flaws, at least attempts to monitor the conditions of the wrestlers. Following Benoit’s death, when the extent of the damage that concussions had done to his brain was revealed the WWE also began regularly running tests for concussions.

One of the saddest effects that Owen’s death had on the world of wrestling is what it did to the Hart family itself. Following Owen’s death, the family divided. Bret, Stu, Helen, and Keith sided with Martha while Ellie, Bruce, and Diana began making appearances that Owen’s death had only been a tragic accident and no one was to blame.

One of the reasons for the split may have been the fact that Diana was married to Davey Boy Smith and Ellie was married to Jim Neidhart. Davey Boy, Neidhart, and Bruce all likely wanted to return (or, in Bruce’s case, get hired) to the WWF fold, and were willing to smooth things over to facilitate that. Although Neidhart and Bruce never got their WWF opportunity, Davey Boy returned to the WWF in September of 1999, vowing to win a title in honor of Owen. In October he won the European title, which he lost to Val Venis in December.

The rifts remain between the Harts to this day. In his book, Bret recounted how the feud even erupted at Davey Boy’s 2002 funeral. One of the harshest notes occurred when Martha Hart announced her settlement with the WWF. In her public statement, Martha announced to the world that the only Hart siblings who had supported her were Bret, Stu, Helen, and Keith. She then talked about how she was no longer going to be part of the Hart family, by saying, “This is not a close-knit family and I’m not part of it anymore – we carry the same last name but that’s as far as it goes.”

Regarding the other family members, she said, “They betrayed Owen by working against me and his children and I will never consider myself, or my children, a part of that family anymore. I will respect Owen’s parents and I will stay in touch with a select few of them but people need to know that Owen was a white sheep in a black family.”

Owen’s mother Helen passed away in 2001. Father Stu passed away in 2003.

One way that Martha has worked to make a difference in the world was with the formation of the Owen Hart Foundation. The Foundation currently provides ten scholarships annually to students graduating from Forest Lawn High School, as well as running the Owen Hart Housing Program – a program that helps lower-income families help save for a down payment on a home of their own. For more information on the Foundation, please visit their website at www.cobloh.com.

Despite the personal issues, the Hart family’s wrestling legacy lives on. Davey Boy’s son Harry and Neidhart’s daughter Natalya are currently signed to the WWE, where they compete with fellow Stampede Wrestling trainee TJ Wilson (Tyson Kidd) on ECW. In addition to them, Georgia Hart’s son Ted Annis also wrestles as Teddy Hart.

Today there are still too many wrestlers dying at young ages. The majority of these are drug-related. Some of them commit suicide. Very few, such as Owen or the late Chris Candido, pass away as the result of an in-ring accident (Candido passed away in 2005 after suffering a broken leg at TNA’s Lockdown pay-per-view. The actual cause of his death was a blood clot from the surgery to reset his leg).

Owen’s death revealed a lot about wrestling. It was a reminder to all of us that wrestlers are human beings who, while they are well-trained, are not stuntmen. It was also a reminder to the promoters that wrestlers should not be doing things that they were not trained for. It was a lesson that Vince McMahon learned. Vince Russo seemed to have trouble grasping it while he was in WCW. It is a lesson that Jeff Jarrett, Owen’s best friend, will never forget.