by Ian Hamilton
As Owen and the Bulldog were in the middle of a match against each other, Bret Hart came to the ring and talked the two out of their ongoing woes, blaming America for turning family against each other, and forming the new Hart Foundation. Instead of the tag team that we saw in the 80s, the 90s’ version of the Hart Foundation was a five man stable, with Bret and Owen Hart being joined by brother in laws Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart and the British Bulldog, whilst family friend (and trainee of the famous Hart family Dungeon) Brian Pillman completing the quintet.
Early on in the Hart Foundation’s run, Owen had skirmishes from two of the hottest stars of the modern era. Initially winning the Intercontinental title from Rocky Maivia (best known as The Rock), Owen would then take on another of the era’s biggest names: Stone Cold Steve Austin. Initially dropping the tag team titles to the team of Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold, Owen and the Bulldog regained the titles, only to lose them to Austin and his new partner, Dude Love (aka Mick Foley). Austin would go on to capture Owen’s Intercontinental title at SummerSlam 1997, in a match that would become famous for shortening, if not nearly ending, Austin’s career. As the title match reached its climax, Owen went to give Austin a sit-out tombstone piledriver - a move that wasn’t exactly performed regularly by Owen. By accident, Austin’s head was positioned too low down, and the impact of the move resulted in temporary paralysis for “Stone Cold”. Realising something was wrong, Owen stalled for time, as Austin managed to clamber onto his knees to deliver the world’s worst schoolboy roll-up to win the match and the Intercontinental title.
As Austin took time off to recover from the broken neck, the WWE creative team decided to turn a real life accident into a storyline, with Owen mocking Austin’s fate, spoofing his trademark “Austin 3:16” t-shirt with his own “Owen 3:16” shirts, and a catchphrase of “Owen 3:16 says I just broke your neck.” Owen would go on to win a tournament for the vacated Intercontinental title, beating Faarooq (Ron Simmons) in the final, thanks to some help from Austin, who would explain his interference by saying he only wanted to regain the title from Owen. Austin would defeat Owen for the title at the 1997 Survivor Series, but it would be the aftermath of that night’s main event that would redefine Owen’s WWE career.
Known as the “Montreal Screwjob”, the main event of the 1997 Survivor Series was remembered for much more than Bret Hart losing the WWE title to Shawn Michaels. In the weeks prior to the match, Bret had been informally asked to walk out of the WWE and seek employment with the rival WCW promotion, despite Bret having been tied to a twenty-year, multi-million-dollar contract with the WWE. As Bret reached an agreement with WCW, there was the issue of just what would happen with Bret’s WWE title - coming into the Survivor Series, Bret remained the champion, but with rumours gathering pace that WCW would announce Bret’s signing the following night, it seemed that something had to give.
The events of November 9, 1997 are discussed to this very day, mostly thanks to numerous repeat performances by various wrestling promotions, but the end result saw Bret Hart leave the WWE for WCW. Out of the remaining members of the Hart Foundation (Brian Pillman had passed away a month earlier, being found dead in a motel room in Minnesota prior to a WWE pay-per-view), Owen was the only one who was refused a contract release: both the British Bulldog and Jim Neidhart were able to buy themselves out of their contract and headed for WCW, whilst WWE refused Owen’s every effort to join his brother.
Owen eventually returned to WWE television by the end of 1997, Owen attacked Shawn Michaels at the end of the D-Generation X pay-per-view, after Shawn had successfully defended the title against Ken Shamrock. Sporting a new character, “The Black Hart” was now a fan favourite, riding on the pro-Hart-family sentiment generated by the events of Montreal. He quickly gained singles gold, albeit in nonsensical fashion (beating a Triple H-impersonating Goldust to win Triple H’s European title). Various backstage politics meant that a planned feud between Owen Hart and Shawn Michaels - for Michaels’ WWE title - was downgraded, perhaps on the theory that Owen wasn’t established as a main eventer, and as such was deemed too big a risk to be in the main event.
Of course, the “other” theory made just as much sense - that Owen may have been ready to give Shawn a “receipt” or two for what happened at Montreal, and not be as co-operative in the match as he would like. As a result, Shawn’s replacement in the feud was his D-Generation X stable mate, and future-man-in-charge-of-WWE, Triple H. It was at this point that Owen was given a rather derogatory nickname, which wasn’t as easy to promote as “The Rocket” or “The King of Harts”. Owen’s new nickname, at least from the edgy-heel DX, was the “Nugget”, supposedly because DX (in storyline) had flushed all of the Hart family out of WWE, and, comparing the Harts to human waste, Owen was the last “nugget” left. Perhaps comparing WWE to a toilet wasn’t the smartest idea, but nevertheless, it resulted in whatever popularity Owen had as a babyface waning away pretty quickly, and as a result, the feud with Triple H was short lived. Owen would go back to his familiar ways, turning heel, as he joined yet another faction: the Nation of Domination.
As a white Canadian, Hart seemed somewhat out of place in a group that was intended to be a take on the “black power” group of the same name, Owen was lofted to “joint leader” of the Nation, alongside the Rock. However, as the D-Generation X stable was promoted ahead of the Nation, Owen found himself sidelined once again, with a series of matches against Ken Shamrock being the only bright point as we approached the summer of 1998. Another change of pace saw Owen being shifted into yet-another-tag-team, this time with a man who would attempt to shape the future of wrestling just four short years later (when he created the TNA promotion) - Jeff Jarrett.
Owen’s team was pretty much thrown together during a time where WWE had bigger priorities than their tag team division. With previous champions such as Kane, Mankind, Steve Austin, and even the tag team stalwarts of the New Age Outlaws - of the Road Dogg and “Bad Ass” Billy Gunn - carving out careers for themselves in the singles division, it was fair to say that tag team wrestling was an afterthought by this point. So much so, indeed, that aside from their WrestleMania outing - a tag team title defence against pre-show battle royal winners Test and D’Lo Brown - the legacy of the Owen and Jarrett team would end up being something that never happened.
By 1999, the WWE was a far different company than the one that Owen Hart had initially joined in the late 80s. Gone were the days of slow paced matches and simplistic storylines - the Montreal incident had been used as an excuse to replace an old, tired (but admittedly, working) format with a style of television that became known as “crash TV”. Most commonly associated with wrestling writer Vince Russo, who had his only fame in WWE in the late 90s, before failing to repeat these successes in WCW and TNA, the format of “crash TV” was, simply put, a translation of the saying “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks”. Characters, instead of being amplified versions of a wrestler’s real personas, would become sensationalised, and shows would often end up resembling episodes of Jerry Springer inside a wrestling ring. Owen was given a storyline and quickly shot it down.
Perhaps intended as a way to break-up his current partnership with Jeff Jarrett, Owen was to have developed a fixation for his team’s buxom manager, Debra, which was to have caused friction between Owen and Jeff. In real life, Debra had been married to former NFL defensive tackle Steve “Mongo” McMichael, which was in some way responsible for her breaking into wrestling, initially with WCW, before jumping to WWE (as Jeff Jarrett’s manager) following her divorce. Debra would go on to marry “Stone Cold” Steve Austin; a marriage that ended in a somewhat acrimonious divorce.
Taking into account the feelings of his wife (his childhood sweetheart, Martha) and their two young children, Owen shot down this storyline out of hand, which left his tag team with Jeff Jarrett in something of a holding pattern. Management didn’t want to split up the team for no reason, but without a long term storyline, there was no
point in their existence. At the end of 1998, Owen retired in a storyline where he had supposedly injured UFC fighter-turned-wrestler Dan “The Beast” Severn following a piledriver. Unfortunately, this storyline didn’t resonate with fans anywhere near as much as the legitimate injury with Steve Austin did the previous year, but the storyline did what it was meant to do - it wrote out Owen Hart and put his team with Jeff Jarrett on ice, allowing the WWE to go back to the past yet again for Owen Hart’s latest reinvention. He would once again don the blue mask and singlet, and go back to a character that had been consigned to history... or so we thought. However, it would be the rekindling of a character which would eventually be the end of Owen Hart.
This version of the Blue Blazer character was nothing like the bland masked hero who first burst onto our screens in the late 80s. This Blue Blazer was an anti-anti-hero, disgusted with his surroundings in the somewhat seedy Attitude era of the WWE, whilst also being portrayed as a bumbling superhero. Although there were comedic aspects to the character, such as the whole “is Owen Hart the Blue Blazer”, where Owen “proved” he wasn’t the Blazer by having other people under the hood - including Jeff Jarrett and former partner Koko B. Ware (you’d have to have been blind not to have noticed or appreciated the comedy of a black man in a mask portraying a white guy in a mask), ultimately, the Blue Blazer was somewhat ashamed to be in the same company alongside characters such as a former porn star (Val Venis) and a pimp (the Godfather).
Come May 1999, the Blue Blazer character was locked in a feud with the aforementioned Godfather, with the Intercontinental title at stake. As a way to enhance the character, the Blue Blazer would be lowered from the rafters of the arena on a cable, in a rip-off/spoof of the entrance that was being used at the time by WCW main eventer Sting. In the weeks that built up to the Over the Edge pay-per-view, the entrance was tried out several times, but for the show itself, there would be an “improvement” added to it. According to the book “Broken Hart” (written by Owen’s widow Martha), the original plans for the entrance would be for Owen to have a “mini Blue Blazer” strapped to him for the entrance. That entrance never happened, as a procrastinating Owen skipped out on the pre-show rehearsals, which resulted in the mini Blue Blazer being axed from the line-up... unfortunately, with Owen being scared of the original entrance idea, the planned “descent into the ring” entrance was to go ahead as scheduled.
As the Over The Edge pay-per-view started, Owen got changed into his Blue Blazer attire, minus the mask, before making his way towards the rafters of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. With cover-alls hiding the distinctive blue of his wrestling costume, Owen headed through the crowd, and climbed up the steps to the top of the arena, before clambering onto a catwalk that was conveniently (for the entrance, at least) directly overhead, some 70 feet above the ring. Moments after a Hardcore title match between Al Snow and Hardcore Holly concluded, a video package played to the arena and to the watching audience at home, recounting the feud between the Blue Blazer and the Godfather.
With everyone being distracted by the video package, a cabled-up Owen stepped out of the catwalk as he prepared to be lowered via the cable-and-harness set-up down to the ring. The planned entrance was to see the Blue Blazer character stop about a foot from the ring, before “struggling” to disconnect himself and take a prat-fall, in line with the comedic, bungling superhero character that was supposedly being portrayed. What actually took place turned out to be something of a watermark in the history of professional wrestling. As the video package came to an end, the harness apparatus went awry, as a quick-release clasp, that was meant to make the pratfall at the end easier to pull off, was accidentally triggered. Whether it was by Owen adjusting his cape, his mask, or even something as simple as a deep breath, the harness gave way, and Owen plunged into the ring, hitting the ropes, before being thrown onto the canvas.
The only inkling that the viewers at home had that something had gone wrong came through commentator Jim Ross, who segued from the video package to a pre-taped interview with the Blue Blazer. Upon returning from that pre-taped segment, all the viewers at home saw for a lengthy spell were shots of the crowd, as WWE went out of their way not to broadcast any shots of the ring, an image of “Good Ol’ JR” at the commentary desk gave us all a good idea of what had gone wrong. Owen Hart had fallen from the ceiling of the Kemper Arena.
In the minutes that unfolded, EMTs feverishly worked to try and resuscitate Owen in the middle of the ring, as a decision was made to continue on with the show regardless - a decision that many contest to this day - even after it was revealed, and announced to the television audience by Jim Ross that Owen had died of his injuries (no announcement was made to the live audience in the arena). The first that those who had been watching the show live at the arena knew of Owen’s death would have come via that evening’s newscasts - this being in the days before the Internet and mobile phones were prevalent, and long before Facebook and Twitter were commonplace. Owen’s death made news worldwide, a sign of how popular both Owen Hart and wrestling in general were at the time.
The following night’s edition of Raw was rewritten to be a two-hour tribute to Owen Hart, in a show that would become a template for future high profile deaths. Gone were all semblances of storylines and feuds, instead, the show was full of tearful tributes by wrestlers, as everyone struggled to come to terms with their loss. These tributes let the fans peer behind-the-scenes and find out that the person that they were booing in the ring was in reality a really nice, down to earth man - as many of the wrestlers confirmed, whether he was teased for being cheap, or for wanting to spend more time at home to be with his family, there was simply not a bad word that could have been said about him.
Perhaps a sign of the sheer shock that Owen’s death caused, the tribute episode of Monday Night Raw drew a Nielsen television rating of 7.2 - making it the highest rated episode in Raw’s history. Meanwhile, on “the other show”, WCW’s Monday Nitro mentioned Owen’s passing - which was somewhat obligatory out of respect, and also given that Bret was in the middle of a planned return following a groin injury. Some months later, Bret would wrestle a tribute match for his brother on an episode of Nitro, at the same arena where Owen died, against Chris Benoit.
As this was in the days where Raw was being shown live one week, with the following week’s episode having been taped, the show tried to get back to normal just 48 hours after Owen’s passing, as a somewhat-regular episode of Raw was taped, with the only mention being made in the storylines being Jeff Jarrett winning the Intercontinental title from the Godfather - a nod to the common belief that Owen was supposed to have won the title as the Blue Blazer - as the rest of the WWE’s storylines picked up where they left off.
In the weeks and months that followed, as the story behind Owen’s death became clearer, gradual changes were being made to the wrestling product as a whole. As it became clear that there was a malfunction with the harness that Owen was rigged to, the flashy, elaborate entrances that were glorified stunts were watered down and removed from wrestling, or at the very least, were subjected to more stringent safety checks. In WCW, Sting’s entrance, which was the inspiration behind the Blue Blazer spoof entrance, was quickly dropped, especially once it became clear that the quick-release equipment used to lower Owen to the ring was so sensitive, it needed less pressure than that needed to pull the trigger on a gun to activate.
As expected, a lawsuit was filed against the WWE and a multitude of defendants, with the main claims being that the stunt and equipment itself was poorly designed and dangerous. The case was settled out of court in November 2000, with the $18m settlement being used to create a charitable foundation in Owen’s name. In the wrestling business though, Owen’s death did lead to some changes - the elaborate entrances started to disappear, whilst pointless, high-risk stunts that didn’t directly figure into matches were removed (of course, this didn’t remove needless matches like WCW’s “Human Torch” match, where a stuntman was set on fi
re and thrown off of a stage... and another match in WCW where a wrestler was power bombed onto the top of an ambulance before sliding off and landing on the arena floor). Barely a year later, the increased safety measures were clearly visible as WCW held their Slamboree pay-per-view at the same Kemper Arena where Owen Hart had died. The end of the show featured a stunt where Mike Awesome would throw Chris Kanyon off of the second level of a triple-tiered steel cage and onto a heavily padded entrance ramp - a stunt that could, in passing, be compared to Mick Foley’s infamous fall from the top of the WWE’s Hell in a Cell in June 1996, except whereas Kanyon’s fall was broken by padding, Foley only hit the wooden announce table seconds before meeting the solid concrete of the arena floor.
In life, Owen Hart was someone who loved what he did, but at the same time, he also loved his family. At the time of his death, Owen was in the process of moving his family into a new home - his and Martha’s “dream home” - the results of years of being ribbed for being a penny pincher, saving monies by travelling with other wrestlers, or getting free car rides from trusted fans. However, as the reinvention of the Blue Blazer was intended to give Owen another chance of making serious money in wrestling, his ways meant that he was all but set for life, and able to seriously consider retiring from the sport before reaching his 40th birthday.
The career of Owen Hart would mean that he would be unable to live the life that he wanted. A career that had changed drastically from what he had originally started off doing, and perhaps most tragic of all, his death, in part, came around from trying to protect his family from yet another storyline that would have been forgotten in the months that followed, in a way that his death did not.
