Owen Hart

Owen James Hart
Data
Ring name	Owen Hart "The Rocket" Owen Hart "The King of Harts" Owen Hart "The Black Hart" "The Blue Blazer"
height	178 cm
Fighting weight	103 kg
birth	May 7, 1965 Calgary , Alberta, Canada
death	May 23, 1999 Kemper Arena, Kansas City
Announced from	Calgary , Alberta, Canada
debut	1986

Owen James Hart (born May 7, 1965 in Calgary , † May 23, 1999 in Kansas City ) was a Canadian wrestler . He was the brother of the successful wrestler Bret Hart , the son of Stu Hart and the brother-in-law of Davey Boy Smith and Jim Neidhart . In 1999 he was killed in an unsuccessful and unsuccessful stunt during a major WWF event .

Life

Owen Hart was the youngest son of Canadian wrestling legend Stu Hart. On July 1, 1989, he married his long-time girlfriend Martha. Together with her he had two children, Oje and Athena. Although Hart originally did not aspire to a wrestling career, he was eventually trained by his father and made his debut in 1986 in his league Stampede Wrestling .

Career

His wrestling career took him to Germany, where he fought a few fights for the CWA promotion . He also appeared for the following leagues: WWF , TWA , SMW , USWA , NJPW . At New Japan he became the first foreigner to win the prestigious IWGP Junior Heavyweight title. To this day, Owen Hart is considered to be one of the best technicians in wrestling. In the summer of 1988 he finally joined the WWF (now WWE). On his debut, he played the character The Blue Blazer with a superhero gimmick . Shortly thereafter, he took a short break, but in 1991 he returned to the WWF as The Rocket Owen Hart.

At the Survivor Series in 1993, arguably the biggest feud of his career began when he - according to the storyline - fell out with his brother Bret Hart. The feud dragged on until 1997 and featured some of the technically best wrestling matches. A match in a ring, which was surrounded by a steel cage, received the rare highest score of five stars from the well-known wrestling critic Dave Meltzer . In the meantime, Hart was able to win the "King of the Ring" tournament in 1994. He was also able to win the WWF Tag Team title twice.

After the feud with Bret Hart ended, the brothers joined forces with their two brothers-in-law Jim Neidhart and The British Bulldog and Brian Pillman to form The Hart Foundation . Shortly thereafter, Hart received his first individual title when he took the WWF Intercontinental title from Rocky Maivia . The entire Hart Foundation subsequently feuded Stone Cold Steve Austin . At SummerSlam 1997, Hart lost his Intercontinental title to Austin and injured his neck in this match by a failed piledriver . Another title for Hart was to follow at the Bad Blood 1997 event . He won a tournament final against Faarooq and secured the Intercontinental title for the second time. He lost this title at the Survivor Series a month later, however, again to Steve Austin. At the same event there was the Montreal Screwjob , in which Bret Hart was cheated out of the WWF Championship by Vince McMahon . As a result, Owen Hart was the only member of the family who did not change to WCW , as he was threatened with substantial fines in the event of a breach of contract.

At In Your House: D-Generation X in December, he completed his first appearance after the Screwjob when he Shawn Michaels attacked in the title match. This action did gymnastics hard for first time since 1994. Facebook .

At the beginning of 1998 Hart became European Champion for the first time. He defeated Goldust , the reigning champion Triple H took. It was also Triple H who took the title from Hart about two months later. In mid-1998 Hart was allowed to join the Nation Of Domination group and, with their support, initially continued to feud against D-Generation X , and later against Ken Shamrock . In early 1999, Hart teamed up with Jeff Jarrett and won the tag team title for the third time when the two defeated Shamrock and the Big Boss Man on one edition of RAW . While on the team with Jarrett, Hart's old gimmick of the blue blazer was revived. The team had to give up the title in early April against Kane and X-Pac .

Deadly accident

In the Pay Per View "Over The Edge", which took place on May 23, 1999, Hart should compete against the reigning Intercontinental Champion The Godfather and secure the title for the third time. To accentuate his Blue Blazer gimmick, it was planned that Hart would abseil down from the ceiling of the hall and thus “float” into the ring. The stunt itself had already been used successfully several times, for example by Undertaker or Sting , but also six months earlier by Hart himself. Hart, who agreed to the stunt despite personal concerns, received a new harness and only one at "Over The Edge" Safety in the form of a quick release, because it should be able to detach itself from the anchorage as quickly as possible in order to make its appearance smoothly without lengthy interruptions. According to the Owen Hart biography Broken Harts by Hart's widow Martha Hart, both the safety precautions and the quality of the safety hook were completely inadequate. When Hart wanted to straighten his costume, he accidentally released the fuse, fell 78 feet (almost 24 meters) deep according to official information and came up with the body in the corner of the ring. Due to serious internal injuries, Hart died lying in the ring after about six minutes. Commentator Jim Ross informed viewers that a serious accident had occurred and asserted it was not a storyline . After Hart was transported to the hospital, where only his death could be determined, Ross notified the television viewer.

The death scandals

Despite the fatal accident in front of a live audience, the event was not canceled, but continued on the orders of Vince McMahon. On the day after "Over The Edge", to the displeasure of the Hart family, there was a special edition of RAW dedicated to Owen Hart, in which the wrestlers could voluntarily compete and occasionally expressed their grief in various clips and the person Owen Hart as an extremely sociable person behind the scenes. Exceptions here were wrestlers, with whom Vince McMahon feared damage to the image. B. Undertaker or Kane. On October 4, 1999, a tribute match between Chris Benoit and Bret Hart took place in the WCW .

Shortly after his death, Hart's family received a bouquet of flowers from McMahon which was decorated with WWF emblems and which they had therefore disposed of immediately. In addition, McMahon made Hart's funeral a TV mourning ceremony, although Martha Hart had expressly forbidden the WWF to show a camera team or to be present at all. He also made a contract offer to Bret Hart during the memorial service, which is why McMahon was even more criticized.

Martha Hart sued the WWF and finally agreed with the wrestling league on a settlement of 18 million US dollars. With part of the money she founded the charitable foundation "Owen Hart Foundation".

successes

title

• New Japan Pro Wrestling
  • 1 × IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion
• United States Wrestling Association
  • 1 × USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship
• World Wrestling Federation
  • 4 × WWF World Tag Team Championship 2 × with Yokozuna , 1 × The British Bulldog and Jeff Jarrett
  • 1 × WWF European Championship
  • 2 × WWF Intercontinental Championship

Awards

• World Wrestling Federation
  • King of the Ring 1994
• Extreme Wrestling Federation
  • Hall of Fame

Trivia

• Like many wrestlers in the role of heel, Owen Hart was the exact opposite behind the scenes. Hart was considered down-to-earth and had no starry airs. He was very popular with numerous colleagues, also outside the WWE, and notorious for the pranks he played on other wrestlers and friends.
• Martha Hart named her son Oje after Hart's childhood nickname (OJ as short for Owen James).
• The 1999 event "Over The Edge", in which Owen Hart lost his life, has not been released on DVD or VHS, nor has that event name been used for a WWE event since then.
• Bret and Martha Hart founded and built the Owen Hart Foundation together.
• The rock band Planetfish dedicated a tribute song to Owen Hart called We Still Need You, Owen .
• The controversial book called Under The Mat , published in 2001 and written by Hart's sister Diana, is about the bad things of her family. In it, Owen is described, among other things, as a constant yes-man who could not assert himself and wanted to avoid any confrontation, while Martha Hart is described as a "control freak". Martha Hart enforced an indexing of the entire book with a lawsuit against the publisher.
• Owen Hart played in the TV series Liebling, I shrunk the children in the episode "Liebling, Do You Like Wrestling" alongside Bret Hart.
• As a tribute to his role model Owen Hart, WWE wrestler Kevin Steen changed his ring name to Kevin Owens .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Extreme Wrestling Federation Hall Of Fame ( Memento from August 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

literature

• Martha Hart, Eric Francis: Broken Harts. The Life and Death of Owen Hart. M. Evans, New York NY 2004, ISBN 1-59077-036-6 .