Stu Hart

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Steward Edward Hart
Data
Ring name Stu Hart
height 178 cm
Fighting weight 105 kg
birth May 3, 1915
Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , Canada
death October 16, 2003
Calgary , Alberta , Canada
Trained by Jack Taylor
Toots Mondt
debut 1943
retirement 1972

Stewart Edward Hart (born May 3, 1915 in Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , † October 16, 2003 in Calgary , Alberta ) was a Canadian wrestler , wrestling coach and promoter .

biography

Sports background / American football

Stu Hart was a successful amateur wrestler in his youth , a wrestler in the European sense, and started playing football with the Edmonton Eskimos in the 1930s .

Due to his success in wrestling, Hart should go to the Olympic Games with the Canadian national wrestling team . But at the beginning of the Second World War (1939) these were suspended and Stu Hart was called up for military service.

Military time

Despite the war, Stu Hart remained loyal to wrestling, as he entertained his comrades with various wrestling matches. In the military, more precisely in the Royal Canadian Navy, he came into contact with actual wrestling for the first time . He made his debut there in 1943 at the age of 27.

After the end of World War II, Hart returned to North America and went to the United States .

Wrestling career

Stu Hart went to New York in 1946 to train as a wrestler. He was signed there by the National Wrestling Association and went through a tough feuding program with Jack Taylor and Toots Mondt . Both had a similar gimmick , with Taylor as a brawler and Mondts as a shoot fighter at the time.

The wrestling style learned there shaped Stu Hart's later career. Although he never won a championship in his playing days , he was considered an excellent technician who could keep up with the tough style. He competed against a tiger and a grizzly bear, among others.

In 1948, Hart founded the Foothills Athletic Club , which organized wrestling under the banner of Klondike in Edmonton , Alberta, Canada . A little later he came into contact with the promoter Larry Tillmann , who ran the Stampede Wrestling promotion in Calgary, Alberta .

Foundation of STAMPEDE Wrestling and joining the NWA

1951 Tillman and Hart merged to form the new banner STAMPEDE Wrestling and both were accepted into the NWA board . Larry Tillman became the official representative of Stampede , Hart, as Tillman's representative, assessor.

But in 1952 Tillman surprisingly withdrew from wrestling and so Stu Hart moved up on the board. In the same year he also took over sole management of STAMPEDE and expanded it into one of the leading Canadian doctorates in the following years.

In 1957, Stu Hart set up a successful TV format with “Stampede Wrestling”, which eventually ran in 50 countries around the world and was not discontinued until 1989.

In 1972, Hart ended his active career at the age of 56.

After retirement

After the end of his active career, Hart began to work increasingly as a promoter and wrestling instructor. For this he converted the basement of his house into a dungeon . In a very tough training, both Hart's own sons and numerous later superstars from other doctorates went through the dungeon. How extremely tough the training was with Stu Hart, his son Bret would later admit in the documentary Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows . In this documentary, he publicly admitted that several times during his wrestling training he had a real fear of death in front of his father when he pulled through various handholds with all his might and asked Bret with the words either to escape these grips or to die in them.

In 1982 Stu Hart resigned from the NWA board and began working closely with what was then the World Wrestling Federation . 1984 also ended Hart's time as a trainer and promoter and so Stampede Wrestling became the official property of the WWF. But just one year later (1985) Hart's son Bruce bought the doctorate from the WWF.

Stu Hart only appeared occasionally in public. For example, in the first half of the 1990s, like the entire Hart family, he was involved in the feud program between Jerry Lawler and Bret Hart .

On October 16, 2003, Stu Hart died of complications from pneumonia. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in April 2010 .

Private

Stu Hart was married to Helen Hart († 2001) for 53 years and raised 12 children with her. The family's four daughters later also married wrestlers. Of the eight sons, seven became wrestlers, the eighth wrestling referee.

Honors

  • Member of the Hall of Fame of Wrestling Observer Newsletter (1996)
  • On May 31, 2001, he was awarded the Order of Canada .
  • In 2005, the city of Saskatoon announced that a street would be named Hart Road after Stu Hart .
  • Member of the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2010 (April 2010)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bret Hart: The Secret Fury of the Catcher Hitman Hart (1998)
  2. ↑ Image: Stu Hart against a tiger
  3. ↑ a b Obituary for Stu Hart ( Memento from November 3, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Interview with Bret Hart ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / uk.sports.ign.com
  5. ↑ Helen Hart passed away
  6. ↑ Stu Hart receives the Order of Canada award

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hart, Stu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hart, Steward Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian wrestler, wrestling trainer and promoter
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , Canada
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 2003
Place of death Calgary , Alberta , Canada