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May 23, 1999, Kemper Arena, Kansas City, Missouri.

An uneasy Owen Hart prepares himself for a professional wrestling match.

It will be the last time he enters a ring.

A shocking death tonight in the world of professional wrestling.

Canadian Owen Hart, known as the Blue Blazer,

was killed performing a pre-match stunt.

In professional wrestling, Owen Hart was a reluctant star.

He was a distinctly normal man in a very strange world.

But Owen Hart had been born for nothing else.

He was the son of a wrestling legend

and the younger brother of Bret Hart, a wrestling superstar.

Owen worked for Vince McMahon, owner of the World Wrestling Federation.

McMahon helped make him a star.

Now Owen would pay the ultimate price for a stardom he never really wanted.

Owen Hart, the man who longed for a life outside the ring, would never escape it.

Owen worked in a world of theatrical violence, but for the family he left behind.

His death was all too real

We at the World Rusting Federation

expressed deepest sympathies to the family of Owen Hart, his wife Martha, his son Oge,

daughter Athena, as well as the entire Hart family.

This was a tragic and tragic just horrible accident.

At 10?

01 AM this morning, with my full authority, my legal counsel filed a wrongful death lawsuit

in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Kansas City, Missouri, against WWF, Vince McMahon,

Titan Sports, and all others I believe are responsible for my husband's death.

Owen Hart's fateful journey to Kansas City began 34 years earlier in a rambling mansion in Calgary, Alberta.

As Owen grew up, the Hart family was already the stuff of legend.

My friends would say, like, wow, there's the Hart's. They live in this big brick house mansion on the hill.

There's like, as far as we know, there's at least a dozen of them.

Their dad's this big mean wrestler, and we always had a very unique family.

It looked like the monsters from the monster TV show looked like they're home

He had like old broken down Cadillacs and old buses and broken down rings and everything

And you just had to see it to believe it before Owen was born

Stu and Helen Hart built Stampede wrestling into a successful family business and had a lot of kids

They wound up with 12 children. She said it's a funny thing

Every time Stu hangs his pants on the end of the bed. I'm pregnant

The weather is cold in the winter, and we love children.

Into this world filled with wrestlers, kids, and animals of all descriptions was born Owen James Hart.

He would be the last of the Hart children, and he was special.

The prince had come in, and this was the last baby, and we all knew.

And we all were in awe of him, like, ah!

There was a bit of an obsession with Owen.

Everybody was trying to pick him up and carry him around.

Slept in the girl's room.

He was the girl's sort of project.

There was an ongoing feud between the girls and the boys.

But if a boy hit a girl, there would be hell to pay.

Living in the girl's room, Owen was caught in the middle.

He was the girl's tattletail.

But his allegiance was strictly with the girls.

My mom said, she goes, and today we move Owen

into the boy's room.

Like, look at Owen, and you can see Owen swallow pretty hardly.

You know, he just knew it was a...

This was a big moment for him.

Sister Ellie and my brother Dean, they got into a huge commotion.

My dad came in and pulled everyone apart,

and right away he looked at Owen and said,

Owen, what happened?

And right away, Owen looked, he sized up the situation and went...

Ellie started it and that was it you know he had severed all the ties with the girls and he was one of the boys

It was like high-fives all around

Got the arm around old one. He's the new team member

As Owen grew up Stu was less active in the wrestling business and spent more time with his son

My dad was one that made my breakfast. He was the one that took me to school

Most of the time is one that made my lunch

When she wasn't having babies, Owen's mother spent most of her time upstairs in an office, managing the family business.

She didn't do it like nine to five. She would do it from nine till midnight.

Running a wrestling business was the last thing this sophisticated New Yorker had planned for her life.

She would tell me that she's waiting to wake up from this god-awful nightmare of the winter and surrounded by wrestlers and

boys. Owen's parents were a classic odd couple.

The moment I met him, I knew that he and I had nothing in common.

Later on, I realized that we would be totally incompatible.

So of course, we got married.

We were married in a blizzard, and I've been snowed under ever since.

Owen's father was big, gruff, and handsome.

He'd fought his way out of poverty and lived by his own rules.

Stu was kind of a character as he was talking he was walking over putting his

hands on me and saying I want to show you this hold I put on superstar Billy

Graham and and he had my hands up here and he started squeezing and I was going

oh no. Stu as a person was born about 300,000 years too late in life. He made an

excellent caveman. And he was a prime example of somebody to start out with

He survived, made it all the way to the top.

I was intimidated of my dad.

I respected him.

Just that fear of ever doing something wrong

kept me from doing something wrong.

Owen watched his father lure victims down to the basement

gym, known as the Dungeon.

It was here, Stu, practiced his art of submission wrestling.

I can remember Owen and often a lot of my brothers

sitting there.

And Owen would study this sort of exercise

High-pitched screaming.

Take the arm here and put it here and smother him with his own damned arm.

He would take you down there and methodically just wrestle with you,

put you in submission hold.

He always knew what he was doing, but you know, am I going to get out of here alive?

You put the chin in the eye, you wouldn't see a lot of shit if you'd seen the tongue.

He was like a sheep herder, he got hit all the kids...

in line, and everybody behaved themselves, and I think it worked.

Once a woman said to me, well, you have to practice what you preach.

She said, if your husband tells their children not to drink, he shouldn't.

I said, he never does. And not to smoke. I said, he never has.

And not to fool around. I said, no, he never did.

And Owen was the same way. They were a lot alike.

Stu taught Owen if he could withstand pain and live right, there was nothing a heart couldn't overcome.

You know, I think my family kind of had this image of, you know, we're the hearts we are, you know, invincible.

Somebody bothers us, bullies us or whatever, we'll get a big brother to protect you.

And the big brothers had my dad.

I don't know if it's a false sense of security,

but there was no fear or no, we just kind of had this image

where the hearts don't bother us.

82 years old, the Patriarch of the Hart family,

and will attempt a stand for Alistair from the ring.

When Owen grew up, his confidence in the strength

of the Hart family remained unshakable.

But when his nephew fell ill with a fatal virus,

Owen faced something even the hearts couldn't overcome.

With Matthew, it's just wrong.

He's just such a healthy boy.

It would drive me crazy to think that a week before,

perfectly healthy, strong, wrestling,

and the epitome of what a perfect young boy should be.

12 days after getting sick, Matthew was near death.

And I got in there, and I got to talk to him.

And as weak as he was, and disoriented as he was,

the first thing he talked about was wrestling.

I was holding his little hands and thinking,

a week ago, he was fine, grabbing guys and wrestling.

And it's like, how could this happen?

It kind of makes you realize that you're

living on borrowed timing.

Matthew's death shook the Hart family to its foundation.

It was the first time Owen had faced tragedy.

Walk along one day and do nothing wrong,

play by the rules, be a good person,

do everything right, and it doesn't guarantee anything.

You lose that sense of power that my family's become

accustomed to having.

Three years later, Matthew's death still cast a shadow,

as Owen prepared to work a wrestling show in Kansas City,

Missouri.

It was in small arenas throughout Western Canada that Owen Hart began his inevitable journey to professional wrestling.

All of Stu Hart's sons had followed him into the business.

But Stu had always wanted a legitimate champion.

Owen was his last hope.

So in junior high, Owen joined the amateur wrestling team.

I was living my dad's dream of being an amateur wrestling Olympic champion.

My dad never made me an amateur wrestler.

But it was encouraged, but I hated it.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like dieting.

I didn't like being Owen Hart, the famous Hart Boy.

But I always had this feeling of, when I come home,

I want to please my dad.

But it was at an amateur wrestling match,

Owen's life changed forever.

We just had such good chemistry,

like it was just something that you just don't find.

Her name was Martha Patterson, and it was love at first sight.

Owen found what most people never find.

He found the one girl for him.

He knew in his heart and she knew in her heart that this is the guy that's the girl.

End of story.

Everything was smooth sailing until one day he came over and he took his socks off and oh my god

Like his toes no kidding they that I swear anybody that knows him says like his toes were resting right on top of his bead

And I talked to him about I said like could you just keep your socks on and he thought it was funny

But he did he did keep his socks

Owen found in Martha the one thing he had never found growing up in the heart house

Owen wanted to have a very structured existence, you know, ordinary life.

I think he was trying to break that mold.

Just like, he didn't want to be a wrestler.

He was 100% sure that he just wanted to be a physical education teacher.

Owen went to university to become a teacher, but it was a wrestling scholarship that got him there.

It's all the kind of need to come home and say, Dad, I got a scholarship for wrestling, and I don't know why I...

I should have just said, I don't want this.

It took precedent over my, the whole purpose,

why I was going to university in the first place,

you know, to get a degree.

And it's like, I'm back in this wrestling.

It's like the curse of wrestling.

And he was just too good at it to not wrestle.

Wrestling had already chosen him.

And then after my third year at university my brother Bruce called me and said we need a new heart

You know I was watching from the sidelines watching wrestling. It's and I'm not gonna do that. I want to be norm

I want to be a fireman or a school teacher, but in 1986

Owen answered the call of duty and joined the family business as a professional wrestler

It wasn't long before Owen Hart was the star of the show

that wrestling was fake.

And even I remember him wrestling Bad News Allen.

Bad News Allen against Owen Hart.

They had this really bad brawl.

And I was ready to take my shoe off

and throw it at Bad News Allen because he was hurting Owen.

And I just didn't know.

And Owen never told me.

The first time I worked with Owen,

I didn't like him because I thought he was a spoiled brat.

His kid that just got out of high school, he's wrestling and he never lost.

Owen couldn't lose. He was his father's biggest star.

But Stampede Wrestling wasn't the biggest show in town anymore.

The World Wrestling Federation had taken over.

And Vince McMahon was the undisputed king of wrestling entertainment.

His number one star was a superhero named Hulk Hogan, who told kids to drink their milk and take their vitamins.

Andy Warhol, your impressions of what took place earlier on here?

I'm speechless.

Owen's father knew he couldn't compete.

His best talent was in the WWF, including Owen's brother, Brett.

Stu told Owen he might as well join him.

New York was where the money was, or WWF.

That was the goal, was to get him there and get him some money.

But it was a rude awakening for Owen.

He debuted as the Blue Blazer, a caped crusader in feathers.

It was Owen's job to lose every match, and he hated it.

He told Vince, he didn't come to the WWF to lose.

So Ben started laughing.

He said, well, I'll tell you what.

He says, finish out now, tonight.

This will be your last night, or you can finish your schedule out.

It made him look at wrestling in a different light.

Like, you know what?

Maybe this isn't all it's cracked up to be.

That maybe, you know, it's not worth taking so seriously.

Maybe there's, you know, more important things in life.

Owen decided to quit the WWF and come back to Calgary.

That summer, he married Martha.

Owen's dream was to get a normal job and live the rest of his life with his family.

He applied to the Calgary Fire Department.

A year later, Owen and Martha had their first child, Oge.

Okay, this quick. What does the dog do?

Owen didn't get into the fire department and he had a family to support.

One job beckoned and it was hard to say no. He was worried that you know, okay, I have to provide for my family here

I have to make a living. What can I do? I can wrestle. I'm good at that. So that's what he did in

1992 Owen went back to the WWF and this time he would never leave

Owen returned to the WWF.

Bret Hart was its biggest star.

Owen had shed the hated blue blazer outfit,

but within a year he was stuck in a tag team going nowhere.

On the verge of quitting a second time,

he finally got his big break.

Vince turned Owen into a villain

and pitted him against the champion,

his big brother, Bret.

That's just because you're older than me.

That makes you better than me.

It doesn't make you better than me, Brett.

And you've held me down all my life.

Well, I was reluctant to do it just because of the family name

and the fact that we really were close brothers.

Oh, I was so, I broke down and cried.

I felt so bad.

You have to go on and say you can't stand on,

and he's spoiled and rotten on us to say you're conceded oath.

Now we have to go through this charade, 24 hours a day,

of two brothers that have this intense rivalry with each other

and a lot of hatred and bad feelings.

I'm coming at you, Fred!

A WrestleMania 10, and I'm gonna beat you, brother.

So whenever anybody gets a shot at the world champion,

it's a big bone on your check.

Olin had put it to me, he goes, the thing about it,

he goes, why can all these guys that have families

and have kids, they get to work with you, and I can't.

And I said right away, I said, we'll do it then.

And a reversal here.

Putting on the brakes, nice, put it over.

There, good doing.

What's the leg now?

Everyone, two, three.

At that time, they were having probably the best matches

in the world, and I think they saw that as a.

source of personal pride

You were both really really happy working with each other and with a lot of fun

He liked being the bad guy and he did it really well and he could do the mean faces

The feud made Owens career

From then on, he was one of the top bad guys in the company.

The brothers kept the rivalry one of the hottest storylines

in wrestling for more than a year.

To keep it real for the fans, Owen and Brett

drove in separate cars and ate in separate restaurants.

It worked most of the time.

We never talked to each other same flight same plane same he'd sit in one spot

And I'd sit in another one time we got detained at Calgary Customs

Owen said something to me and I kind of leaned back and I said something back to

Owen like yeah, right or something like that and and all of a sudden this

Woman's customs officer comes barging out of the little office and she goes I got ya

I knew that you guys talked I knew you were friends and we both looked at each other and we burst out laughing

Brett and Owen were riding high, but life on the road was still a grind

To keep things light wrestlers were constantly ribbing and teasing each other

Owen was a master

Owen was a perfect guy. He was good for the morale. He was always up there always joking and his jokes never harmed anybody

If someone had him in a painful hold and Owen would look

And he smoked the imaginary cigarette, which was a big one

Where he'd yawn

Over-accented wrestling falls and stuff, you know, huge somersaults and overdoing everything.

The nice thing about it is the crowd had no idea.

Olin had the rep for being a major river of dynamic proportions.

There was nobody that was safe.

The silent river, you know, I mean he'd ribbed somebody and all of a sudden they say hey nods

What did you do to my bag or what did you do?

I said, I didn't do nothing. I swear I didn't do nothing, you know and under all of it. It was Owen

He was the master

I respect, you know, you didn't try to get Owen back. It was considered to be a

Compliment to be ribbed by Owen

Owen played jokes to make being away from Martha and Oge more bearable.

Family was Owen's reason for living and never more so than when his daughter Athena was born in 1995.

He loved being a dad.

Athena was, you know, the apple of his eye.

They were just so connected and, you know, even just like they would sit on the couch together watching TV.

I think he definitely had his priorities.

Some people will say they lived for wrestling,

and I think they had it backwards.

The goalie had his priorities in the right order

because he lived for his family,

and he just wrestled to live.

I remember him saying to me that he said you've got the best of both worlds, so you've got a good job, you're staying at home with your kids.

They always knew what they wanted, what they wanted was each other and they wanted their family and they wanted to be together to the end.

Every week, year-round, Owen chose to go back on the road, determined to make enough money to buy their dream house.

Wrestling was the only way to afford a life they'd always hoped for.

A few more years and it would be theirs.

Over the next three years, Owen's career continued to rise.

He was a main eventer and one of the WWF's hottest tickets.

But if Owen was a star, his brother Brett was a superstar.

Brett, the hitman heart, a classic good guy,

had been Vince McMahon's biggest draw,

a vital asset in a ratings war with the WCW

that was threatening to destroy the WWF.

For the longest time Vince McMahon was the dominant wrestling promoter in North America and then Ted Turner got into the game

By 1996

Ted Turner's wrestling was outrating Vince McMahon's wrestling

There was a dog fight for supremacy in the wrestling world the WCW offered Brett nine million dollars to leave

But he turned them down out of loyalty to Vince Brett signed a 20-year contract for significantly less money

Owen continued to play a cowardly bad guy and was booed accordingly, but wrestling fans wanted a bad guy

They could cheer. I think the quench essential good guy the guy next door that that that my parents would think is a good guy

People puke at that. They don't want that now

Stone Cold Steve Austin a man without a conscience a classic vicious bad guy became a fan favorite

Owen understood the shift but was stuck playing a character that was wearing thin for a while now

It seems bad. It's cool a little bit on the dark side a little bit bad

It's like I like that guy. It's cool. He tells it out like it is, you know

Owen and Brett needed a change. It was time for the heart brothers to kiss and make up

ring and called out Owen who he'd been feuding with for you know Owen for years

and years you know going back to 94 and I think when Brett started talking to

Owen about growing up and who used to take you to school

Owen got the tears in his eyes and Brett said I love you Owen and Owen said

I love you.

With fans cheering Steve Austin, the hearts became a new kind of bad guy.

In the summer of 1997, they formed the Heart Foundation.

The Canadians waged a crusade against American immorality.

And it wasn't long before Owen faced off against Stone Cold Steve Austin.

What's on the line is Stone Cold Steve Austin's ass.

Now I've beaten him twice before, I have nothing to prove.

It was an important match for Owen up against the new star of the WWF

It would turn into a disaster

The crowd was right where we wanted him everything was perfect

I couldn't I could do no wrong and my opponent Steve Austin was perfect everything he did the crowd responded to he was the

fan favorite. I was the bad guy

It's like a dance partner and you go out there

You're doing your stuff and you got him right where you want him and everything is going well

And then all of a sudden, you know in a split second I did a mover. I dropped him on his head

He had a trap nerve in his neck for a while now for a few months

It's been wood bugging him, you know, even if you just shove him from behind if his neck kinks back it can

You know, he gets these lightning bolts

And I saw his neck, you know, there was a little bit of a cushion and impact on my thighs.

And his neck is so vulnerable, it just, it kinked, and he just went numb.

I knew right there, I said, there's something wrong.

He said, I can't feel my fingers.

It went from utopia to hell in a second, because now all of a sudden, my first concern is he paralyzed.

You know, is he done?

20 seconds it's felt like forever, you know slow motion. What do you do?

You know, do I look at the promoter and tell him this isn't part of the match?

There's a point there. We got to see what's more important the guy's health or

Satisfying this crowd and the cameraman and everybody else

It ended up where he crawled you could barely even

My two-year-old daughter could have rolled me up better, you know, you grab me and pulled me down and pinned me one two three

He didn't have the strength to do anything else, you know,

and he could barely hold up the belt.

People don't, they don't know

because they think wrestlers are superhuman.

They don't, this isn't supposed to happen.

Something's got to, there's got to be a catch.

The guy's going to spring out and beat on or,

and I watch it back and I say,

there is no happy ending in this.

The guy has dropped on his neck.

He's suffering like temporary paralysis.

We're not magicians.

A few months later, Vince McMahon shocked the wrestling world.

He forced Bret Hart out of the WWF.

It all had to do with the size of Bret's contract.

It was much larger than everyone else's contract in the company.

And I think the feeling was that if Bret's contract stayed at the rate it was,

then Austin and Undertaker who were, and Michael's as far as that goes,

would all want the same money as Bret.

Bret's loyalty to Vince McMahon was repaid with insult to injury.

In his final WWF match Vince had agreed Brett wouldn't have to lose in Canada

Instead Brett was double-crossed

Ending his 14 years in the WWF in what felt like a disgrace

The plan was for Owen to run into the ring and save Brett from defeat

The cue never came

When he realized what had happened Owen went to the ring to console his brother

I was I was reeling for a second there and then I know it was on that was the one that kind of gave me the

Pulled me up to get me back on my feet

Jones attitude right away was you did nothing to be ashamed of just like that

You got nothing to be ashamed of these people Vince McMahon should be ashamed of himself

The next morning, Brett left for the WCW and for the first time, Owen felt he was alone.

Owen wanted to get out and we talked extensively about it and I said, they can't make you stay there.

And I said, I think you should ask him.

You should just say, look, the right thing for you to do is to let me go.

Here now you have this brother that you love and you care about and he's been squashed his feelings are hurt

He's devastated by the sky and now he's moving on to a different company

And here you have Owen who's stuck in this lousy contract that has no outs and he asked Vince

Will you let me go Vince wouldn't let him go

Owen stayed in the WWF

but he was a lone figure in a wrestling world that was radically changing.

Every week it was shock television.

The raunchier Vince McMahon got, the better his ratings got.

Sabre would come out in less and less clothes every week

and she had finger paint over her breasts

and kids just loved it.

It was more violin oriented wrestling as well.

He brought back blood, more use of clubs, and baseball bats, and chairs.

Vince didn't live by any rules other than his own, which are no rules, just whatever works, you do it.

I think it was real difficult for Owen because it was not what he liked, but it was working.

I always advised don't ever sell yourself out don't ever sell your morals out

For money because you know what you're gonna walk away from it, and you're gonna hate yourself in the end money is not worth it

But it was getting harder to escape the raunchy storylines people craved

Vince teamed Owen up with a wrestler named double J, but the real star of the team was the busty valet Deborah

The new storyline made Owen increasingly sickened by a job that was more about sex than it was about wrestling.

It wasn't what Owen had been brought up to believe in.

The last time he was here, he said, dad, you know what? I don't want to talk about wrestling. He said, I just can't stand

talking about it. I'm so sick of it.

So a few minutes after that, he had to go. That was the last time I saw him.

Increasingly fed up with life in the raunchier WWF it was his family that kept Owen going

After years of planning Martha and Owen had finally started their dream house

Owen was caught between a job he found humiliating and the need to pay for the house

He went back to work

a reluctant actor in the Deborah storyline.

It had turned so raunchy there was going to be a blow-up eventually because no one couldn't keep saying no

I can't do this. No, I can't do that because everything was no like everything

They wanted him to do was no because everything was so dirty and filthy and raunchy and corrupt

he was gonna have his genitals fondled by the girl manager and

I think there was also a circumstance where gold dust was gonna put his hand down his pants or something like that and he just

Said no, I'm not gonna do anything like that. They wanted to do a thing where Owen would have a crush on Deborah

And so that would lead to Owen and Jeff Jarrett splitting up their team and feuding.

He said no.

He didn't want to put his wife and his kids through.

The idea that it looked like he was having an affair on his wife on television every week.

After he said no to the angle with having a crush on Deborah, the next story they came up with him was to go back to being the Blue Blazer.

This time the Blue Blazer was meant to ridicule the stars of the WCW, Bret Hart and Hulk Hogan.

Because I always take my vitamins, say my prayers, and drink my milk.

I know that he had felt that the Blue Blazer character, you know, was his punishment for turning down the Deborah thing.

And I think the only reason that it's like, I don't care if it's funny or stupid or not,

as long as I don't have someone humiliating me sexually,

that something that's totally unacceptable to my family and my kids.

You have to understand, Owen's walking a very thin line here because his contract states like,

you do what the promoter says or else they're going to fire you.

Sting was one of WCW's biggest draws, and so he was another target for the Blue Blazer storyline.

And his big trademark was coming from the ceiling, so it was to spoof how fake and how out of touch

coming from the ceiling really was.

To further deride the WCW, McMahon asked Owen to do a sting-like stunt.

He was to come down a cable superhero style, but end up playing the fool.

Owen didn't like heights, but he reluctantly agreed.

and he said, you know, they want me to do this stunt and I'm, you know, I'm kind of don't feel

right about doing it. And I said, well, don't do it then. And he's like, well, you know, I have to

do it. Like, I can't get out of it now. He was supposed to land in the ring and get unleashed and

actually walk forward and trip and fall down. That was kind of like that was the whole this whole

thing was done for that moment. A couple of days before Olin was to leave for Kansas City,

They were one week away from moving in then it was time for Owen to leave

He was in such a rush

And I never wanted to kind of get in the way, like he was hurrying, he had his bags and he was trying to get his boots on and get the car keys and get old in the car.

And so I was just, I said goodbye to him, I just remember he was down, he was putting his shoes on and he was bent over and I just kind of like hugged him quick and I kissed him on the cheek really quick just so I wouldn't get in his way.

And he grabbed me by the arm and he pulled me in and he gave me a kiss right on the mouth.

You know, it was so nice that he did.

And I thought, jeez, like, that was nice,

because I know you're in such a hurry.

And it was like the last kiss that he ever gave me.

Owen arrived in Kansas City and drove his rental car

to Kemper Arena.

He got there early, so he'd have lots of time to prepare for the show, a pay-per-view billed as over-the-edge.

Five hours before the show was to start, Owen climbed up to the catwalk for the first time.

He was shown the rigging device and the quick release cord.

It would take less than nine pounds of pressure to snap Owen out of his safety harness.

Less pressure than it takes to pull the trigger of a gun.

Owen practiced the stunt once and then went backstage to get dressed an hour before the show. He bumped into Hardy race. I

Saw one coming down the ramp and I went over him was chatting with him back and forth and

Owen was telling me that he had a new rigging and he wasn't really comfortable with it, but

He was going to do it

I have personally seen the harness and the hook device,

which was to have suspended him 80 feet

high above Kemper Arena.

It is a contraption which we allege in our lawsuit

was grossly inadequate and ill suited

to hold a 230 pound man such as Owen Hart.

This is a stunt that's performed.

On a routine basis

In any number of venues

Owen was simply to descend into the ring in

Superhero-like fashion

I'm not an expert on rigging I guess you are

Well, it would appear that there were no precautionary measures taken.

Why not?

First of all, I resent your tone.

Um, uh, no, no, I resent your tone, lady, okay?

You know, this was a tragic accident.

It was a tragic accident.

Don't try and put yourself in the spotlight here, okay?

This was an accident.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

An accident.

And everything that should have taken place

in terms of rigging to our knowledge at this moment

did take place.

It was rehearsed in the afternoon,

and everything was fine.

And that's all I know.

Mr. McMahon is the truth in that Owen did practice three or four times during the afternoon

and everything was set and he felt comfortable with it prior to the actual occurrence.

As far as I know everything was fine during the afternoon. A number of rehearsals took place.

Owen was told to take his place on the catwalk.

Dressed in coveralls to hide his blue blazer costume,

he ran up through the crowd to the top of the arena.

He climbed a wooden ladder and ran across the catwalk to where the rigors were waiting.

He quickly dressed, put on his mask,

got into the nylon vest and was connected to the rigging device.

Then he was swung out and suspended high above the crowd, awaiting the queue to descend.

He must have been scared.

Absolutely terrified.

Suspended 75 feet up up the crowd.

Something caused the quick release to open.

And Owen fell.

As life came on, we'd seen him hit the rope

until he landed on the ground and he'd just lay there.

He'd lifted his head.

off the canvas just ever so slightly just a couple inches in his arms he kind of

looked like a guy that had just done a hundred sit-ups and was trying to do a

number a hundred and one and couldn't quite do it and he had fell back on the

canvas and I looked at my friend and said this is this is messed up something's

wrong and some people started chanting oh when oh when oh when and I think

everyone was looking for that customary thumbs up signal that the

that the football players sometimes give

when they're hurt and they're being carried off the field,

but it never came from him.

One of the guys who worked on him was a friend of mine,

and he told me almost immediately afterwards

that no one was going to make it.

All of his friends are...

cried, you never ever thought I'd ever dream something like that could happen in wrestling.

The phone rang, I was sitting in my front chair and I was looking at my house that I was just packing up

and it was this doctor from the hospital and I just felt this doom sweep over me and he said

Mrs. Hart there's been an accident he owing foul and hit his head on the turnbuckle

And I he was going through like all this stuff and it was like and I said

Just get to the end of it. I said what what's the end result?

like don't give me the whole buffer thing like what happened and

He said I you know normally we'd fly you down here to tell you this kind of news, but you know your husband has died

I just melted into that chair.

Like, I just couldn't believe it.

Didn't know what to do.

Didn't know, I was,

I kept thinking that it was such a,

such a crummy ending for him, you know, for my family.

The hearts already knew something was wrong.

They were waiting anxiously for more information and when the phone finally rang Helen answered I

Said Helen I

Don't know how to tell you this. I really don't like it

It's this hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life

But I am so sorry to tell you that your son has died and I can't believe that it's true, but it is I said no

Of course

All the nose in the world couldn't change anything.

For my father's sake, I think if you could have had it not happen in any way associated with wrestling,

it would have been something you could at least bear.

I can recall actually getting so overwrought that I would sob or cry, you know,

but I think we all suffered inside.

someone is at fault should the business competition be so fierce between these

two companies that the wrestlers life their future is in jeopardy how many

millions can a company make how many billions is enough

I invited Vince McMahon for a few reasons.

I wanted him to realize, you know what?

You guys are so desensitized from all the garbage that you put on your show.

You don't even realize the degree of pain that's been caused here.

And I want to show you.

I want to show you Owen in the coffin.

That he was really gone and he was really taken from me.

And this is what really happened.

This is reality.

It's funny because in our life together we really both just wanted this

country home this private life that we'd created for ourselves and

It was like I don't care what the rest of the world is doing

I got my perfect little husband

I got my perfect little family here and that's all I want and that's all Owen wanted and that's all we wanted together

But my path was lit and I knew where I was going and we knew where we were going and I could see it for miles down the road

Now it's black and it's dark and I don't know what's around the corner for me

People in the business wonder if Owen Hart's death will do much to change professional wrestling.

Martha Hart hopes Owen's death will not be in vain.