Owen Hart: Remembering WWE superstar on 25th anniversary of his death
WWE.comOwen Hart was a beloved member of the Hart Dynasty alongside his brother Bret Hart, but his story would end in tragedy on a fateful day in May 1999.
Hart was the youngest of twelve children, born in 1965 to his father, Stu, and his mother, Helen.
All seven of his brothers were professional wrestlers at one point, with one sister, Diana, also taking up the family legacy.
Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Hart got his toes wet in the wrestling world as an amateur high school athlete.
He continued his journey by starring for the University of Calgary wrestling team and placing fourth in the 1984 Canada West Championships.
Although he was labeled a natural talent, wrestling wasn’t what Hart felt a calling to do. He initially only wrestled to appease his family.
According to his wife, Hart searched far and wide for a profession that would allow him to be a family man while still putting food on the table.
Alas, wrestling didn’t release him from its grip. Instead, as a member of Stampede Wrestling, his father’s Canadian-based promotion, Hart began catching the eye of other wrestling factions.
Professional wrestling was in Owen Hart’s blood
After fully committing to being a professional wrestler, Owen underwent extensive training in his father’s “Hart Dungeon” — a wrestling gym in the basement of the Hart mansion.
All of that hard work culminated in Hart’s selection as 1987 Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Rookie of the Year. With that came even more eyes on the youngest member of the dynasty.
In the following months, Hart began performing for New Japan Pro-Wrestling and would quickly become the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship — the first non-Japanese wrestler to accomplish this feat.
Then, Owen’s big break came. He agreed to a contract with the World Wrestling Federation — now known as the WWE — but things didn’t go as planned initially.
Rather than promoting Owen as a member of the historic ‘Hart Dynasty,’ WWE placed the ‘Blue Blazer’ persona on him instead.
As you might expect, the generic superhero gimmick failed to resonate with fans. Citing creative differences, Hart left the company for a couple of years to “recreate his character again.”
At the turn of the decade, he eventually found a home with World Championship Wrestling but ultimately chose against relocating his family all the way south to Atlanta, Georgia.
As such, the WWE came knocking again, and this time, Hart would finally get a chance to live up to his namesake alongside his family, already under contract with the company.
At first, Hart teamed up with his real-life brother-in-law Jim Neidhart to form the ‘New Foundation’ — although their run as a tag team was short-lived.
In 1993, after Neidhart had left the company, Hart teamed up with his three brothers, Bret, Bruce, and Keith, in a Survivor Series match against a group led by Shawn Michaels.
A rivalry with Bret Hart begins
During that Survivor Series fiasco, Owen and Bret accidentally collided, costing Owen his place in the match.
He would confront Bret afterward, leading to the first hints of a heel turn for the younger brother.
As Bret and his parents stood in disbelief ringside, the first-ever rivalry between the family had begun. And that night in Boston, Massachusetts, was merely the beginning.
Owen, the youngest member of the Hart family, always felt the need to prove himself to his siblings and, more importantly, his father and mother.
That Survivor Series reignited his desire to be better than Bret, as Owen began donning the same pink and black attire while also sporting his brother’s ‘Sharpshooter’ finisher in the ring.
Although Owen was unrelenting in his wishes to challenge Bret to a one-on-one match, his older sibling wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of it.
The brothers reconnected and put their bad blood aside for a short time, as the ‘Hart Dynasty’ had a chance to win tag team gold at the 1994 Royal Rumble.
However, thanks to an injury suffered by Bret during the match, he was unable to tag Owen in, leaving the younger brother stewing with anger on the sideline.
That’s when Owen’s frustration got the better of him. He attacked an injured Bret, costing them the match and completing his heel turn.
At long last, Owen got what he wanted: A singles match with his big brother to prove who the better Hart actually was.
After living in Bret’s shadow virtually his entire life, Owen would challenge him on the grandest stage of them all — WrestleMania X.
Owen cleanly pinned his brother in the opening match, but Bret would get the last laugh after competing for and winning the WWE Championship from Yokozuna that same night.
Even on an evening when Owen got the three-count against him, the spotlight was still heavily fixated on Bret’s championship-winning performance.
Once again, Owen felt upstaged by his brother, leading to even more animosity between the two, as their feud continued for much of the 1994 and 1995 slates.
Soon after WrestleMania X, Owen won the prestigious King of the Ring tournament, defeating Razor Roman and adopting the nickname ‘The King of Harts.’
Later, Bret and Owen would have a WWE Championship match at SummerSlam, held inside a steel cage, which Bret would win. It was an instant classic, fetching a five-star rating from wrestling insider Dave Meltzer.
The two fought multiple times in 1994 and 1995, with Bret beating Owen consistently, leading to the end of their brotherly rivalry.
Owen Hart chases tag team gold
Hart spent the rest of the year holding the tag team championships alongside Yokozuna — a run that lasted nearly six months before they dropped the belts at In Your House 3.
Soon after, Hart would begin teaming with brother-in-law Davey Boy Smith — also known as ‘The British Bulldog’ — and the two became champions in short order.
But their time together didn’t last long, as inklings of trouble lingered between Owen and Bulldog, coming to a head when the former accidentally eliminated the latter from the 1997 Royal Rumble.
The two even came face to face to crown the first-ever WWE European champion, with Bulldog emerging victorious, leaving Owen in the shadows of singles success again.
Rather than escalating it further, Bret, who had just turned heel himself, came out to the ring during a match and talked Owen and Bulldog into reuniting for a new version of the ‘Hart Foundation.’
Reunited, and it feels so good
Joining with his family led to immediate reward for Hart, as he would defeat Dwayne’ The Rock’ Johnson for the WWE Intercontinental Championship.
That led to a lengthy feud with ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin over the belt, resulting in a one-of-its-kind battle called a “kiss my ass” match.
At the 1997 SummerSlam, Hart put a special stipulation on the Intercontinental Championship match vs Austin. If ‘Stone Cold’ lost, he was supposed to kiss Owen’s backside in the center of the ring.
Unfortunately, toward the end of the match, Hart botched his patented ‘Piledriver’ move, leading to a now infamous neck injury to Austin that nearly left him paralyzed.
In Austin’s absence, Hart regained the Intercontinental title, setting up a blow-off match between the two men when ‘Stone Cold’ returned from injury.
On the same evening that his brother Bret was the victim of ‘The Montreal Screwjob,’ Owen dropped his belt to Austin, putting an end to their rivalry.
Owen Hart stays with WWE
On the back of the controversial Survivor Series, Bret left the WWE and Neidhart and Bulldog both requested immediate release from the company as well.
As of November 1997, Owen was the only member of the Hart family still under contract with WWE, which caused real-life friction between the family outside of kayfabe.
After a few weeks off television, Hart debuted a new persona which caught fire with WWE fans. He began using the monikers of “The Lone Hart” and “The Black Hart.”
On the final episode of Raw in 1997, Owen challenged for Shawn Michaels’ WWE Championship, but Triple H interfered, costing Hart the title.
That sparked a feud with Triple H over the European Championship, which he and Hart would pass back and forth.
During the feud with Triple H, Hart recruited the help of the ‘Nation of Domination’ faction, serving as the co-leader of the group alongside The Rock.
He stuck with the group until Rock branched out and became the megastar wrestling fans know him as today. That led to Hart finding a new running partner.
Jeff Jarrett would team with Hart to win the tag team championship and then defend the straps against Test and D’Lo Brown at WrestleMania XV.
Weeks after ‘Mania, in April, Hart and Jarrett lost the titles, making it the final time Owen would ever wear WWE gold around his waist.
The following month, disaster struck during a live WWE pay-per-view event.
How did Owen Hart die?
At Over the Edge, Hart was making a spectacular entrance where he was supposed to be lowered from the rafters to the ring.
The initial plan was for Hart, wrestling under the ‘Blue Blazer’ guise, to get stuck in his harness a few feet above the ring.
He then planned to pull the quick release mechanism, leading to Hart faceplanting on the canvas to a thunderous chorus of laughter from the crowd.
However, while Hart descended to the ring, a tragic error occurred with his harness.
Owen fell 78 feet and landed on the top rope, careening himself into the ring in front of a live audience in Kansas City, Missouri.
Although doctors at Truman Medical Center made several efforts to revive him, Owen was pronounced dead at 34 years old.
In the moments after, the crowd was unsure what had just occurred. Thanks to it being a pre-taped show, audiences did not see the fall at home.
But only moments after it happened, lead commentator Jim Ross broke the fourth wall by revealing to fans that what had just happened was not a wrestling angle.
Reaction to Owen Hart’s death
In the immediate aftermath, Vince McMahon caught backlash for continuing the pay-per-view event, even after the seriousness of Hart’s injury was revealed to fans.
The Undertaker, one of the superstars tasked with taking the ring after Hart’s fall, has spoken at length about how uncomfortable the situation was behind the scenes.
“One minute he’s there, and then the next he’s not,” Undertaker explained. “Then you have to go out and put the pieces together and try to perform.
“It was probably one of the most difficult — definitely, mentally, one of the toughest days I think I’ve ever had. I didn’t envy Vince McMahon having to make that decision. It was a tough call in the heat of it.
“You lived by that motto back then, ‘The show must go on.’ I just don’t know that that was the right thing to do.”
The at-home video of Over the Edge never saw the light of day, and even when the PPV was put on WWE Network, all mentions of Hart were removed — apart from a short memorial at the onset.
The following night, Monday Night Raw, then known as ‘Raw is War,’ was rebranded to ‘Raw is Owen’ to honor Hart. To this day, it remains the highest-rated special episode in Raw history.
Next week’s Raw saw Hart’s former partner, Jeff Jarrett, win the Intercontinental Championship after Owen was initially supposed to win the belt at the now infamous Over the Edge PPV.
Five months later, as a member of WCW, Bret Hart wrestled Chris Benoit in the same arena where Owen’s death occurred. He won, and it was one of the most emotional matches in wrestling history.
Legal issues surrounding Owen Hart’s death
After a nearly two-year lawsuit, WWE agreed to pay $18 million to Owen’s widow, Martha. She used part of this money to establish the Owen Hart Foundation.
Diana, Owen’s big sister, released a book addressing Owen Hart’s death titled ‘Under the Mat.’
But Martha quickly pursued legal actions, citing “distortions, misstatements, and unjustified slurs” that besmirched the memory of Owen.
Martha wrote her own book about Owen called ‘Broken Harts: The Life and Death of Owen Hart.” That brought an end to the public sparring between herself and Diana.
Owen Hart’s professional wrestling legacy
Owen Hart is often considered one of the best pure in-ring performers ever to lace up a pair of boots.
Current superstar and fellow Canadian Kevin Owens grew up as a super fan of the Hart Foundation — primarily of Owen.
He would name his own child after the fallen star while also incorporating it into his stage name — hence “Owens.”
All-Elite Wrestling, a rival promotion of WWE, even introduced the Owen Hart Cup, a tournament amongst top superstars with the winner earning a trophy called ‘The Owen.’
Long-time wrestling fans still remember that dreadful day in 1999. One fan I talked to directly said, “It’s one of those things you never forget.
“Whenever I think about the WWE or hear Bret Hart’s name, it instantly takes me back to hearing the Owen Hart news. It’s a somber memory.”
From past and current superstars paying homage to Owen and his memory still living in the minds of wrestling fans everywhere, it’s easy to see the imprint that the youngest Hart had on the business.
Though the day of his death is now synonymous with Owen Hart’s name, plenty still remember his in-ring prowess and standing as one of the best performers of his generation.