Growing up, I was a fan of wrestling. I can remember playing as my favourite wrestlers, on various gaming consoles I owned. Names like Bret ‘the Hit Man’ Hart, Goldberg or Ric Flair. Though I didn’t have a lot of access to wrestling, not having Foxtel. So, my exposure to it was through videos and DVDs. Which I didn’t really like, as the matches tended to be two or three years old when I first viewed them.
The world of professional wrestling, known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), is the brainchild of one man, retired executive Vince McMahon. McMahon founded the WWE in the 1980s. And later grew it into the vast wrestling entertainment empire it is today. Wrestlers hone their skills, bodies, and characters for years to be able to perform in the WWE. However, behind the muscles and machoism, there is a darker side to the profession. One that is filled with stories of steroid use, serious injury and even death. Real-life tragedies like Eddie Guerrero who, at the age of just 38, was found dead in a hotel room of a suspected heart attack in 2005. Or the infamous case of Chris Benoit who, one night in 2007, committed a double murder suicide against his own family. There is a 2020 television series that discusses at length these incidents. In this piece, I will be reviewing one of the episodes.
Owen Hart was a Canadian Wrestler, who came from a large family. The Hart family were all involved with Wrestling. Owen Hart, however, did not want to be involved with wrestling long term. And he’d constantly been looking at ways to leave wrestling behind and focus on other priorities. Tragically, he died before he could achieve this.
This episode of the “Dark Side of the Ring” details how Owen Hart got into wrestling. His brother Bret Hart was already popular, and a mainstay, by the time Owen Hart started making a name for himself. While at the same time, Owen Hart supported his wife and his children. He was constantly looking at how he could leave wrestling for family life. Bret Hart and Owen Hart were both part of the WWE, until 1997, when Bret Hart left the WWE. He’d quit over disagreements with Vince McMahon. Bret Hart immediately signed up with the rival wrestling company World Championship Wrestling (WCW). However, Owen Hart remained in the WWE.
In 1999, at the age of 34, Owen Hart had been wrestling under the ring name of Blue Blazer. As part of this character, he donned a blue costume and blue mask. Also, as part of this persona, Owen Hart had a particular way of entering the ring. This involved him descending from the ceiling into the venue. Attached to a harness. The harness would then come lose and fall off, after he made contact with the inside of the ring. At an event in Kansas City, in May 1999, something went wrong with this stunt. The clip holding him to the harness broke, just after he started the descend. This therefore meant, nothing was holding him in place. As a result, he fell the rest of the way, dying on impact with the ring.
Owen Hart’s wife Martha, as well as the rest of the Hart family, were told of the accident. However, they each disagreed on the course of action to take. Owen Hart’s wife made it her mission to find out what had gone so wrong. She travelled to the venue, re-tracing the last footsteps of her husband before he plunged to his death. There she discovered that the clip used on the harness had been swapped out for a different one, at the last minute. This resulted in a lawsuit against Vince McMahon and the WWE. This court action was eventually settled out of court, to the sum of 18 million dollars. Since then, Owen Hart’s wife refuses to allow the WWE to induct Owen Hart into their hall of fame. In her eyes, the WWE killed her husband.
So that was my review, of “The Dark Side of the Ring”. I do intend to write about other episodes, in future reviews. While not a brand-new series, I do know about some of the incidents they feature. I had known about the Owen Hart tragedy, though never in this much detail. I don’t pay any attention to wrestling anymore, so it has been interesting watching this series.
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