♪
As a fan of Owen Hart, pioneer of all pioneers...
You know, one of the best.
I knew that this guy was gonna make it.
You can tell.
When I grew up, I wanted to be just like Owen Heart.
He was really the chosen one.
Owen, he just had a very nice aura.
He was always just trying to spread the joy.
And he was cast in the role of a lifetime.
Owen Hart was a naturally gifted wrestler.
He was born into a legendary wrestling dynasty,
but he put family above all else.
Despite his success in the ring,
he was always searching for a way out of it.
On May 23rd, 1999,
during a live Pay Per View event,
Owen Hart's hopes for a life after wrestling
were tragically cut short.
Ladies and gentlemen, when you're doing
live television, a lot of things can happen and
sometimes they are not good.
Is this really real?
And then I remember hearing a gasp from the crowd.
It was shocking. Like, "What do you mean, Owen fell?"
He goes, "Owen just fell!"
It was Owen. He was like laying in the ring,
like, face up.
I just heard them screaming, "It's not a fake!
Get a real EMT back here!"
If he fell, he's gotta be dead.
Owen Hart fell from the ceiling during an event
in Kansas City.
Someone doesn't just fall from the top of an arena.
Something's wrong here.
Her husband flew to Kansas City to go to work and
never came home again.
Mere days after Owen's death,
his widow Martha vows to uncover what happened
that night in Kansas City.
There will be a day of reckoning and this is
my final promise to Owen.
It was out of respect for Owen.
I can't let everything that our life was
just be all for nothing.
♪
[singing] Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you...
From the earliest days of professional wrestling,
it has been traditionally a family business.
We are the greatest combined force
in the World Wrestling Federation!
Few compare to the impact of the Hart family in Calgary,
who has spawned generations of in-ring icons.
Despite being the youngest of 12 siblings,
Owen Hart was considered a true prodigy.
Number 1, baby!
But with the circumstances surrounding his death,
his legacy has become more complex.
In this episode, his family comes together to share
memories of the husband and father they lost all too soon.
I don't think you can talk about pro wrestling history
and not incorporate the Hart's into that
conversation very early.
I'm Jim Ross, 2007 member of the WWE Hall of Fame,
the NWA Hall of Fame, and The National Hall of Fame.
And, one of the athletes that I worked with very closely
is the late, great Owen Hart, one of the best.
Stu Hart had a dozen kids,
and all of the boys became wrestlers,
and all the girls grew up to marry wrestlers.
So, the extended Hart family was almost 20 people
involved in the professional wrestling industry.
I'm Jim Cornette. For almost 40 years,
I've been a promoter, a matchmaker, announcer,
manager, historian,
all things related to professional wrestling,
and I also managed Owen Hart.
The Hart family was almost a dynasty in wrestling because
of the respect that Stu Hart had as a promoter,
and the fact that when the boys got started
becoming wrestlers, they were all good.
And, the Hart family, over a period of time,
became one of the royal families in professional wrestling.
It was like a nice Sopranos.
They didn't kill anybody, but they stuck together and
they helped each other, and everybody got a chance to
pick the brass ring off the wrestling merry-go-round.
All of his sons began to want to follow in his footsteps.
Bret Hart was, obviously, the biggest star worldwide.
Some of the other sons - Ross and Keith -
were stars as well. And, then the son-in-laws,
Davey Boy Smith "The British Bulldog",
Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart.
So many of them got to be stars that at one point,
there was a Hart family member in
half the territories in wrestling.
Owen was the youngest brother to get involved in wrestling,
but when he started, he was a prodigy, instantly.
Owen Hart, as a rookie, he was spectacular.
His acrobatics were amazing.
He could flip backwards off the ropes.
He could land on his feet from every direction.
I saw this guy doing all of these things I'd never
seen before: back flips off of a guy's back,
he had blond hair, he looked cool.
He kind of looked like a bigger version of Johnny
from The Karate Kid.
I just thought, I want to do this.
I want to do it with that guy,
and I used to draw pictures of me and Owen Hart as
the tag team champions, in Stampede.
I just really was, was influenced by him.
You could tell Owen was a natural.
You didn't have to teach him.
He'd already picked it up by osmosis.
I'm thinking, within hours of his debuting,
he's as good as anybody in the territory.
You can see it. Just get him in the game...
he's gonna be a star. He was.
Please, Owen. I'm gonna cut the tape.
No, hang on.
Well, why don't you say something to the camera,
you egomaniac!
Hello there. [laughs]
I am Martha Hart.
I am a doctor for the University of Calgary and
Alberta Children's Hospital.
I'm the founder of the Owen Hart Foundation
and I'm a mom.
That's my whole title.
I started dating Owen when I was 15.
For me, he was just very striking, you know,
he had this blond hair and really well built,
and I thought he was a bit of a scrapper because,
well, first of all, he was an amateur wrestler.
But then, as it turned out, you know,
he was actually quite a gentle giant underneath.
He was a really secure, grounded person.
Even though he ended up being a very world famous wrestler,
he didn't feed off of that fame.
He really wanted to have this very normal life.
He wanted to have, you know, a normal job.
He wanted the white picket fence.
- Hi, Owen. - Hi, Martha.
What ya doin'?
I'm just walking with my boy Oje, here.
Owen was an amazing father. He loved being a dad.
- Hi, Oje. - Hi.
My childhood was phenomenal.
I loved every second.
I'm Oje Hart, and I am Owen Hart's son.
My mom's love for my father was unexampled.
They had the love that could only get stronger with time.
I love trains. Trains are my favorite thing on earth,
especially toy trains. Every year,
a train show would come to Calgary and
I only wanted to go with dad.
And, I remember he said he was going somewhere,
like a big trip, but I think what he did was
he actually rebooked it.
That was him stiff-arming the show and saying, you know,
"Kids come first, and this weekend I cannot miss.
And, this one's for my son."
But, I remember that when he was there,
it was us there together, and mom and Athena.
Athena, do you like that?
- Wee. - Yeah.
Him taking me to the zoo. That was, like, our thing.
And, I don't have very many memories,
but that's like the one that's always stuck and it's just,
yeah, it makes me happy 'cause the short time
that we had together, that was my favorite.
I went to school where my dad went to school and so,
everyone always knew me as the wrestler's daughter.
Hey, daddy wins. Who did he beat?
Uncle Bret. He turned his head!
Owen loved the wrestling business.
He wasn't a lifer like some of the other guys.
He wanted to save his money, devote it to his family,
and get out at an early age.
At the age of 23, Owen signs with the WWF,
where his older brother, Bret,
is quickly rising through the ranks as an
up and coming star.
I remember going to the Winnipeg Arena to see a
WWF show and this guy comes to the ring wearing -
I knew what Stampede Wrestling tights looked like,
they had lightning bolts on the side and three stars
on the ass, except for he had a mask.
I'm like, wow, I wonder if--
that guy looks like a Stampede Wrestling guy.
Who is it? And then he did the bum flip,
and I was like, that's Owen Hart.
Owen had a great personality,
but he didn't have an over-the-top personality
that translated on television for the style of
the WWF at the time.
By 1993, the Blue Blazer persona is phased out,
and Owen enters a story line portraying Bret's jealous
little brother, looking to prove himself.
Bret Hart, you're nothing but a selfish person!
Your ego is too big!
You only worry about yourself, Bret!
Their feud builds towards a highly anticipated match
at WrestleMania X.
There's a lot of great matches I would watch.
One of them would definitely be in the Garden,
WrestleMania X, Owen and Bret,
because here's the deal: two brothers from Calgary,
two sizes, too hard, came into New York city,
Madison Square Garden, the world's most famous arena,
and stole the show. Bottom line.
- Oh, wow! - [match bell]
I think it was a testament to Bret that he went along with it
because it was really designed to help Owen.
Owen wasn't over yet. He was getting there,
he was getting the route. Bret was the star.
Arguably, the biggest star that we had.
So, Bret doing this was really brotherly love.
He helped his brother get recognized and
get the spotlight on him.
After his win at WrestleMania,
Owen Hart comes into his own,
achieving accolades beyond the shadow of his brother.
But for Owen's family, his growing success
means a more rigorous travel schedule.
He was gone over 250 days a year,
and he would go ten days on and then three days off.
Just on my way to go wrestle at the Nashville Municipal party.
It was just a revolving door of, you know,
he was home and then he was gone, and home and gone.
It's a rough life, but one day I'll have,
hopefully, some money to pay for all the aches and pains
that I've done and I can enjoy myself at home with
my wife and family.
[Martha] Hm, that's nice.
In 1997, Bret's controversial departure from the WWF
to rival company WCW shakes up the entire industry.
In an incident known as The Montreal Screw Job,
Bret is stripped of his championship belt following
creative differences with the company.
Fans witness real life backstage drama unfold
as Bret is left stunned on live television.
The Montreal Screw Job was a double cross on Bret Hart
and Bret was hot. He was mad.
Even though Owen didn't share the same sort of
philosophy or view of wrestling that, you know,
Bret had, he knew it was important to his brother,
so he knew his brother was gonna be crushed.
So, soon as that happened, he went right to the ring
and told Bret, "Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter.
It's, you know, it's all garbage anyway."
But for Bret, it was a stab in the heart.
This thing was taking on a life of its own and it was
starting to look bad and reflect poorly on the WWF,
and they wanted to keep one member of the family.
The fact that we knew Owen was gonna be a star -
big star, not a star, he was already a star -
but to get to the next level, we gave Owen a new contract.
You know, you get a lot of people say,
"Oh, it had nothing to do with Montreal."
Bullshit. It had a lot to do with Montreal, come on.
But that's not bad, it's just what it is.
We knew what we had, and he was so motivated from
being Bret's little brother to being Owen Hart.
And with Bret gone to another team,
it helped facilitate that.
It has been said that anything can happen here
in the World Wrestling Federation,
but now more than ever,
truer words have never been spoken.
Vince McMahon wanted wrestlers to start being actors
at this point, and he couldn't understand why
they didn't want to go along with it.
Because, the way that wrestlers had always been
portrayed was, you're not playing a character.
This is you.
Surely, the era of the superhero who urged you to
say your prayers and take your vitamins is definitely passé.
In the new entertainment, Attitude Era,
they didn't know what to do with Owen because
he was just a great professional wrestler.
They kept trying to find something to plug him into.
Well, let's get him in an affair with somebody,
Debra McMichael.
Owen was the one guy that was always pushing back,
you know, "I don't want to do this angle.
I don't want to look like I'm cheating on my wife with Debra."
It was that tipping point that we reached at that time between,
we're not gonna use great wrestlers just 'cause
they're great athletes and they're great wrestlers.
They have to be willing to put on goofy outfits and do skits.
[Commentator] Check this out. Owen Hart, man,
his, his head is not in this at all.
So, that's why when they came to him with a revival
of the Blue Blazer, as a comedy gimmick, "Okay, sure.
At least that's not gonna make my family look bad,"
right, it's just stupid.
[Commentator] Here it comes! It's Owen Hart!
The Blazer is Owen Hart!
You got one of the top four or five workers in the world
and you want to put him under a mask,
an unknown mask, the Blue Blazer.
Didn't work. Bottom line is really simple:
creative couldn't find a better idea to utilize one of
the best technical workers in the entire world,
and I found that to be embarrassing.
♪
[Narrator] In 1998, the WWF reprises
the Blue Blazer character, a campy superhero gimmick
Owen Hart portrayed a decade earlier.
Take your vitamins, say your prayers,
and drink your milk. Woo!
They were also trying to spoof Sting who was a
wrestler in the WCW and, he would come down,
descend into the ring.
And so, I think they were competing with WCW and that
was one way that they could almost make fun of them, too,
in a sense.
He's stuck. The idiot is stuck in the harness.
The company that had rigged Owen was a top rigging company
that had rigged Elton John, The Rolling Stones.
They also had worked for Disney and MGM in Las Vegas
so, they, they were really renowned.
You know, Owen didn't have control over any of the stunt.
He was locked in with what they call a locking carabiner,
which they feel is the only safe apparatus to use
if you're doing these types of descent.
He can't get out of the harness!
This is nonsense!
Six months later, the aerial descent of the Blue Blazer
is revisited for an upcoming Pay Per View event
called Over the Edge.
Owen was on his way home.
He was just flying in and I was literally just walking
out the door to go pick him up from the airport when I got
a call from someone that worked at the WWF and they said,
"Well, you know, we need to get his measurements
for a vest because we're doing this drop-in
this weekend in Kansas City and,
we need to get his measurements ASAP."
And, and I remember thinking, you just had him.
He was just with you guys.
Why didn't you just, why didn't you get it?
And I asked her that, and then, she said,
"Well, we just decided. We just wrote it in."
So, I actually asked on the phone about, you know,
who'd be rigging him and the girl on the phone said,
"Oh, you know, don't worry.
We have the top riggers from LA coming in,
so don't worry about that. Yeah, it's totally safe."
He never questioned, ever, his safety because
he assumed that this billion-dollar company was
certainly going to make sure that they hired
the best in the business...
Which they did not.
Life on the road is never-ending for Owen and
his family, and on May 22nd, 1999,
he travels to Kansas City for Over the Edge.
It was a Saturday when he left.
He was rushing out the door, you know,
just embarking on another long,
10-day journey away from home.
He decided that he was gonna take Oje to the airport and
he'd pick up my mom.
She'd drive Oje back to the house.
It wasn't very common where I would take dad to the airport,
but this occasion was different.
And, the last thing he said to me was, like,
"You look after your mom.
Take care of your mom and take care of your sister."
And then, he was walking in with his bag
over his shoulder into the airport.
I wasn't sure what that meant.
I honestly didn't think anything of it.
Just seemed like something you'd say
when you were saying goodbye.
My name is Jimmy Korderas and I am a former referee
with the WWF, slash, WWE.
We got there, we set up the ring.
We got our match assignments,
which was Blue Blazer, Owen, versus The Godfather.
They happened to be together at ringside and I went over
and got with him, got the finish to the match.
And, that was basically it. It was business as usual.
I am The Godfather, WWE Hall of Fame, Godfather.
I remember hanging out with Owen that day.
We talked about the match, we talked about the finish.
Just normal stuff, hanging out.
We were sitting in the arena and he said that he was
getting ready to practice one of the things,
and he did that and I watched him.
I had a feeling that day that Owen was not his
normal, exuberant, enthusiastic self about
what he was doing that night.
And I remember saying something about,
you know, "Better you than me. I don't like heights."
He said, "I don't either."
I think that he was a little concerned and, look,
he's the one that's gotta do it.
There's nobody that can do it for him
'cause there's no stunt double.
There's a couple little things he said,
and maybe more specific what he didn't say,
led me to believe that he's not totally down with this thing.
♪
On May 23rd, 1999,
Over the Edge takes place at Kemper Arena
in Kansas City, Missouri.
The event plays to a sold out crowd and airs live
to hundreds of thousands at home.
In preparation for his dramatic entrance,
Owen Hart makes his way to the top of the arena.
That night, myself and Mark Henry worked Kane and X-Pac
for the tag titles in the first match,
and I believe Owen was like the third or fourth match.
I remember talking to Kane and X-Pac,
and seeing Owen walk by, and this was before our match.
From the rafters, Owen changes into his Blue Blazer costume,
and the rigging crew readies him for his descent.
We were clearing out the ring.
I had my left hand on the top rope and I was kicking debris
out of the ring and I was moving towards the corner.
At that time, there was a promo playing on the screen
of the Blue Blazer.
Oh, The Godfather, just saying his name
makes my blue blood boil!
Hanging in the air, over 80 feet above the ring,
he waits for his cue.
And then, here comes the time for the entrances and
I'm looking at my monitor, looking at my paper...
And all of a sudden, Lawler gives me the elbow.
I looked up, and I just caught Owen
come into my line of vision.
A blur, phoof.
♪
And, I just...
I thought I heard screaming.
And then, I felt something brush against the side of
my head and my shoulder, and at the same time,
the top rope that I was holding pulled out of my hand
and came back and, like, jammed my fingers.
And, I'm thinking in my head, what the heck was that?
And when I turned and looked, there was Owen.
He was like laying in the ring, like, face up and,
I just started screaming for help.
I thought he hit the turnbuckle or the ring post...
'cause it really sounded sick... sick, sick.
That's when, you know, things kind of went sideways.
Ah, the Blue Blazer as we know is Owen Hart, was going to
make a very spectacular superhero-like entrance from
the rafters, and something went terribly wrong here.
I was watching the Pay Per View,
as I did at the time, and then they go to Jim Ross and
Jerry Lawler, said that Owen Hart has had
a bad fall or whatever they said.
And, "We'll keep you posted." I'm like, "What?
What do you mean?"
And they're not showing the ring.
They're just panning the crowd. What's going on here?
I said, "Something's wrong."
I was at the gorilla station behind the curtain and
somebody said, "Owen fell. Owen just fell."
And I went, "Owen fell? What?" He goes, "Owen just fell!"
I kept getting these alerts in my headset,
"We need another update,"
but I'm not getting any updatable material.
And JR's, you know, filling time on live television
while a guy's laying there in the ring, dying.
Well, it's one of the most shocking things I've ever seen.
This is not a-- your typical wrestling story line.
This is a real situation.
I said, "----, I've never seen anything like that...
not on any wrestling program,
not on any television program.
It's never happened before."
It was Jerry Lawler who came back,
he came through the curtain, and Jerry was,
he was as white as a ghost. And his exact words were,
"I think he's dead." And we're like, "Who?"
And he was like, "Owen."
And then it was just like: [gasp]
Jerry Lawler back joining me here.
King, I was just reiterating to the fans
this is not a part of the show.
We're here to entertain and have fun,
but this is neither.
No, it's... it doesn't look good at all.
I knew something was wrong because Lawler,
his face just became ashen white.
Like he had just seen death.
And, they wheeled Owen past us to go to the ambulance and...
♪
[sighs]
♪
That's, that's not even an image I want to even
bring up in my head anymore. Just, it's...
that was not what I wanted to see.
When they wheeled him through the curtain and
they put him in the ambulance, I remember just being in shock.
When they did wheel him back,
he was like blue, and I remember that.
And I remember crying too.
They didn't want to stop the show so,
Jeff Jarrett, who was real close with Owen,
did a promo and he was in tears.
Owen Hart, I'm praying for you, buddy.
And I am, too.
In the chaos, Kevin Dunn, Executive Producer,
thought that I had been told that,
what the deal was.
And, I said, "Kevin, nobody's told us anything.
What is the update?" And he said...
"He's dead. And you're back in 10, 9..."
[cheering]
And, I have the...
unfortunate responsibility of letting everyone know
that Owen Hart has died.
Owen Hart has tragically died from that accident...
here tonight.
On the camera, what people saw,
was a result of 10 seconds of preparation.
Didn't know what to say. And it wasn't story line.
I got very numb after that night.
My hands were shaking, my stomach was hurting.
I was just, I was... damn, man.
And they went on with the show.
When Owen was-- Shit.
♪
When Owen was falling, everybody that was there
said the last thing that he yelled was, "Look out."
A guy's falling from 100 feet, and he knows he's done,
and the last thing he's thinking is, "Look out.
I don t want to hurt you." You know, that's--
It was ----ing foolish, it was unnecessary.
It didn't need to happen.
♪
[Narrator] During a live Pay Per View event,
Owen Hart was set to make a dramatic entrance
from the rafters of Kemper Arena...
when something would go terribly wrong.
The phone rang and it said, "Unknown Caller,"
which was always like kind of code for, like,
that's Owen on, on the road.
And so, then I picked it up in a hurry and I was like, "Hello?"
And then, you know, I heard this voice, like, "Martha?"
And I said, "Owen!" And then he said,
"No, this isn't Owen. This is Vince McMahon."
You know, Owen was such a prankster,
and I'm like, "Oh, Owen..."
And he's like, "No, it, it's Vince McMahon."
And then he said, "I'm calling you because,
you know, I have to tell you that Owen's had a fall."
"Well, what do you mean?" Like, "How far did he fall?
What's wrong with him? Is he conscious?"
Like, and then he was like, "I don't know. I don't know."
"Well, I need to talk to somebody
who's got some answers." And so, then he said,
"Well, someone will be calling you right away."
Then, the next call that I got was from the doctor from
the Truman Medical Centre. So, the doctor, you know...
♪
So, the doctor, he said,
"Are you home alone?" And I said, "Yes."
And, he said, "Well, you know...
we should really fly you down to get this kind of news."
And, you know, he was kind of going through all of
these details, and then, I said to him,
"You know, doctor, could you just get to the end and just
tell me what the end result is?"
And he said...
"I, I tried. I did everything I could to save his life,
but I couldn't."
He said, "I'm so sorry, but your husband has died."
And then, I just, you know, I just doubled over and
I just screamed, "No, no, no!"
You know, of course all the "no's" in the world
weren't going to change anything.
[Owen] Whose belt is that, Oje? [Oje] Dad's.
[Owen] Dad's. And what is it? What kind of belt?
[Oje] Champion belt. [Owen] Champion belt.
World Tag Team Champion.
My memory of May 23rd begins in my basement of my house.
♪
I was with my one neighbor and they said
my mom was crying, and really crying.
And I was like, "Well, what is my mom crying about?"
And, she said... I don't know why your mom's crying,
but she's crying a lot.
I went upstairs and I opened the door and
I walked through the foyer and into the kitchen,
and there my mom was screaming,
"What am I going to do?"
And, I really did not have any conclusions drawn about
why she was so hysterically sad.
[Martha] And I just remember, like, it was just such a
moment of truth where, I just, like, saw so clearly like
there were just two paths in front of me.
One total destruction and one of like reconstruction,
you know, and I was like, I can t let this destroy
everything that we've worked for and,
and let everything fall apart.
You know, all I could think of were Oje and Athena
because I was like, their whole lives are
gonna be different now and all they have is me.
That's it. They're three and seven years old so,
I need to make sure that, you know, somehow,
I survive for them.
[Oje] Then, mom has to take me upstairs 'cause it's bedtime.
And, we sit at the foot of the bed, on the side.
Nobody prepares for this, but she did it.
And, she said, "Your dad's dead."
She said, "He's died.
He fell and he died, but he didn't feel any pain."
[sighs]
That memory has played in my mind millions of times.
I remember that night, all three of us slept in
the same bed and I just looked at the roof.
[sighs]
I just looked at the roof and
I tried not to hear my mom sniffling.
I don't think either of us slept that night.
Martha and her family begin to make final preparations
as Owen's body is transported to Calgary.
I remember the funeral director saying,
you know, "Are you ready? Are you ready?"
And I said, "Yep, I'm ready."
Soon as he opened the door, I just remembered being
absolutely horrified by what Owen looked like.
I screamed so loud and I tried to run away,
and Bret just bear hugged me and then we just sort of
did this weird little, like, inch dance towards the casket.
And then, you know, I just took it all in and then
I was comforted by his hair 'cause his hair was the same,
and then, I just thought, "Oh, you know what,
the person that I loved in life, you know, I loved in death too."
And then I just wasn't afraid anymore.
On May 31st, 1999, Owen Hart is laid to rest.
[News] Owen Hart, known as the Blue Blazer in the ring,
was killed last week when a stunt went horribly wrong
at a match in Missouri.
Taking part in a tearful farewell were the
sports' superstars, politicians, and a huge crowd of fans.
We were riding in the funeral procession and there
were Canadians pulled off on the side of the road,
letting us pass, like Owen was a head of state.
It was amazing to see how revered he was in that town,
in that country, and in our business.
There were so many people that came to the service and
we didn't have room for everybody inside,
but there were over 1,000 people outside of
the funeral home just to listen.
We, we broadcast it, we piped it out through speakers.
[Martha at funeral] I am a very forgiving person,
and I'm not bitter or angry. [sniffles]
But there will be a day of reckoning,
and this is my final promise to Owen.
[Martha] When you live in a world of make believe and
something so real happens, you want to hammer that home.
Although I didn't know exactly what had happened yet,
that I was gonna get to the bottom of it,
and that I would have my day of reckoning.
♪
After Owen Hart's funeral, his widow, Martha,
travels to Kansas City to try and piece together
the events surrounding her husband's death.
I saw my mom transform into a completely different person,
but she became a fighter.
That means I have to go to Kansas City,
I have to see the arena that he plummeted in.
We actually went up on the catwalk.
[Oje] She needed to see it firsthand.
She needed to, as hard as it was, to know.
And she had to go and take us so that we would never
have to wonder, and that we would never grow old
or thinking, "Ah, if only I'd known."
[Martha] I really didn't want to leave any stone unturned so,
I consciously chose to go on that catwalk and to walk to
the exact spot where he fell.
From my understanding, Owen had to make his way
down that little catwalk to get to the point
where he needed to be. We walked right to the spot.
You're literally right at the top of the arena.
[Oje] And when I looked over that cliff,
into the abyss down below, I saw...
Distance between where we were and the ground,
and knowing that he just, like,
that he went out there.
I can't even imagine the fear that he would have been
feeling in those final minutes, like,
those seconds, but still not forfeiting the
opportunity to bring us the life that we had.
So, ultimate sacrifice.
[Martha] It was, you know, very disheartening for me
to know that that's the last things that he saw,
and how hopeless that feeling would have been
to know that there's nothing you could do.
Your life was over and you knew it.
I have all these nagging suspicions that, you know,
Owen was the most cautious person I'd ever known.
He'd never take, you know, any sort of uncalculated risk
and, how did this happen?
There must be negligence, like, you know,
someone doesn't just fall from the top of an arena
and die and, something went wrong.
Like, something's wrong here.
And so, what evidence did the Kansas City policy show you?
They brought everything in and they put it all out on a table.
And, then we kind of went through everything slowly and
that's the first time that I saw the clip.
This is some of the legal documents and...
this is actually the clip that...
held Owen.
This is the actual clip.
It's a clip meant for the sole use of sail boats.
And, how it's designed is, it's designed to release
on load so, when you have a load on it,
and then, when you just click it,
then it just opens - [snaps] - it opens immediately
because the design is to let the mast down on a sailboat.
It's this quick release right here,
six pounds of pressure to release it, like that.
That's it. This is what was holding him,
this little thing right there. That's it.
When I first saw the clip, the very first time, I gasped.
And, I... was so upset.
It was just appalling.
We looked at statement to really piece together
what we felt Owen's last day was like.
Just hours before the Over the Edge Pay Per View event,
Owen was approached by the riggers to rehearse the stunt.
They had approached Owen and asked him to do a rehearsal
and then he said, "No, it's okay. I, I got it."
Bobby Talbert said, "Well, but it's a different setup,"
and so, Owen said, "Okay."
To my understanding, they did it.
I don't know, to this day, if they did it with the
quick snap shackle or the locking carabiner.
I have a sense that it was a locking carabiner because
he didn't release himself.
The way Owen had been rigged previously,
they felt, was-- looked a bit clumsy,
a bit sloppy and, what they wanted was this,
[snaps] like, quick release.
Like, soon as you hit the ground you just unrelease
and you're ready to go, immediately.
And so, that's what they wanted.
It was to save, like, two seconds of the setup.
Bobby Talbert should have never been
in charge of rigging anybody. He had no experience.
[Producer] Do you remember what you came to learn were
the rigger's final instructions to Owen?
They said, "As long as you don't pull this cord,
you'll be okay."
And, he never pulled the cord.
After I'd gathered enough information about
what had happened, I was so firm in my belief that
there was absolute negligence involved,
hand over first.
Everything was pointing in that direction.
With my full authority, my legal counsel filed a
wrongful death lawsuit against WWF,
Vince McMahon, and all others I believe are
responsible for my husband's death.
I was suing Vince in Kansas City,
and he wanted the case moved to Connecticut because
in Connecticut, there are no punitive damages awarded.
He chose to sue me, the widow,
which caused a lot of grief.
And on top of it, he was manipulating Owen's family.
There were some people in the family that were for it,
and some people that were against it
when the lawsuit came up.
I'm sure a lot of shock and trepidation amongst the core
Hart family that you can't sue the most powerful man
in wrestling because their, their family life had
centered around professional wrestling.
And, there was still a lot of other people in the family
that probably thought that Vince McMahon was gonna
be good to them in the future.
[Martha] The Hart family, they were...
not supportive of my lawsuit against WWF.
Some members were silent.
And then, other ones actively worked against me,
stealing my legal documents, giving them to the defense.
So, they basically had our playbook.
So, that was very heartbreaking for me,
you know, because I said to them, you know,
"You don't have to support me,
but please just don't work against me."
First of all, I resent your tone.
No, no, I resent your tone, lady, okay.
You know, this was a tragic accident.
Her fight for justice was an uphill battle,
to say the least, a real David and Goliath story.
I do think that the measurable neglect that had to go into
something so catastrophic cannot be overlooked.
This tragedy is the magnitude at which it's at because
it was completely preventable.
This was a guy who was 240 pounds.
There could have been a rigging team that knew
what they were doing, and they didn't because
it was more expensive.
♪
[Narrator] After a year-long legal battle
between Martha Hart and the WWF,
a settlement is reached in the amount of $18 million.
For me, I didn't care about the money.
It wasn't about money for me.
I wanted this case to go to trial.
That was my biggest, you know,
thrust from start to finish was that I didn't want a settlement.
I was looking for justice.
I was looking for accountability.
All my mom was trying to do was preserve the dignity
that my dad had, and give her kids
the best life they could have.
The settlement provides some closure,
but the WWF's decision to continue the show after
Owen's fatal fall remains controversial to this day.
How did this happen? He didn't commit suicide.
Was their foul play? Is it an accident?
We don't know so, leave everything the way it is
'til we figure this out.
No, we'll just go ahead and have four or five more matches.
That they didn't stop Kansas City was bullshit.
The fact that Vince just discarded Owen like he was a
piece of garbage and scraped his dead body off the mat
and sent wrestlers out to wrestler on a ring
where Owen's blood was...
And, it even had broken some of the boards,
Owen's fall, so there was a dip in the ring,
and they could feel where he fell.
The police should have stopped the show,
and they should have investigated immediately.
This was a potential crime scene.
There's been a death here and, you know,
we can't just let the show go on.
There's nothing that I've ever experienced that
compares to Owen Hart's death and having to
live with it every day since.
It was the worst moment of my wrestling career.
Maybe the worst moment of my life.
Here's a vibrant guy that died unnecessarily before
he could ever get to the thick of his career,
who had a beautiful family and,
and a wonderful mum and dad who are so proud of him
because the youngest Hart had stepped away from the pack
and he had made his own way,
with his own style, his own uniqueness,
and they were all proud of him.
He was popular everywhere he went,
kind of introduced this high flying style
all around the world. He was a pioneer.
He could be serious, he could be funny.
He could be a technician in the ring,
he could be a high flyer in the ring.
He was great at everything.
Had Owen not died in '99, even though he was getting a
little bit disenfranchised with the wrestling business,
think about who was coming into the business and
coming into WWE at that time.
In less than a year, Guererro was there,
Malenka was there, Edge, Christian, Kurt Angle.
Owen would have had a huge career resurgence because
I don't think anybody could keep up with him
in the WWE in 1999.
We'll never know how great he could have been
'cause he was just approaching that place
when he fell from the skies in Kansas City.
If a guy like me is in the Hall of Fame,
there's no damn way that Owen Hart shouldn't be in ten.
Owen Hart should be in every wrestling Hall of Fame there is
because of his talent and because he belonged there,
but he's not in the Hall of Fame because his wife does not
want him celebrated and glorified by the
same company that took him away from her.
[Martha] I would never allow for Owen to be recognized by
a company that actually is responsible for his death.
[Oje] I, I would never let the...
WWE put his name on a piece of silver and
say that they, they got that.
We have built a foundation that helps put people in homes,
that helps single moms like my mom was,
that let kids go to school.
This is all done in his namesake.
This has all got Owen Hart written all over it.
This is how communities, this is how people, society,
remembers him, and that's how we want it to be done.
Yeah, he was a wrestler, but other than that,
he was bigger than that.
That was just part of what he was.
I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and
we're very grateful that we are as fortunate as we...
have everything that we could ever ask for,
and most importantly, our health and our happiness together.
I feel like if my dad had never been in wrestling,
he'd still be here.
And so, I've always blamed, like, wrestling for not,
like, everything that's happened.
It's just all wrestling's fault.
If it never would have caught his eye,
he would have done something else and then...
we would have all been together.
And when I think of him, I just think happy trails.
And, I would have really liked to have had you around.
- Merry Christmas, Oje. - Merry Christmas, Dad!
It would have been a lot of fun.
It was fun. Thanks for that.
[sighs]
There was one person that always believed in me,
and that was Owen.
And I think he'd be so thrilled that Oje is a lawyer and
that he's gonna pursue human rights law,
and that Athena's a journalism graduate and
is pursuing that.
When you lose someone that you love,
because you still have all that love for them,
I took all that love that I had for Owen and
I created the Owen Hart Foundation.
Our message is that, you know, be kind to people.
Life is hard and everything we do through the foundation
is a reflection of the type of person that he was,
his generosity of spirit and the kindness that he exuded.
So, I think...
he would be, you know, clapping and applauding me,
up there in heaven, and saying,
"Well done, you."