Tag: Owen Hart

The most publicized story ever in North American pro wrestling, the tragic death of Owen Hart on 5/23, is brought vividly back to life with the documentary “The life and death of Owen Hart.”

The one-hour piece, debuted in Ontario on TVO on 11/3, in the rest of Canada on 11/6 on the A Channel and will be part of A&E’s bio week on pro wrestling, with an 11/16 showing. The film was still having the final editing touches put on at press time, as there are apparently numerous changes from version we are reviewing.

It’s a tear-jerker, with a lot of home video footage of Hart with his two young children, Oje and Athena. The most powerful part of the movie is the fact that Producers Paul Jay and Sally Blake, who also produced the highly acclaimed “Wrestling with Shadows,” made the point to bring out that this was a real person with a real family who just happened to be a pro wrestler. This portrayal of Hart and all the family home movies made it impossible to dismiss the repercussions of it even though it’s a business that has built up thick callouses because deaths happen with such frequency.

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The expected lawsuit filed by the Hart family against a number of defendants, the main one being the World Wrestling Federation, was announced at a press conference on 6/15 in Kansas City.

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In a funeral described by onlookers as overwhelming, the Calgary community, the pro wrestling fraternity and wrestling fans paid their final respects to Owen Hart at his funeral on 5/31.

The funeral, which was front page news in both Calgary newspapers, saw both Alberta Premiere Ralph Klein and Calgary Mayor Al Duerr attend along with current and former wrestlers from around North America.

Various press estimates were that between 1,500 and 3,000 people (CNN reported 3,000 but most reports were closer to the former figure) attended the most publicized wrestling funeral in North America of the modern era. Although funerals for wrestlers who became national heroes like Giant Baba and El Santo were larger, due to the circumstances of the death and the current popularity of wrestling, this was the most publicized in recent memory in North America. In some ways it was similar to the large throng of wrestling fans in 1984 at the funeral of David Von Erich, estimated by various local reports as between 3,500 and 7,000 although that funeral was far more publicized in regards to attempting to draw a large crowd of wrestling fans while the location of this was almost secretive to not draw that kind of element.

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