Remembering the Blue Blazer

>> An eulogy for wrestling's Owen Hart

COMMENTARY by RYAN DAY

Former Mirror intern Ryan Day is 16 and in Grade 10 at Westmount High School. He was introduced to wrestling by his father about 14 years ago and has been a fan ever since.

On Monday, May 24, I awoke to a day like any other. When the phone rang, I figured it was one of my friends calling to tell me about the World Wrestling Federation pay-per-view that happened the night before. My grandmother was on the other end of the phone line, however. She told me that a wrestler from the WWF had died in an accident; she had read it in the paper.

She couldn't recall his name, and commenced giving me a series of agonizing clues to help me reveal his identity. With every clue, I came one step closer to realizing that my hero, Owen Hart, had died. A horrible feeling went through my body and I simply couldn't believe it. I thanked her and called my best friend to inform him--he's a big Owen fan, too. After breaking the news, we both sat there, awkwardly waiting for someone to say something...

I got into wrestling because it was exciting, like a male soap opera: who will turn their back on who, who hates who, etc. Owen quickly became my favourite because of his charisma.

He didn't need much of a gimmick; he used his ability to get over with the fans. He was a high flyer, an aerial strategist, meaning he leaped off the ropes a lot. He put his own well-being on the line to entertain the fans. Owen was a "heel" character, but many of his peers said that it was hard for him to be a bad guy since he was such a nice person.

Owen was the youngest son of a famous wrestling family, the Harts from Calgary, Alberta. He came into the WWF in the late 1980s, under the mask of the Blue Blazer. He slowly rose in the ranks due to his immense wrestling ability. He captured three different world titles in the WWF and was considered by many to be one of the best they had ever had.

Owen Hart died while performing a stunt in Kansas City, in front of an entire arena of fans. The WWF wanted him to be lowered into the ring from the rafters, for more effect. Owen had performed this stunt many times, always without problems. But that night, tragedy struck when his harness somehow snapped and he plunged four storeys and hit his head on a turnbuckle. He was later pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

His family feels that his death was the result of an unnecessary stunt to get ratings. They say the WWF has pushed the envelope on violence way too far, and that it was only a matter of time before someone died. I agree with them to a certain extent, the WWF is getting more and more violent every day. But I don't think that Owen's death was a direct result of that. You see, Owen's stunt had been performed by himself and other wrestlers many times, even before the WWF really started changing and focusing on extreme violence as its main selling point. I do feel, however, that someone else will be seriously hurt soon due to the violence level.

The night after his death, it sank in for me that Owen had actually died when I watched Raw Is War, the WWF's weekly television show. Numerous WWF athletes shared their feelings about Owen Hart, many breaking down into sobs while describing how great a man he was. Owen Hart will be sadly missed by the entire wrestling industry, but most of all by his family, including his wife and two young children.

I will still watch WWF programming every week and I'll still enjoy the intense action. The incident hasn't changed my perspective, because accidents like this could happen in any other "sport." But I feel that the WWF definitely has to slow down on the amount of violence, and maybe even reduce it a little.