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WWE, Creative Control, Ownership and Owen Hart
On this day in 1999, Owen Hart died in a professional wrestling ring while performing for Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). He had just turned 34 years of age.
Despite the tragedy, McMahon ordered the show to go on.
While it’s true that a lot of high-profile names become legendary icons when they die young, regardless of the true measure of their talent, if anything Owen Hart’s legacy is often understated.
If you go back to watch his matches in Stampede Wrestling in Canada, in the U.K., in Japan, or even when debuting as the masked “Blue Angel” (later “Blue Blazer”) upon arriving in McMahon’s WWF in 1988, you’ll notice that his in-ring style doesn’t just hold up today: it’s positively cutting-edge. Owen was executing moves off the top turnbuckle, and even literally off the top rope itself, long before such high-flying, fast-paced wrestling was commonplace.
Owen was, of course, the younger brother of Bret “The Hit Man” Hart, who is widely regarded as one of the best pro wrestlers of all time, in part because of his thirteen year run with the WWF, where he captured every major title that there was to win, with mostly uninterrupted momentum: retaining the same persona and remaining a key part of WWF storylines, some of which fortunately coincided with McMahon’s…
