Owen Hart

Canadian wrestler (1965–1999)

He was of Greek descent through his maternal grandmother and Irish through his maternal grandfather. His father was mainly of Scots Irish descent, but also had Scottish and German ancestry. Because his mother, Helen, was born in New York, Hart held American citizenship in addition to Canadian citizenship, which he acquired due to birth in Canada to a Canadian born father.

Hart first gained wrestling experience in the amateur wrestling division at high school, through which he met his wife, Martha. Hart continued amateur wrestling for the Dinos at the University of Calgary. He placed 4th at the 1984 Canada West championships in the 76 kg weight class. Wrestling was not Hart's first choice for a career; as Martha explained in her book Broken Harts, Owen tried numerous times to find a profitable living outside of wrestling. Owen is quoted as saying, in the WWE Home Video "Owen Hart of Gold" that "during his time in the University, he wrestled incognito (under a mask) as the original British Bulldog. Then, after he graduated from the University, he wrestled as "Bronco" Owen Hart at Royal Albert Hall in London, England. As those attempts were unsuccessful, Hart was trained in his father's Hart Dungeon and worked for his father's federation, Stampede Wrestling and in England for Max Crabtree's Joint Promotions in matches that got broadcast on ITV's World of Sport. He remained with Stampede for the next couple of years while honing his skills. During 1986, Hart teamed with Ben Bassarab and won the Stampede Wrestling International Tag Team Championship. The success of the team and Hart's in ring skills earned him Pro Wrestling Illustrateds Rookie of the Year Award in 1987. After he and Bassarab lost the tag team title, both before and after he debuted the Jushin Liger gimmick. On May 27, 1988, Hart defeated Hiroshi Hase for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, becoming the first non Japanese wrestler to win the title. He continued to wrestle in the midcard, defeating enhancement talent but often falling short against other name talent; he lost to Ted DiBiase on the March 11, 1989 Saturday Night's Main Event XX and was defeated by Mr. Perfect at WrestleMania V.

Shortly after WrestleMania, Hart left the WWF to tour the world both with and without the Blue Blazer gimmick. He also returned to Stampede, until it shut down in December 1989. In 1991, Hart lost the Blue Blazer mask in a mascara contra mascara match against Mexican wrestler El Canek, and would not utilize the gimmick again until 1998. He also returned to New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW). In 1990 he went to Germany and worked Catch Wrestling Association. Hart debuted in World Championship Wrestling's self titled TV show on March 16, 1991, the first of five TV matches he competed in, all of which were against preliminary talent such as Mark Kyle. One of the bouts saw him team with Ricky Morton.

Hart had been engaged in contract discussions with WCW but the deal was never struck, as Owen was not willing to move himself and his family to the company's headquarters in Atlanta. Neidhart left the WWF shortly afterward, and Hart set out on a very short run as a singles wrestler, including a victorious match at WrestleMania VIII when he faced off against Skinner. Shortly after WrestleMania, Hart was teamed up with Koko B. Ware to form the duo known as High Energy. They had only one pay per view match as a team, at the Survivor Series where they lost to The Headshrinkers. The team was quietly dropped at the start of 1993 with Hart starting a singles career. Owen suffered a knee injury on April 17, 1993 in a match taped for Superstars, against Bam Bam Bigelow, which kept him sidelined for nearly two months.

In the middle of 1993, when Bret Hart's feud with Jerry Lawler ignited, Owen stood by his brother's side and fought against Lawler in the United States Wrestling Association where most of the WWF talent were considered the heels. Owen won the USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship from Papa Shango. After the act, an infuriated Owen accused his brother of being selfish and holding him down. Owen admitted that it felt good to take out his brother. The two brothers faced off for the first time at WrestleMania X, where Owen cleanly pinned his older brother. Later in the evening, Bret won the WWF Championship against Yokozuna while Owen stood by and watched in anger and jealousy as Bret celebrated in the ring. Owen won the 1994 King of the Ring tournament turning back Razor Ramon in the finals with an elbow drop to the back and with an assist from Jim Neidhart. After the victory, Owen dropped "The Rocket" nickname and took the nickname "The King of Harts." Owen and Bret feuded throughout the summer of 1994, clashing many times both in singles and later in tag team matches (with Bret joined by the returning British Bulldog). Two prominent matches took place in this feud: first, their steel cage match in the co main event of SummerSlam for Bret's WWF Championship, which Bret won. This match later received a five star rating from Dave Meltzer. The second was a lumberjack match on August 17 that Owen initially won and was announced as WWF Champion; Bret won the match after it was ordered to continue due to interference. At the Survivor Series, Owen struck the most damaging blow against his brother as he conned his own mother Helen to throw in the towel for Bret. The ploy cost Bret the WWF Championship to Bob Backlund. Owen also prevented Bret from regaining the WWF Championship at the Royal Rumble in 1995 when he interfered in the match between Bret and new champion Diesel. In the weeks after the Royal Rumble, Bret and Owen clashed again with Bret soundly defeating his brother, thus putting an end to their feud for the time being.

Owen rebounded from the loss to Bret by winning the WWF Tag Team Championship from The Smoking Gunns at WrestleMania XI. Owen also won a Slammy Award for injuring Shawn Michaels and began using the nickname "Slammy Award Winner" and the "King of Harts," though this nickname was rarely used. Owen was also a color commentator for the 1996 King of the Ring (exhibiting clear partisan support for Vader and Smith) and during this time wore a cast on his right forearm for several months, feigning a nagging injury to subsequently use his cast as a weapon during his matches. In September 1996, Bulldog and Hart earned a pay per view shot at the tag team titles at In Your House 10. Owen and Bulldog left with the gold after defeating the Smoking Gunns. After the Rumble, they had miscommunication in matches against Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon and Bulldog fired Mason after losing a match to Crush who was also managed by Mason, something which did not sit well with Hart. Another bone of contention between the two was the newly created WWF European Championship; both men had fought their way to the finals to crown the first champion with Bulldog coming out as the victor. The match was booked for March 31; on the night, the two went at it with such intensity that many thought the tag team champions had finally gone their separate ways. Then in a shocking moment, the recently turned heel Bret Hart appeared at ringside and stopped the match. Bret appealed to both Owen and Bulldog, talking about the importance of family. They agreed to put their differences aside and join with Bret to form the new Hart Foundation, an anti American stable that also included Hart in law Jim Neidhart and Hart family friend Brian Pillman.

After forming the Hart Foundation, Owen quickly gained singles gold of his own as he pinned Rocky Maivia to win his first WWF Intercontinental Championship. Austin won the title from Hart that evening, Later that night, the Montreal Screwjob took place. Bret left the WWF after Survivor Series and both the British Bulldog and Jim Neidhart were granted quick releases from their contracts to jump to WCW. This left Owen as the only Hart family member remaining in the WWF, due to his contractual obligations.

Hart was not seen or mentioned on WWF programming until he made a surprise appearance after Shawn Michaels retained his title following a disqualification loss to Ken Shamrock at In Your House: D Generation X where he attacked Shawn Michaels. Now a fan favourite, but with a new edgy, antisocial attitude, Hart became known as "The Lone Hart" and also "The Black Hart". Owen had a feud with D Generation X (DX) and challenged Shawn Michaels for the WWF Championship on the December 29, 1997 episode of Raw Is War: Hart had Michaels locked in the Sharpshooter when Triple H interfered in order to save Michaels' title, giving Hart the victory by disqualification. He later won the European title from Triple H, although not directly. After the attack on Shamrock, Hart became the co leader, with The Rock, of the Nation of Domination, claiming that "Enough is enough and it's time for a change". The Nation's first big feud after Hart joined was against DX. It was during this feud that D Generation X parodied the Nation of Domination. The imitation was complete with an actor dressing up as Hart and uttering the phrase "I am not a nugget"; this was in response to Shawn Michaels referring to Owen as a nugget of feces in a toilet bowl that, no matter how many times Michaels flushed, he was unable to get rid of. "Nugget" became a derisive term that followed Hart for the rest of his career. Hart's participation in the DX feud was sidetracked when Shamrock returned from injuries dead set on getting revenge on Hart. The two split a pair of specialty matches on pay per view, but nothing was ever conclusively settled between them.

Hart remained with the Nation throughout the year until the stable slowly dissolved. After SummerSlam, he teamed with Jeff Jarrett. Hart and Jarrett had Jarrett's manager Debra in their corner. During this time a storyline was proposed that Hart was supposed to have an on screen affair with Debra, something which Owen turned down. Playing off the legitimate injury Hart had inflicted on Austin the year before, the angle blurred the lines between reality and "storyline." Yet as soon as Hart "quit," the Blue Blazer appeared in the WWF claiming to in no way be Hart despite it being very obvious who was under the mask. Unlike the first run of the character, the Blazer was now an overbearing, self righteous heel who treated the edgy Attitude Era WWF with disdain. Hart and Jarrett ended up making the storyline comical. To prove that Hart was not the Blazer, he showed up beside the Blue Blazer, who was a masked Jarrett. In a later attempt to prove that neither Hart or Jarrett was the Blazer, they both appeared next to a man in the Blue Blazer mask; however, it was obvious that a black man was under the mask (Hart's former tag team partner Koko B. Ware). On May 28, 2011, Hart was inducted into the Legends Pro Wrestling "Hall of Fame" by Jack Blaze in Wheeling, West Virginia at their "LPW Hart & Soul Tour" event. The award was accepted by his brother in law Jim Neidhart, who was also inducted that night.

On May 23, 1999, Hart fell to his death in Kansas City, Missouri, during the Over the Edge pay per view event. Hart was in the process of being lowered via harness and grapple line into the ring from the rafters of Kemper Arena for a booked Intercontinental Championship match against The Godfather. In keeping with the Blazer's new "buffoonish superhero" character, he was to begin a dramatic entrance, being lowered to just above ring level, at which time he would act "entangled", then release himself from the safety harness and fall flat on his face for comedic effect—this necessitated the use of a quick release mechanism. It was an elaboration on a Blue Blazer stunt done previously on the Sunday Night Heat before Survivor Series in 1998. Hart had performed the stunt only a few times before. Hart's widow Martha has suggested that, by moving around to get comfortable with both the harness and his cape on, Hart unintentionally triggered an early release. Television viewers did not see the incident. During the fall, a pre taped vignette was being shown on the pay per view broadcast as well as on the monitors in the darkened arena. Afterward, while Hart was being worked on by medical personnel inside the ring, the live event's broadcast showed only the audience. Meanwhile, WWF television announcer Jim Ross repeatedly told those watching live on pay per view that what had just transpired was not a wrestling angle or storyline and that Hart was hurt badly, emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. Hart was transported to Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. While several attempts to revive him were made, he died due to his injuries. The cause of death was later revealed to be internal bleeding from blunt force trauma. The impact severed his aorta, resulting in Hart bleeding to death just minutes later; he was 34 years old.

WWF and Vince McMahon drew controversy when the company chose to continue the pay per view event after Jim Ross announced Owen Hart's death on the live broadcast. Over the Edge was never commercially released on WWF Home Video, although it was available on the WWE Network in 2014 for the first time since its original air date. Other than a short memorial that was added before the show began, all footage and mention of Hart was edited out. A special episode of Raw Is War that aired on May 24, 1999, the night after Hart's death, was dubbed Raw Is Owen. It was broadcast live from the Kiel Center in St. Louis. The tribute show scored a 7.2 Nielsen rating, making it the highest rated special episode in Raw history and the third highest rated episode of Raw overall. The next day, WWF taped the episode of Raw for May 31, 1999. During that show, Jeff Jarrett defeated The Godfather to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship,

On October 4, 1999, five months after Hart's death, Bret Hart faced Chris Benoit on WCW Nitro in a tribute to his brother. The match took place in the same arena in which Hart had fallen to his death. After a lawsuit that lasted over a year and a half, a settlement was reached on November 2, 2000, which saw WWF pay the estate of Owen Hart US$18 million with the help of Pamela Fischer. The manufacturer of the harness system was also a defendant against the Hart family, but they were dismissed from the case after the settlement was reached. In 2001, Hart's sister Diana released her first book named Under the Mat which discussed the Hart family. The book was written partially in response to Hart's death. Martha Hart pursued legal action, stating that the book was "filled with distortions, misstatements and unjustified slurs that attempt to destroy the reputation of my family and me, and undermine the memory of Owen." In 2002, Martha wrote a book about Hart's life called Broken Harts: The Life and Death of Owen Hart.

Hart was widely regarded as one of the best in ring performers in the WWE; Fox Sports dubbed him a "genius". He would go on to be considered one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time by many industry colleagues. WWE released Owen: Hart of Gold on DVD and Blu ray on December 7, 2015, in the United Kingdom, with the United States release the day after. WWE wrestler Kevin Owens named his son after Hart and incorporated the name into his own ring name as tribute to both of them. On September 20, 2021, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) announced the Owen Hart Cup Tournament, in partnership with the Owen Hart Foundation, wherein the winner will receive a trophy called "The Owen". The company also announced production and distribution of original Owen Hart merchandise and Hart as a character in AEW's console game, AEW Fight Forever.