Photo via bleacherreport.com
Fourteen years ago today — May 23, 1999 — professional wrestler Owen Hart died in a WWE ring when an aerial stunt went tragically wrong.
Performing as the masked Blue Blazer, Hart was supposed to ...
Photo via bleacherreport.com
Fourteen years ago today — May 23, 1999 — professional wrestler Owen Hart died in a WWE ring when an aerial stunt went tragically wrong.
Performing as the masked Blue Blazer, Hart was supposed to descend slowly by a cable from the rafters of Kansas City’s Kemper Arena, but his harness failed, sending him into a fatal plummet to the ring 78 feet below.
It was a shocking tragedy that cast a gloomy pall over the wrestling world, which was darkly ironic, considering that Owen Hart, perhaps more than any other wrestler in history, was so devoted to brightening the world around him.
Owen was one of wrestling’s most notorious pranksters — a master of the “ribs” that helped wrestlers break the tedium of an endless life on the road. While some wrestlers were feared for their nasty ribs (the old poop in the duffelbag trick, for example), Owen’s ribs were almost always harmless fun, if a tad annoying.
Given the passage of time and the nature of wrestling lore, some of these yarns might have become embellished after multiple re-tellings. But that’s the nature of a good prank: it becomes the stuff of legend. The legendary Owen Hart would surely be proud.
10. Michael Cola
Photo via WWE.com
Commentator Michael Cole has essentially become “the voice of WWE,” over the past decade, but it took him some time to rise to prominence. It’s somewhat surprising that he didn’t quit after his first day on the job. At a live event in the late 1990s, Cole was nervously preparing to do his very first on-air interview, and it was a big one — with the WWF Champion (and Owen’s brother), Bret Hart.
“I was all nervous, I was in my tuxedo, my hands were shaking, we were only a few minutes from the live shoot,” Cole later recalled.
“Right before we went to the interview, Owen and the British Bulldog took a liter of Coke and poured it down the back of my tuxedo pants. I have to stay in character, so I did the interview with an entire liter of Coke in my pants. That was my ‘Hello and welcome to the World Wrestling Federation’ from Owen.”
9. Tagging with the cops
Photo via WWE.com
Owen Hart and “The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith were notorious partners in pranking. One time, they befriended a couple of undercover cops and convinced them to pull over Lex Luger, who was driving the car in which Owen and Smith were passengers. Everything went fine until, as the cops were walking away, Smith hollered (as pre-arranged), “Oh, blow it out your arse!” The cops, as scripted, charged back to the car and demanded that Luger step out of the car. They handcuffed Luger and refused to listen to his pleas of innocence. Only after Luger was sufficiently terrified did Owen and Smith, along with the cops, reveal the ruse. Apparently, Vince McMahon chuckled in amusement at the whole thing from the comfort of his nearby limo.
8. Hotel Shenanigans
Owen found another partner in crime in the 1-2-3 Kid (later known as X-Pac and a half-dozen other names). While on a tour in Japan, they decided to have some fun tormenting a fellow wrestler. When he was away from his hotel room, they put all his clothes in the bathtub and filled it with water. They ordered every pay-per-view movie available on the TV. And, for good measure, they removed every single light bulb from the room. According to the story, the wrestler was seen the next day wearing ill-fitting clothes borrowed from someone else, looking bewildered.
7. The World’s Strongest Prank
Owen was good friends with “The World’s Strongest Man” Mark Henry. During long car journeys and tedious hotel stays, they’d pass the time by making prank phone calls. One one occasion, Owen targeted Henry’s longtime manager, Terry Todd, who had recently moved to a ranch and was having trouble with cows escaping through a broken fence. Hart called