As I was browsing through my column archive the other day I noticed something that had slipped my mind. Yesterday is the sixth anniversary of the tragic event that took Owen Hart so early in his life. It’s been six years – hard to believe, huh?
The night after his fall I published the brief article linked above. In it, I basically say that there is no one to blame, but that we were still left the question…why? Why did such a young man have to be taken so early? Why did he have to die in the manner that he did? What was the point?
I also highlighted the fact that there really was no one particular person or group to blame that would result in a feeling of vindication. Sure, some extremists would immediately say Owen’s death was WWE’s fault. Of course, these are probably the same extremists who blame our soldiers dying in the Middle East on President Bush and not the fighters who are shooting rocket-propelled grenades or planting car bombs under our jeeps. In short, both of these extremist views are what you get when someone wants immediate vindication – they take a shot at the biggest target in sight.
But I am not writing this article to educate people on exactly what an extremist view is; rather I am writing this article to take a brief look at WWE in 2005 and see whether or not a lesson has been learned from Owen’s tragic death.
Immediately we see that wrestlers are no longer descending from arena ceilings. Thank God. This was always a risky proposition, but it is odd that no one really saw how risky it was until too late. You know, I believe I remember reading that Owen was against riding down the pulley system. WWE finally learned that there is no use in “character development” through descending from the ceiling for an entrances.
In a more general sense, I ask whether or not WWE learned to respect the bodies of their wrestlers moreso today than they did in 1999? I lean towards yes on answering this question. Over the past six years (either through industry trend or WWE booking) we have seen a drastic reduction in the amount of risks that wrestlers take during a match.
Now read my previous statement correctly: the risks that are taken these days are extreme in nature (remember the ladder match from WrestleMania 21?), but there is no denying that they are less frequent than in years past. No longer do we have a Hardcore Division. No longer do we have routine Raven’s Rules, ECW Rules, or No Rules hardcore matches all the time. Folks, this is a good thing and I think that in some small way WWE and the professional wrestling industry as a whole finally learned to respect their wrestler’s bodies more in 2005 than they did in 1999.
I do not intend for this article to be a puff piece, so let me share an area where I think we have not learned any lessons. With respect to what makes a show spectacular – something that you’ll be talking about for weeks and months to come – both WWE and the wrestlers themselves have learned nothing. We’ve seen people fall off of the TitanTron, we’ve seen people go through plate glass, we’ve seen people take a dive off a 15 foot ladder in the ring all the way down to the arena floor. Folks, this is insane.
Like I said above, we have witnessed a greater respect for the wrestler’s bodies by making these “shocking” events few and far in between, but the lust for doing something bigger and better and more outrageous than last time around has not gone away. I don’t know where this trend will go, but I do fear that it might eventually consume a younger wrestler trying to make his name against the “New Glass Ceiling Stars” (I’ll write about them in another column).
The other area where I think there is a lack of learning is the manner by which the wrestling executives, promoters, and commentators handle telling the truth about injuries to the fans. In 1999, Jim Ross was struck dumb when he had to make the announcement that Owen Hart had passed away at a local hospital. A few years later when he went on a personal campaign against the high-flying style as Vice President of Talent Relations, he concocted a story about Jeff Hardy breaking his knee or leg or something due to a fall off of a ladder during a match.
Come on, dude. After a disaster like Owen Hart’s death does WWE really need to keep up the kay fabe about wrestler injuries? Do we really need to have younger fans almost in tears because they think that their hero, Jeff Hardy, might be disabled? What a cheap and desparate shot by an executive that showed entirely no remorse for the very real tragedy of a few years earlier.
When will bookers and executives learn that injuries are not storylines! If a wrestler is truly injured, then say it! But don’t say that someone is out with a busted knee or a busted neck when they’re perfectly fine and you’re trying to teach the wrestling public a lesson about high-flyers.
That’s where I stand on these tricky and sometimes contradictory issues. I think that the wrestling industry learned much in the wake of Owen’s death, but it did not become the ideal that it could have. And truthfully, I am not that disappointed in this fact. I know that change takes time even when it is bolstered by an earth-shattering event.
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