KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Wrestling’s biggest stars were in the ring in Kansas City for Monday Night Raw at Sprint Center. The show took place nearly 20 years to the day of one of the WWE’s darkest hours, the night Owen Hart fell to his death at Kemper Arena.
“We in the WWF are saddened by the tragic accident that occurred here tonight,” then WWF Owner and now WWE Chairman and CEO Vince Mcmahon told our FOX4 cameras, May 23, 1999.
FOX4 Video Editor, Mark Rodriguez witnessed the tragedy that wasn’t shown on TV that night.
Owen Hart, the “Blue Blazer,” prepared to make his entrance from Kemper Arena’s catwalk while a video played on the monitor that pay-per viewers also watched at home.
“All the sudden you just see something, it was like a blur, fall and hit the top rope and fall into the ring. At first I just thought it was a dummy and that’s what everyone thought because they would do stunts like that,” Rodriguez said.
Then fans would realize somehow Hart’s harness released. A raucous Kemper Arena fell silent, as medics and others rushed into the ring.
“I could still hear them counting through the compressions, that’s how quiet Kemper Arena was,” Rodriguez said. “Owen Hart, Blue Blazer, a very serious situation here is being attended to,” WWF ringside announcer Jim Ross told viewers at home.
To many fans’ dismay, the show would go on. Ross would later tell people at home Hart had died. No such announcement was made in the arena.
“You could definitely feel the mood in Kemper Arena was different, not just from the crowd but from the wrestlers too,” Rodriguez said.
As the WWE made its stop in Kansas City for Monday Night RAW, to some younger fans, the death is a mere footnote. But to others it stirs up raw emotions, especially those who followed the buses from Kemper to St. Louis for a tribute called “RAW is Owen.”
“Everybody came out and the stories about him, and how much they missed him. They did some of his moves in the ring, it was a tearjerker,” Randy Beyer, who attended both events in May, 1999, said.
“You grew up with the Hulk Hogans and the Macho Mans and they were like superheroes. But then you found out that they are people too, they have families, and how important they are, not only to their families but people who watch them,” Ralph Garcia said.
WWE settled a lawsuit with Hart’s family out of court. The organization declined comment about Hart’s death Monday or its stop in Kansas City so close to the 20-year anniversary.
