Random news footage from the night and next morning after Owen Hart died
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00:00I cannot believe this! We've got a new WWF champion! The Rattlesnake has been spruced!
00:12They are not.
00:14And um, we send our condolences and sympathy to Owen Hart's family, his wife Martha, OG and Athena.
00:28Owen and Martha's two very young children, the entire Hart family, all of Owen's fans all over the world,
00:40were saddened by this tragic loss, and right now there are no answers.
00:52There is an ongoing investigation, and um, we don't have any answers as to how this happened yet, and we will shortly.
01:10And as soon as we know something, you'll know something. That's all I can say.
01:18That is the owner and president of the WWF, Vince McMahon, commenting on Owen Hart.
01:23Norm Resha of Colinall Sports. Norm, have you ever seen anything like this before?
01:26You know what's funny, as I was watching the commentator, he kept using the word real.
01:31And you know, for years we've accused this thing as unreal, not real. And they've always defended that.
01:36But ironically, he had to separate the two. And he did it, without even realizing it, by saying,
01:43this is really happening. This is a real situation. As opposed to all the unreal situations that we have been commenting on.
01:53You know, over the years. The only thing I hope, and obviously it's very tragic, but I hope they don't utilize this,
02:00and say, see how real wrestling can be? Because this was a, whatever happened, certainly wasn't planned.
02:10It might have been an equipment problem or something, but it's very tragic. It really is.
02:15On the phone lines, wrestling.
02:17...pronounced dead at Truman Medical Center because of a broken neck, after he fell 50 feet from the ceiling of the arena into a ring turnbuckle.
02:24The event, called Over the Edge, was televised on pay-per-view, and was seen across the country.
02:32Dave Meltzer, we gotta go.
02:34...died after falling 50 feet from the roof of Kemper Arena into the ring.
02:38Owen Hart, known to wrestling fans as Blue Blazer, was being lowered into the ring when the accident happened.
02:45And we send our condolences and sympathy to Owen Hart's family, his wife Martha, OJ and Athena,
03:00OJ and Martha's two very young children, the entire Hart family,
03:07all of Owen's fans all over the world,
03:13were saddened by this tragic loss.
03:20And right now there are no answers.
03:24Hart was given CPR in front of the sell-out crowd, and then taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
03:30The accident was also seen across the country on pay-per-view television.
03:36...died after the harness being used to lower him in the ring broke.
03:40It all happened in front of a sold-out audience in Kansas City's Kemper Arena.
03:44One young fan tells what went through his mind.
03:48I was thinking, like, man, is he going to live, or is he going to die at a young age?
03:56Just don't know what can happen to him.
04:00Probably won't never see his kids again.
04:03Owen Hart was 33 years old.
04:06...his interview, Owen Hart was being lowered into the ring on a cable when the cable connection either came undone or the cable snapped.
04:14Thousands of fans watched as the wrestler, known as the Blue Blazer, fell 50 feet and hit his head.
04:20The World Wrestling Federation has no explanation.
04:25We don't have any answers as to how this happened yet.
04:32And we will shortly.
04:35And as soon as we know something, you'll know something.
04:39The program resumed about 15 minutes after the accident.
04:41Owen Hart is the younger brother of wrestler Bret the Hitman Hart.
04:45The arena originally thought the tragic accident was all part of the show.
04:497th's Dan Housley is live in the 7th data center with the latest. Dan?
04:53Well, the World Wrestling Federation's website has a short statement expressing sadness and shock at the death of 33-year-old Owen Hart, known to his fans as Blue Blazer.
05:02One pro wrestler describes Owen's death as a circus act gone wrong, like performing a high wire act without a net.
05:09Paramedics worked feverishly to revive Hart as the commentator repeated over and over to the crowd this was no act.
05:16The reaction of the ref would tell you that.
05:19I just heard them screaming, saying it's not a fake, get a real EMT back here.
05:23He's not breathing, the ripcord broke or something, I don't know.
05:27The 33-year-old Canadian-born wrestler was being lowered into the ring when he fell 50 feet into a turnbuckle, the corner piece of the ropes.
05:35He was coming down on a cord and all of a sudden it snapped and he dropped.
05:39I think everybody was trying to figure out whether it was part of the act or not.
05:42And I think until the end people still didn't know for sure whether it was part of the act or it was really going on.
05:50Fans were stunned when they figured out it was real, but the show went on just 15 minutes later.
05:56WWF showman Vince McMahon offered a brief statement later.
06:00We're saddened by this tragic loss.
06:06And right now there are no answers.
06:09I find that I feel my injuries more on those nights, you know, just getting thrown around.
06:13This is Hart just a few weeks ago.
06:15He comes from a family of wrestlers, the most famous his brother Brett Hitman Hart from the rival WCW.
06:22Owen's father, old-time wrestler Stu Hart, didn't see the accident that took his son's life.
06:27But the elder Hart says he figures someone else slipped up.
06:31This was a nationally televised pay-per-view event, but the TV audience never saw Hart fall.
06:36The accident happened when TV fans were watching a montage of Hart's highlights.
06:40And then the camera panned the crowd as paramedics worked on the fallen wrestler.
06:44Hart leaves behind a wife and two young children.
06:47Promoters say the WWF cable show scheduled for tonight will go on.
06:51We're live in the data center. Dan Housley, 7 News.
06:55...as he plunged to his death in front of a sold-out show.
06:58Hart, now known as the, known rather more recently as the Blue Blazer,
07:03fell 50 feet at a pay-per-view event in Missouri last night.
07:08Officials think the cable to which he was attached snapped during the stunt.
07:12Paramedics were trying to revive him as he lay motionless in the ring.
07:16World Wrestling Federation President Vince McMahon was stunned.
07:21An ongoing investigation.
07:26And we don't have any answers as to how this happened.
07:31The 33-year-old Hart came from a long line of wrestlers.
07:35His father and all six brothers wrestled professionally.
07:38His brother Brett, the Hitman Hart, is a superstar in the WCW League.
07:43Magic in Kansas City. Wrestler Owen Hart, also known as the Blue Blazer,
07:48fell 50 feet to his death while doing a stunt at a World Wrestling Federation event.
07:53Hart, who is the brother of another popular wrestler, in fact it's a whole family of pro wrestlers,
07:58Brett the Hitman Hart is his brother.
08:00He was being lowered into the ring on a cable.
08:02Witnesses say that Hart fell some 50 feet hitting his head on the turnbuckle in the ring.
08:09Right now there are no answers.
08:11There is an ongoing investigation.
08:15We in the World Wrestling Federation are saddened by the tragic accident that occurred here tonight.
08:25And we send our condolences and sympathy to Owen Hart's family, his wife Martha.
08:36Owen Hart was 33 years old.
08:39There were more than 16,000 people in attendance at last night's event,
08:42which was also broadcast live on pay-per-view television.
08:48He plunged to his death last night in front of a stunned crowd in Kansas City, Missouri.
08:53Hart was being lowered into the ring from the ceiling
08:56when something obviously went very wrong with his cable.
08:59Tonight's wrestling show in St. Louis will go on as planned.
09:02The live broadcast will include a look back at Hart's career.
09:07Out of the box...
09:08...last night was anything but.
09:10Owen Hart, wrestling as the Blue Blazer, fell during his entrance to the ring and died.
09:15Brian Kilmeade is here now with more on that and other developing news in the sports world.
09:19Hi, Brian.
09:20Yeah, of course, we're talking about NBA basketball, but first and foremost,
09:22the death in the ring in a sport that they admit truly, you know, true blue is a fake sport.
09:26But there was nothing fake about this yesterday,
09:28except for maybe the fake way in which they handled the death,
09:31which is treated as if it was part of the show, many would say.
09:34Now, first off, a lot of the repercussions are coming in right now
09:37about what happened with the WWF last night,
09:39which, by the way, is far and away the king of cable television.
09:43And they're going to broadcast TV, and they did, in fact, last week,
09:46and just to a huge success.
09:48Now, moments ago, I met with the associate editor of TV Guide
09:51to talk about the success of wrestling and what this death could mean.
09:55And they said it will be key how they handle the death.
09:57Here is Greg Fagan talking about wrestling.
10:01The way Vince McMahon has structured the WWF,
10:04everything sort of gets turned into the storylines.
10:08If they decide to turn this, this death, this tragedy,
10:12into a storyline of some sort,
10:15that would seem to be something that might cause some problems.
10:19It might bring even greater scrutiny onto the organization
10:24and on the way it does its business.
10:27And they already had a chance, Shep, to come out and say,
10:30hey, this guy has died, Owen Hart has died, it's not fake, it's not real.
10:33And basically, three-quarters of the people in Missouri who were watching that match
10:37were saying, we didn't know what was happening,
10:39we had no idea what was really happening,
10:41so many people at home did not know.
10:43And so those are the reports.
10:44Why can't you level with your crowd?
10:45How could you go on with the subsequent matches after it was done?
10:48And if they sit there and try to twist it into some fake plot,
10:51like on a soap opera, they could be a major problem.
10:54Yeah, that would probably be a big mistake.
10:55We'll stay on that one.
10:56I told you a little while ago about this resignation in the NBA.
10:59But we're going to ask, what went wrong?
11:01Why did this happen?
11:02Lori, right now we're going to go down to Capitol Hill
11:04where NBT News Capitol Hill correspondent Joe Johns
11:07is standing by with some late information about the Chinese espionage scam.