10 Emotional WWE Moments That Made Fans Cry

2. Jim Ross Announces Owen Hart's Passing

It's not like pro wrestlers had never died before Owen Hart passed in 1999, but none had ever died so publicly (even though the pay-per-view audience never saw his accident take place). Nobody really knew how to respond when Jim Ross made the somber announcement, live, that Owen had passed away. That's why so many people thought it was some weird storyline that the WWF had put together. He couldn't have actually died, could he?

If you were watching wrestling back then, you'd remember that people were speculating for weeks about Owen's death being some elaborate storyline, and that he'd return at some point to great fanfare. For those who weren't so far caught up in wrestling to understand what was happening, hearing JR say those words was jarring and changed the way you looked at the business forever. You began to wonder how something like that could have happened. You began to wonder how it must have looked to those poor, unfortunate souls that were in attendance. You began to wonder how Owen's fellow wrestlers could have gone out into the ring to continue the show. While we're discussing that, though...

Vince McMahon did the right thing in continuing the show. Far too many people in that crowd would not have understood what was going on had the show been called off, and they would have been angry. It also would have been a financial nightmare for the WWF, although that's certainly not something that should have been at the forefront in their thought process. Lastly, you'd like to think that a performer who loved wrestling like Owen Hart did would have wanted his friends to try and go out and entertain the fans, and to distract them, instead of cancelling the show and having everyone focus on what happened. Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing for sure, so all we can do is speculate on that.