10 Stories That Prove Wrestling Is The Wildest Industry EVER
1. The Show Must Go On
In any other walk of life, if somebody dies, the workplace gets shut down for the day.
There are few notable historic exceptions, as Dave Meltzer pointed out in his incredible May 31, 1999 Wrestling Observer Newsletter write-up. The 1972 Olympic Games were ordered to continue by Avery Brundage following the Munich Massacre. This should have acted as a rule-proving exception on May 23, 1999.
It did not.
Owen Hart was killed after he slipped out of the shoddy and unfit harness that was to lower him to the ring ahead of his parody entrance at Over The Edge. He did not descend theatrically from the rafters. After the WWF dismissed expert opinion, he fell at a rapid, fatal speed head-first onto a turnbuckle and was killed instantly. After paramedics failed to resuscitate him, his corpse was removed from the ring. He was pronounced dead 33 minutes after the fall. The faintest signs of pulseless electrical activity convinced the medical staff at the Kansas City Truman Medical Center that a further resuscitation attempt was not in vain. It was. The man was dead. The man, more accurately, had been killed.
The show still went on.
At the time, some people understood the WWF's position. They had an awful decision to make immediately, and they made a terrible one. But isn't that more awful?
Isn't it so unconscionable that, under the instinct that forms our inherent moral core, Vince McMahon proceeded with the show?
Isn't it somehow more disgusting that he claimed that it's what Owen would have wanted?