10 Things We Learned From Owen Hart’s Final Day: A POST Profile
1. Lingering Legacy
Owen Hart's in-ring legacy has been tacitly secured by the vast WWE Network archives in the post-DVD landscape, but Pollock's piece posits this as something of a mixed blessing in terms of those that matter the most.
There is no WWE-style happy ending to the documentary, just as there wasn't for Owen, his family or his fans in 1999. Martha and Bret sided with one another during legal proceedings, but she elected to divorce herself from the family entirely in the post-script. Referring to Owen as a "white sheep in a black sheep family", she lost 'The Hitman' when she made efforts to block WWE's celebration (and, presumably, profiteering off) of his back catalogue in the years that followed.
Treigh Lindstrom's troubling anecdote about being asked to leave the 'Raw Is Owen' taping before the show even began felt like the start of a second story entirely, but it proved just another ungainly move by WWE during a 24 hour period where they made far too many of them.
There are no right answers to how Owen is permitted to be remembered, nor does the documentary or its interviewees go searching for them.
A wronged and hurt widow deserves the right to have her husband immortalised in the way she wishes for his children without worrying about the needs of wrestling fans. His siblings and legions of fans naturally want the opposite, but are similarly driven most of all by the want to elevate his status.
Oddly, the documentary itself serves as a detailed, fitting tribute in its own right. "Owen Hart stories" were shared by mourning wrestlers the night he passed and multiple times again in the 20 years that followed. This particular one - the story of a family man's final moments - hasn't ever been so well articulated.
As a result, it is (for now, at least) the most important one of all.