10 Things We Learned From Owen Hart’s Final Day: A POST Profile
8. On Threat Of Termination
Amongst the endless sadness that surrounds this story, there's always been a particularly devastating take from Bret Hart when asked to discuss the butterfly effect of an alternate universe in which the Montreal Screwjob never occurred.
'The Hitman' has rather succinctly summed up his thoughts on Owen being made to don the dated Blue Blazer gimmick - if he was there, it wouldn't have happened.
There's no telling exactly how much power Hart could have exerted over such a situation, but speculatively speaking, he absolutely could have benched the persona or the requirement of his brother to take life-threatening flights from the rafters. According to Treigh Lindstrom, Owen had no such pull.
Discussing how disinterested the former 'King Of Harts' was with the spot, Lindstrom spoke of Owen's phone ringing throughout a gym visit the pair had made to help Hart avoid rehearsals. "If I'm not here, they can't do it...we can't do it" was his reasoned take, until Vince McMahon himself apparently gave him two choices - "be at Kemper Arena in 15 minutes, or no longer work for the WWF".
One of Owen's last ever decisions was thankless, made against a needless and thoughtless threat - words and narratives that came to define the entire tragedy.