Martha Hart was interviewed by CBS Sports' Brent Bookhouse in advance of tonight's season finale of Dark Side of the Ring on VICE TV, documenting the life and death of Owen Hart as well as the legal aftermath of Hart's passing in May 1999 after falling from the rafters of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City at the WWF Over the Edge PPV. The interview prompted a response from WWE's lead attorney Jerry McDevitt and can be read in complete form at this link.
Hart on how Dark Side of the Ring finally gets the true story of Owen's passing out: "I'm just one individual and the WWE is a PR powerhouse. They've always had the upper hand with getting their message and their side of things out. This episode really provided the opportunity to tell the real story and tell how I had the biggest fight of my life. It was a real David and Goliath battle and how awful they were to me and how disrespectful they were to Owen."
Hart on the Stunt that led to Owen's death: "First of all, the stunt itself was so negligent. They hired hackers they knew would do anything they wanted when they knew that proper riggers they had hired in the past had told them, 'We won't do this kind of stunt, it's not safe.' Everything about that stunt was done wrong. The entire set-up was wrong. The equipment was wrong -- the harness, for example, was meant for dragging people behind a car. It was a stunt harness, but it wasn't meant to suspend someone 80 feet above the ground. What was happening to Owen when he was sitting in that harness is, his circulation was getting cut off and he couldn't breathe. Then, the snap shackle that they used, that snap shackle is not meant for rigging humans. It's meant for the sole use of rigging sailboats. It's a sailboat clip that, by design, is meant to open on load. By the very design of the stunt, it was meant to fail, because the weight of Owen on that clip actually made it more likely it would open spontaneously. Proper riggers have a few things they would never do. First, they would never do a stunt without redundancy. That didn't happen; there was no redundancy. Second, they never, ever, let the talent have any control into the stunt. These guys were telling Owen, 'This cord taped here, don't pull it until you get to the ground.' That would never happen; proper riggers don't rig things this way. The other thing is, WWE is a billion-dollar company. Owen never questioned his safety. He thought for sure they were hiring people that knew what they were doing. He was putting his life in their hands, and they didn't care. They didn't have any regard for Owen's life whatsoever. They went outside of qualified riggers that had good experience."
Hart on WWE's reaction to Hart falling: "When Owen died, they scooped him out like a piece of garbage and they paraded wrestlers out to wrestle in a ring that had Owen's blood, where the boards were broken from Owen's fall and where the guys could feel the dip in the ring from where he fell. Just that disrespect and lack of respect for a human life that had just been lost. The fact that they didn't stop the show is just appalling. Vince McMahon was a poor leader, and he failed because that talent was looking for leadership and he failed them."
Jerry McDevitt's response to Martha's statement: "The reality is, we've never told our side of the story of what happened -- at least not outside of court. We told it in court, but when she talks about the way the lawsuit unfolded over the years, it really isn't accurate what she's saying. What she did whenever this happened is, she hired a lawyer in Kansas City who we caught essentially trying to fix the judicial selection process to get a judge that was more to their liking. We caught them and went all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court. The Missouri Supreme Court said, 'No, no, no. We're not going to let that happen.' They essentially appointed an independent judge to come in from outside of Kansas City to oversee the proceedings. We were basically trying to find out what happened that night. Martha was not even remotely interested in finding out what happened that night; she just wanted to used it as a vehicle to beat up a business that she didn't like that her husband was in, the wrestling business."
Hart on Not Allowing Owen into the WWE Hall of Fame: "There's always been this talk that, 'Oh, we want to put Owen in the Hall of Fame,' Their Hall of Fame? They don't even have a Hallway of Fame. It doesn't exist. There's nothing. It's a fake entity. There's nothing real or tangible. It's just an event they have to make money. They put it on TV and have a celebration, and it's just so ridiculous. I would never even entertain it. It's garbage."
