Straight from the Hart (39 page)

Things would get even worse once the court case began. In one of his first appearances in court, my dad described Vince McMahon as an old friend and testified that he believed Owen’s death had been an accident. He was censured afterward for not having condemned Vince as the monster they wanted him to be perceived as, and the lawyers then sought to have his remarks disregarded, on the grounds that he was “mentally incompetent,” which he was quite offended by. My mother was the next to incur the wrath of the lawyers. After one particularly stressful courtroom session, there was a recess and outside the courtroom, she bumped into Linda McMahon, whom she hadn’t seen since the funeral. Linda is one of the classiest and nicest people I’ve met in wrestling. She and my mom exchanged a tearful embrace and Linda expressed her regrets that things had become so strained and acrimonious. At that juncture, one of the
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lawyers ran up and snatched my mother by the arm and scolded her so harshly that she burst into tears.

As I mentioned before, one of the early casualties of the bitter battle with the WWF had been Davey Boy. Bret’s unwarranted dog-in-shit column had resulted in Davey getting back on drugs and by the spring of 2000, his life and career were in a such a shambles that the WWF finally ordered him to go into rehab down in Atlanta. While he was in rehab, he got wind that my sister Diana (his wife) — who was pretty fragile herself at that time — had left him for some other guy. Furious, he checked himself out of rehab and headed back to Calgary, where he encountered Diana and her new beau, up at my dad’s house. A violent altercation ensued and my dad, in the process of trying to break it up, was shoved, backwards, down the stairs by Davey Boy. It was a bad fall and Dad had to be ambulanced to the hospital.

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When the WWF got wind of Davey Boy having pulled himself out of rehab and all the rest, they suspended him — which pretty much marked the end of his once celebrated wrestling career.

Just after his release from the WWF, Davey Boy was hospitalized with a serious staph infection — brought on, I’m told, by years of steroid abuse, which had ravaged his immune system. I felt sorry for him, as he’d been unjustly maligned by Bret, had seen his marriage crumble and was incurring some serious health issues. I went up to visit him and to offer him some moral support.

After my visit, I was talking to my wife, Andrea — who is an expert on natural healing and homeopathic remedies and that sort of thing — and told her of Davey Boy’s health problems. Andrea said she had some holistic remedies that might help him and decided to visit him to see if she could be of some help.

Little did I realize what a can of worms that would soon open up.

I should perhaps give you a brief bit of background on the stormy relationship that had existed for years between my wife and my sister Diana. Since I first had been going out with my wife, way back in 1982, she and Diana had never gotten along. Most of the time, their antagonism took the form of cattiness, but
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after Davey had made it big in the WWF, Diana tended to flaunt her wealth and look down her nose at my wife, which only added fuel to the fire.

As I was saying, when my wife went up to the hospital to see Davey, her intentions, I think, were good. She was primarily concerned with trying to help Davey get off drugs and get his health back, through homeopathy and changing his diet and whatnot. When my sister heard that her archenemy, Andrea, had been visiting Davey at the hospital, she flew into a jealous rage, accusing him of having an affair.

Davey Boy quickly deduced that he could perhaps use my wife as a ploy to get Diana back and soon began giving her money and letting her drive his big BMW and enjoy the trappings of wealth, which she’d seen Diana enjoy all these years. Under normal circumstances, I’m sure my wife would never have gotten involved, but because of her abiding contempt for Diana and perhaps because she felt like she’d been deprived all these years, she couldn’t resist the temptation. Perhaps it was to piss off Diana and, perhaps, to enjoy the good life that she’d seen all the other wives enjoying.

One thing led to another and in the fall of 2000, my wife told me that she and the kids were moving in with Davey. Having my marriage on the rocks was pretty discouraging, because my wife and kids had been, by far, the most important thing in my life. A few weeks after my wife shacked up with Davey, she chose to return my poor son Rhett back to me because her new beau Davey was sick and tired of hearing him cry all the time.

While I was glad to have him back, it was exceedingly tough as he was heartbroken that his mom, whom he was extremely close to, had abandoned him. He couldn’t figure out what he’d done to deserve this — I couldn’t either.

At about the same time as my marriage was hitting the rocks, the acrimonious lawsuit was dragging on, with no end in sight, and everyone’s nerves were frayed.

In October 2000, I was talking to my parents just after they’d returned from another frustrating courtroom session down in Kansas City and they told me how discouraged they’d become and how they feared it could go on for years.

The next day, I happened to receive a phone call from Jerry McDevitt, one of the WWF’s lawyers. He was calling about some aspect of the case and, during our conversation, I related how discouraged my parents had become with the
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whole ordeal and that they both just wished it could somehow be resolved.

McDevitt — whom I’d always found to be a pretty decent guy, unlike most lawyers — said that he’d mention that to Vince and see if something might be worked out, as they had no desire to have it drag on any further themselves.

I’m not sure if my conversation with McDevitt had anything to do with it, but a few weeks later, it was suddenly announced that the lawsuit had been settled out of court, which was a relief and we hoped that we could move on and, perhaps, get our lives — which had all been put on hold — back on track.

Those hopes, however, didn’t materialize, as the family, especially Bret and Martha, remained quite bitter and acrimonious afterward at those who hadn’t signed the document. As such, there is still quite a bit of bitterness and division within the family.

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On February 14, 2001, after what had been a long siege, there was finally a bit of good news, when my dad was informed by the Governor-General of Canada that he’d been inducted into the Order of Canada, which is Canada’s highest honor — kind of like being knighted in the United Kingdom or being given the Congressional Medal of Honor in the States. My parents were thrilled and humbled at the honor and they excitedly made plans to attend the gala induction ceremony, which was scheduled to take place at the end of May. As a goodwill gesture, my parents invited Bret and Martha to join them, on the cross country train trip down to Ottawa for the big occasion.

About six weeks before the Order of Canada ceremony was to take place, I received a call from Chris Benoit, who at that time was the WWF champion.

He said he was pleased to hear my dad was being awarded the Order of Canada and, as a means of expressing gratitude for all my dad had done for him, he and fellow Dungeon graduate, Chris Jericho, wanted to pay tribute to my dad in the ring on
Monday Night RAW
, which was scheduled to take place in May — only a few days before the award ceremony.

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I ran the idea by my dad, who told me that since the lawsuit with the WWF

had been settled and he’d made peace, he didn’t see anything wrong with it. I called Benoit back and was pleased to give him thumbs-up for the tribute.

If I might, I’d like to interject something about Chris, here and now. I’m sure you’ve all heard about his unfortunate murder/suicide in 2006. After that extremely tragic scenario, I had all kinds of media types calling me, seeking my perspectives on what could have driven such a seemingly nice family man to do something so heinous. I told them that I didn’t profess to be a psychologist, but that since it was pretty well known — at least in wrestling circles — that Benoit had used steroids, it was certainly possible that steroids, which have been know to make people aggressive and violent (’roid rage, as it’s called), might have been a contributing factor.

I also related that the Benoit I’d known had always been a nice kid and that for him to have committed such an abhorrent crime, he must have been delusional — which, I’m sure, most others wouldn’t have argued with. In any case, the next day in the newspaper, there was this big headline “Hart Calls Benoit a Delusional Juice Freak” — which wasn’t really what I meant. I felt bad afterward, because it looked like I was dumping on him as well — which wasn’t really the case and certainly didn’t reflect the high regard I’d always had for him.

While I’m not trying to understate the atrocity of his crime, nor am I trying to justify anything, nonetheless, I think it’s a shame that he’s remembered primarily for having committed that crime rather than for having been one of the greatest workers of his generation, or for having been one of the nicest guys in the business.

On
Monday Night RAW
, Benoit and Jericho — who were two of the hottest faces in the WWF at the time — delivered a really touching tribute to my dad, which had many in the crowd of 20,000 in tears. I was pleased my dad was able to enjoy it and had seen nothing, whatsoever, wrong with it. Unfortunately though, when my brother Bret caught it on television, he went ballistic and went over to my dad’s place — where my mom had this kind of shrine on the wall, dedicated to Bret and Owen. Bret tore down all the pictures and
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