Shaun Assael - Sex, Lies, and Headlocks: The Real Story of Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment

For Mom & Dad

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To Ruth, for her love; Dusty and Mikey, two fine sons; my sister, Vicky; Dad; and the memory of Mom

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In the ring, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible.

French literary critic Roland Barthes (19151980)

I have a tendency to take the business personally because its my life and its the life of my daughter and my son and has been the life of my family. So when people say, aw, come on, its just business, I dont subscribe to that. Its personal. Its damned personal.

Vince McMahon, owner of the World Wrestling Federation

A s Owen Hart arrived at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, he felt queasy about what his paycheck required of him. Most of the wrestlers, or the Boys, employed by the World Wrestling Federation were willing to do anything that Vince McMahon, its dimple-chinned owner, asked. But Owen had recently begged off of performing a seduction scene with a former Miss Texas named Debra Marshall. The WWF had just come through the May sweeps having notched the four highest-rated shows in all of cable television. And Hart knew that the children in his sons private school in Calgarylike those in schools across Americawatched its show on Monday nights. He didnt want to confuse his son, who was just seven, or his three-year-old daughter, by flirting with another woman before 6 million viewers.

Unfortunately, his request for an alternative yielded something that was only slightly more appealing. McMahon had ordered him to resurrect the Blue Blazer, a silly superhero that Owen had used when he was starting out in the mid-eighties, when the business was still about cartoon costumes and simple morality plays. It required him to wear a full-face mask with dollops of silver and red, a blue leotard with a red spider on it, and a feathered shoulder cape, all of which he found extremely embarrassing. But he assumed that was the point. McMahon wanted to use him to needle all the moralists and handwringers who were accusing the WWF of peddling pornography and violence to kids. The more self-consciously pious the Blazer looked and acted, the better he served that purpose.

Because this was one of twelve pay-per-views that the WWF staged a year in addition to its regular cable TV shows, McMahon also wanted a little something extra from the Blazer tonight. Owen and his wife, Martha, had discussed it before he left for Kansas City, while they were walking through the five-thousand-square-foot home they were building in Calgarys pristine and woodsy Elbow Valley. Owen liked to quip that he was probably the cheapest man in wrestling, though he rarely joked when he sidled up to the younger Boys and implored them to be smart with their money, to save it for when their star eventually faded. He could have done without all those nights sleeping in cheap motels, eating bad buffet food. But at least he knew where it had goneinto this lakefront spread. Too many wrestlers his age had woken up with no clue. (And no house.)

As he looked at his wife, however, he could see she was worried about what the job required this week. Vinces writers wanted the Blazer to descend on a steel cable from the arenas rafters, looking clumsy and comical on the way down. Martha was concerned because her husband was afraid of heights; the whole thing just seemed absurdly risky to her. But Owen said that hed made one stink already this month. He wasnt going to land deeper in Vinces doghouse by making another one so soon.

If there was any consolation, it was that the evening would end with him winning the Intercontinental belt, a mid-card honor that assured hed be kept in the limelight. The writers had arranged that hed get it from Charles Wright, a popular three-hundred-pound ex-Vegas bouncer whose character, a pimp called the Godfather, was escorted to the ring by faux hookers in a ho train. Once he made it into the ring hed be fine, Owen told his wife.

But as the thirty-four-year-old walked past the guard station at the Kemper Arena, he had to admit he still felt uneasy. After making his way backstage, he grabbed a bite to eat at the preshow buffet and decided to use his spare time to climb up to the catwalk and look over the rigging. It featured a harness with a release mechanism similar to the kind used on a parachute; once hed gotten all the way down, all he had to do was pull a lever and it would release him. It sounded simple, but neither three successful trial runs nor the backstage food had completely settled his stomach by show time.

The pay-per-view was called Over the Edge, and in order to boost the number of buys that night, McMahon used a tried-and-true gimmick: On Sunday nights, the USA network broadcast another of his cable shows, which was called Heat. On the one airing tonight, he created a cliff-hanger ending that viewers had to pay to see resolved. Hed personally climbed into the ring to face a brawler with a tattooed forehead and in the process supposedly had his ankle shattered. As the show ended at 8 P.M., viewers saw the fifty-three-year-old writhing in pain, offering the lure of three more hours of similar action for just $29.95.

For the two hundred and fifty thousand viewers who bought Over the Edge, the next image they saw was of a hooded devil worshiper with white eyes, bathed in pink smoke and intoning, Tonight, darkness will seize the land and destroy all you hold dear. This was the Undertaker, promising that later in the evening he would meet the companys biggest star, Steve Austin, and devour your soul.

Owen was already on the catwalk by the time that part of the show went to air. Wearing coveralls to mask his costume, hed made his way unnoticed through the crowd, reaching a ladder that took him to a juncture where three stagehands were waiting to help him get ready for the stunt. Before hed arrived, hed taped a video clip of his own, declaring, The Blue Blazer is back because the WWF needs the Blue Blazer. Now, as he watched it flicker on two huge video screens in the arena, he breathed evenly and thought about how he was going to make the twenty thousand fans watching it laugh after hed dropped down and released the harness.

Ringside announcer Jim Ross was in the arena viewing Harts pre-taped segment on his monitor when Owen started his descent, as was his partner, the acerbic colorman, Jerry Lawler. It was Lawler who first heard the words Look out! and glanced up to see Hart hurtling eighty feet down the rigging. Fans who saw the same thing thought they were seeing a mannequin falling headfirst off one of the padded buckles that connects the ring ropes, flipping over and collapsing in a heap in the corner of the ring.

Lawler elbowed Ross and mouthed the frightened words He fell, then leaped from his seat and raced to the ring. When he found Hart lying on his back with his left arm extended in the air, Lawlers first reaction was relief: He thought the wrestler was signaling that he was still alive. But then the announcer looked more closely.

Harts eyes were open, but they were lifeless. A gash had been torn in his arm, but there was little blood, a sign that his heart had stopped beating. As Harts body changed in color from purple to blue to gray, Lawler cradled the dying wrestlers head in his arms, waiting for the paramedics to arrive.