For the WWF, Owen Hart’s death couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The popular professional wrestler – a brawny member of the circus-like menagerie that is today’s World Wrestling Federation – plummeted 90 feet from the roof of Kansas City’s jam-packed Kemper Arena last week in a stunt gone wrong.
Initially, fans weren’t even sure if they were seeing a tragedy or just another WWF plot line from the sometimes-twisted but always-inspired mind of WWF ringleader Vince McMahon.
While no one doubts the sincerity of McMahon’s mourning – he has skipped promotional appearances since the death and will join hundreds of Hart’s fans, fellow wrestlers, family and friends at a funeral in Calgary tomorrow – there’s another reason McMahon is grieving.
In the next few weeks, his $750-million “sports entertainment” powerhouse, TitanSports, is expected to announce an initial public stock offering worth 20 percent of a business that has been in the McMahon family since early this century.
While few Wall Street analysts believe Hart’s death will hurt the IPO, the fatal stunt has once again turned the Kleig lights away from McMahon’s burly brutes and the bizarre action in the ring and back onto McMahon’s sex-, violence- and racism-filled formula that fills stadia, sells hundreds of millions in merchandise and makes his TV broadcasts and pay-per-view events the highest-rated shows on cable.
“Hart’s death is not going to hurt the IPO,” said Marty Blackman, principal of sports marketing firm Blackman & Raber. “In fact, it might even help. You don’t like to say it, but things like this add to the element of danger and excitement. This is what attracts people.”
But Hart’s death can hurt the WWF. For one thing, members of the grieving family lashed out at McMahon, saying that the pressure to create daring stunts and high ratings was the reason Hart was on a thin catwalk high above the Kemper ring in the first place.
“Owen would be alive if they still did wrestling like we used to,” said Stu Hart, who ran a regional wrestling league that set the standard in the days before WWF “attitude.”
Comments like that have renewed scrutiny by critics, who body slam the 53-year-old McMahon for creating an angry world where racism, sexism and violence are considered normal problem-solving skills.
On any given broadcast of McMahon’s top-rated Monday night cable show “Raw Is War,” viewers are inundated with images of cleavage-baring “managers,” simulated sex and mock crucifixions. Sable, a female WWF star who has appeared in Playboy, once doffed her costume to reveal a bosom obscured seductively by paint.
A frequently cited Indiana University study of 50 “Raw” episodes counted 1,658 incidents of crotch grabbing, 157 obscene finger gestures and 128 visions of simulated sex.
“I can’t watch wrestling anymore, because of all the nudity and violence,” said Hart’s eldest brother, Smith Hart.
But “Raw is War” remains the No. 1 show on cable, with higher ratings in the 18-to-35-year-old male demographic than even Monday Night Football.
Fewer appreciate the genius of McMahon’s achievement. Until he entered the family business in 1971, joining his father’s already prosperous – but by no means earth-shaking – Capital Wrestling, the junior McMahon was basically a failure at everything.
As a kid, he was so unruly that the state of North Carolina gave him a choice: reform school or a military academy. He chose the latter but became the first cadet in the history of Fishburne Military School to be court-martialed.
He took five years to get his degree from East Carolina University.
As a businessman, McMahon made Biff Loman look like an overachiever. He sold paper cups and adding machines, promoted rock concerts and even handled the broadcasting of Evel Knievel’s failed leap over the Snake River Canyon.
By today’s standards of glitz and mayhem, the senior McMahon – also named Vince – was a small-time operator, but his impact on the world of wrestling was substantial.
His “Capital Wrestling” – the precursor to the WWF – brought the likes of Gorgeous George and Bruno Sammartino into the nation’s living rooms.
The elder McMahon treated wrestling as a sport, a purer form of entertainment that preferred sweaty athleticism to gaudy showmanship, a good body slam to an upraised middle finger.
The senior McMahon never got involved in his wrestlers’ soap operas, although he sometimes allowed his announcer son to mingle with the plot lines, as when the younger McMahon caught a beating from Lou Albano for giving a Manager of the Year award to Sammartino’s handler Arnold Skaaland.
“You can trace the start of McMahon’s idea of showmanship to those days,” said Bill Apter, editor in chief of World of Wrestling magazine.
After buying up several regional wrestling outfits in the early 1980s, McMahon fused wrestling with the in-your-face production values of rock shows.
The culmination in 1985 was Wrestlemania, a kitschy pop “happening” that filled the venerable Madison Square Garden with a supporting cast that included Liberace, Billy Martin, Muhammad Ali and Cyndi Lauper.
A new national pastime – he called it “sports entertainment” – was born. McMahon would even admit that the “matches” were preordained, ending the sham of wrestling his father tried to protect.
Now, McMahon could use his IPO money to turn an East Side building into a production studio as well as renovating a Las Vegas casino into a wrestling-themed hotel.
And he never apologizes for what wrestling has become – even as he’s been pelted by claims that he’s poisoning the minds of the young boys who form his primary audience.
“Compared to everything else that’s out there in terms of violence, in terms of guns and knives and shooting people and blood and guts pouring from someone that you see on television, we’re very, very mild,” he told CNBC recently.
Personal profileName: Vincent Kennedy McMahonOccupation: Owns and Operates World Wrestling FederationFamily: Married; two children.Age: 53Education: B.S., business administration, East Carolina State University.