Photo Of Owen Hart and British Bulldog Playing WWF WrestleMania On PS1

“Owen was always a better video game worker than most of the boys. Owen was a pretty dedicated father, and would play a lot of the Nintendo with Oje when he was home. Even among the Harts, Owen used to frustrate my brother Bruce pretty regularly. Bruce was pretty fond of hanging at arcades, and showing the kids how good he was at Paperboy. Which of course didn’t translate when they brought the machines home. I mean more than a few Hart dinners were ruined because Owen wouldn’t put Bruce over in Duck Hunt.

So whenever one of the boys would hook up the video games backstage, Owen would usually go over most of the other guys. It was sort of a big equalizer for Owen. He didn’t necessarily have the best body, or promo but if you put a clicker in his hand he could really go y’know. I’m not ashamed to say that he was probably better at the Nintendo or Sony than I was. Those sort of things were never my style. I put a lot of effort into making the Hitman character being something you could really believe. Which I think got lost whenever they put me in a videogame. Suddenly everyone was the same level worker in this game, which really wasn’t the case in real life y’know.

I know as part of the WWF New Generation they wanted us to do a lot of cool ‘90s’ things to connect with the audience like video games. Especially in the summer you’d arrive at the arena, and Shawn would be running around chasing people with supersoakers. Of course if you got one, and soaked him back he’d get pretty upset, and sometimes refuse to work the card. Though not all of the boys were on board with it. I mean Undertaker never took part in any of this. He’d walk right past the table with the supersoakers, and then look over to see the boys playing the Nintendo he’d just do his eye-roll face. Which again really sorta ties back to his belief in the traditional way of doing things. In those days wrestlers never showed pain, they never broke character, and certainly didn’t play video games.

My Dad Stu used to say ‘TV will rot your brain, and your work rate’ which is just sort of an old-school shooter’s way of saying that you get lazy when you sit around staring at the screen too long. And I think Taker definitely abided by that. He knew his best work in the ring was going to come from spending the night getting tattoos, drinking jack daniels, and visiting stripclubs. Which is why the next day when he showed up and he had the dark circles under his eyes, looking pale, walking around the backstage slowly, it was a shoot. Which I think added to his characters legitimacy as a dead person who hates life y’know.”