Jimmy Korderas Recalls Being In The Ring For Owen Hart’s Accident at Over the Edge 1999

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of Owen Hart’s death, which happened after a fall at WWF Over the Edge 1999. In an interview with Wrestling Inc), former WWE referee Jimmy Korderas recalled being in the ring at the time of Hart’s tragic accident. Here are highlights:

On being a witness to the fall: “They had had that hardcore match ahead of time. There was a bunch of debris in the ring. So the crew went out there, and since I had the next match, which was Owen as Blue Blazer against Godfather, I went out there to help them, and I was kicking stuff out of the ring and that sort of stuff, and I had my hand on the top rope … And it’s so weird because I heard a scream, but I just thought, it’s an arena full of people. Obviously somebody’s going to scream … And a second or two later, like I said, I had my hand on the top rope, I felt something brush against, believe it or not, against the side of my head and shoulder. At the same instance, that rope pulled out of my hand and snapped back and like jammed my fingers. So I looked around and I saw that the rope was still there, and when I turned around and I saw Owen just there in the corner laying face up, and I couldn’t put two and two together. It just didn’t click. So I went over and I called out a few times and it was so weird, eyes wide open, not moving, and I just panicked and I started screaming for help … It was surreal. Unbelievable.”

On going to RAW the next night, Jim Ross offering him a flight home: “We ended up going to St. Louis the next day for ‘Raw,’ and I still don’t remember getting there, if that makes any sense. I don’t remember driving, flying from Kansas City to St. Louis. It was just that surreal. I just told him, ‘JR, you know what? I don’t know if this sounds weird to you, but I feel I need to be here with everybody, because we’re all going through the same thing.'”

On what Jerry Lawler told him: “He sat me down and said, ‘Listen, I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but his fall, I saw, I witnessed the last 15, 20 feet of his fall.’ He had just caught him out of the corner of his eye, and his first reaction is, ‘Oh my god, he’s going to fall on the referee.’ And apparently that’s what I felt brush by my side. And when he told me that, again, I just lost it. I couldn’t hold it in. And he consoled me as best he could. And again, they said, you know, if you want to go home. I said no, I think I need to be here with everybody, because like I said, we’re all going through this.”