REMEMBERING THE ANVIL
Wrestlers mourn Jim Neidhart
Minutes after the death Monday of his brother-in-law and former wrestling icon Jim (the Anvil) Neidhart, Bruce Hart heard the sad news from his sister Ellie.
Neidhart, 63, had collapsed and struck his head in the Florida home he shared with his wife Ellie.
“I’m kind of shocked — I’d heard he’d had some health issues but nothing alarming,” said Bruce, adding Neidhart had suffered early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
The news conjured up a flood of memories of the man who had left his NFL dreams behind to come to Calgary in the late 1970s, seeking a new chapter in life under the wing of wrestling royalty’s Hart family.
“Anvil had been sent here by some wrestler in Los Angeles,” said Bruce.
“I introduced him to my sister and he went on to wrestle with us for five years before he went on” to the World Wrestling Foundation.
Neidhart honed his wrestling chops under the eye of Hart family patriarch Stu, training on the green monster mat in the basement of the family’s west-side Calgary mansion.
He went on to help form the original Hart Foundation with Bret “Hitman” Hart.
After disbanding that team, Neidhart helped form the New Foundation with Bret’s brother Owen, who later died in a ring accident in Kansas City in 1999.
“They were pretty successful,” Bruce said of the teams.
Another Hart Foundation brought together Neidhart with Owen, Bret, the British Bulldog and Brian Pillman.
“Bret’s the last remaining member of the Hart Foundation,” noted Bruce.
“There’ve been quite a few casualties, sad to say, in the wrestling realm.”
On Monday, a grieving Hitman could barely summon words to express his sorrow.
“I’m heartbroken,” tweeted the man who won two WWE Tag Team Championships with Neidhart.
On his Instagram account, he added: “Stunned and saddened. I just don’t have the words right now.”
Neidhart’s final time in the WWE ring was in 1997.
But his daughter Natalya has taken up the wrestling torch, while chronicling her life as a grappler as a Postmedia columnist.
On Twitter, the 36-year-old vowed to keep her father’s memory alive.
“My dad was always a fighter and an incredibly special person. There was no one like him!” she tweeted.
“We are going to hold all of the moments we had with him close to our hearts forever and never let them go. I promise to keep your memory alive. We love you so much, Daddy!”
Fellow ring warrior the Iron Sheikh also paid homage to Neidhart by recalling their travels.
“One of my oldest friends in the business … I love him forever like a brother,” he tweeted.
Neidhart’s zest for life will be missed, said Bruce Hart.
“He was always pretty high energy, up for fun and a bit of a hellraiser,” Hart said.