Jimmy Hart has revisited the story of being shot with a homemade dart gun by a fan during a 1980s Memphis-area wrestling event, telling Cody Rhodes on the latest episode of What Do You Wanna Talk About? that the incident happened on his way back to the locker room and that the dart was crafted from a fast-food straw and a sewing needle.
The Hall of Fame manager was reflecting on the heat-getting era of southern territory wrestling when the story came out. Hart was working a six-man tag in Louisville against Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jarrett, and Dylan D alongside Dream Machine and Handsome Jimmy Valiant. The heels lost. Hart was being carried out, draped over Jimmy Valiant’s shoulder, when he felt the impact.
“I didn’t complain or get mad. I loved that when we had people mad. I got shot one time in Louisville. Everybody has, in the rump with a dart gun. A guy made a homemade dart, hit me right up. They, he got a cheap little straw from Wendy’s or McDonald’s or whatever building this big one made at home, took a little needle, like threading needle, put it in there, put a little thing on it and went as I was coming out because they had me draped over Handsome Jimmy’s shoulder.”
Hart’s initial reaction was concern about a different issue.
“It was a six man tag. It was like Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jarrett and Dylan D against me, the Dream Machine and Handsome Jimmy. And I’m leaning over the back. They carried me out. Of course I got beat right. So I’m leaning over the back and all of a sudden I’m going, ‘Oh God’. And I thought, ‘man, I hope nobody burnt my tights’ because we didn’t make a lot of money back then. And so I got back. I went, ‘Oh my, I hope my tights aren’t burnt.’ They go no, look, they went ‘whoa.’ And I went ‘what is it?’ They go, ‘look, it’s a dart.'”
Mrs. Jarrett, Jerry Jarrett’s wife and one of the Memphis territory’s central figures behind the scenes, intervened on the medical side.
“Miss Jarrett ran, she goes ‘you’ve got to go get a tetanus shot.’ I went ‘Oh my God, it’s going to take my whole payoff to go get a tetanus shot,’ you know, but I went and got a tetanus shot. I didn’t have anything, thank goodness, but that’s what happened.”
Hart told Rhodes he does not hold a grudge against the fan and never did at the time. He framed it as a hazard of being a successful heel in the territory era.
“I don’t really get mad about it because we get the people upset over it and then we get mad because they get upset with those. It didn’t make any sense, right?”
Arn Anderson recently shared a similar story on his own podcast about being cut with a knife in Continental Championship Wrestling in Dothan, Alabama, and being hit with a battery at the base of his neck during the Omni riot in Atlanta. The Memphis territory specifically was known for its hot, engaged audiences that frequently crossed the line into fan-versus-wrestler physical contact.
Hart managed Jerry Lawler in the Memphis territory and later worked the WWF/WWE main roster across the late 1980s and 1990s as a manager for Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, the Hart Foundation, Honky Tonk Man, Greg Valentine, Earthquake, the Mountie, Money Inc., and many other top WWF acts. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.
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