15 years ago today, a great wrestler was taken from us too soon. RIP Owen Hart (May 7, 1965-May 23, 1999)
European title tournament final match from 1997
Tag title match from May 1997
KOTR '94 Finals
WM 10 Highlights
15 years? Christ. Nirvana is on the classic rock stations...
ReplyDeleteGOD rest the dead.
ReplyDeleteCan the Powers that be post a few classic Owen matches?
How about this?
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/hlPJgMtIyxQ
ReplyDeleteIf they hadn't let him RIP, Owen would still be with us today.
ReplyDeleteFor Jef. Hopefully a classic.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he would have been the IC champ by the end of the show.
ReplyDeleteHated Owen as a kid — he died when I was 10 — but rewatching his career, he's become one of my favorites. Also reading about how great he was in the locker room and how much of a family man he was makes it that much better. Still so sad.
ReplyDeleteOwen Hart, being the gay hating jerk he always was until karma finally caught up to him.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWc1AFWT3g
He'd probably be the 14 time IC champ by today.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite Owen Hart moment was when Yoko was introduced as his tag partner at Wrestlemania 11 against the Smokin' Gunns. When Yoko makes it to the ring, Owen gives him a big teddy bear hug.
ReplyDeleteHaven't really watched most of there matches but weren't they a pretty dominant team?
ReplyDeleteDepends on how you define dominant. They weren't booked as a heel team that ran roughshod over all the faces but they had a solid title run for a few months.
ReplyDeleteThat feels strange, doesn't it? I rarely listen to the radio but you're right. Nirvana is on the classic rock stations and now stuff like Steve Miller Band, George Thorogood, James Gang, etc is on the "oldies" stations.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and the Hart family reunion with Bret, Owen and Davey was amazing. It still makes me tear up.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Col. DeBeers, really wasn't a white supremacist . Fritz Von
ReplyDeleteErich - not a Nazi. Ivan and Nikita probably didn't want to destroy
the USA. And Kamala almost never are human flesh.
Kevin Sullivan really is Satan, though. So, there's that.
That's hilarious. I've never heard a wrestler actually start that chant lol. And I didn't know he was ever in wcw
ReplyDeleteI'd say they were pretty dominant and booked like a main event tag team. Don't think they ever lost a match as a team during their tag title reign. Not even Luger & Bulldog beat them and I was sure they'd drop the straps to the Allied Powers at the time.
ReplyDeletehttp://24.media.tumblr.com/df9cf54010e2a6fdfbbdbf5efc609786/tumblr_n60ejkesGX1qj9mz6o1_1280.png
ReplyDeleteWhen do Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera and the like start to show up on "oldies" stations do you think?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite mark out moment just because it was the first time Owen won WWF gold.
ReplyDeleteNobody ever looked like a badass wrestling in suspenders.
ReplyDeleteAnd I continue to feel older by the day... fifteen years, holy shit.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be interesting how his career would've gone if he hadn't have died. Owen hinted that he was going to retire soon, but I believe with Vince Russo out of the company and the influx of Radicalz and Jericho into the company that Owen would have revived his love for the business again and stayed.
ReplyDeleteEh, I stopped giving too much of a shit about feeling "old" around 25 or so. I've got my 10 year high school reunion to look "forward" to this year, and 30 approaching is kinda freaking me out a little, but it's more surprising to me that I've even been watching wrestling this long.
ReplyDeleteBig Bubba Rogers begs to differ. https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4014/4271958101_4eebda3f8f.jpg
ReplyDeleteb/c vince
ReplyDeleteoh wait, it's 2014
b/c hhh
Ha, pretty awesome find.
ReplyDeletePoint well made and taken - but suspenders with no shirt? Whose idea was THAT?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I loved Owen but it was hard to like him while he wore those tights. Even the Blue Blazer costume was better.
ReplyDeletequit downvoting me, martha
ReplyDeleteEnjoy life while you're young. I feel the years are going by fast. As a kid it felt like FOREVER until next year came.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, much like WWE programming, the years all tend to blend together to me.
ReplyDelete31 here, and now 14 years since I graduated high school. Not THAT old, but stuff like that is a nice little reminder.
ReplyDeleteI worked at Hot Topic forever, which can make ANYONE feel old at 25. Damn kids n' their music...
ReplyDeleteI forgot who clocked him in the head with a chair, and he no-sold it... I want to say Dusty, but not 100% sure.
ReplyDeleteHa, I started feeling old around that time after realizing that my favourite club that I had been going to for 8 years was filled with teenagers.
ReplyDeleteHe was my favorite wrestler. Not ashamed to admit I bawled like a baby during RAW is Owen.
ReplyDeleteoh god. hopefully never.
ReplyDeleteOne of the few Raw's I've watched in full repeatedly.
ReplyDeleteOwen is awesome.
ReplyDeleteMy appreciation for Owen grew much greater long after he was gone. He would do amazing little things in the ring that really would add to the match. His match with Bret at WM seemed about as real as it could get.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I'd like to note... Owen always got really shitty haircuts.
Yeah it was Dusty. Hit him with a balsa wood chair, Bubba took it and adjusted his tie. Pretty badass moment. Story goes that Bubba was basically a jobber but impressed Dusty by taking Tully's slingshot suplex which had to be tough for such a big guy. Dusty saw that, took him off tv for a while so people would forget about him jobbing and repackaged him as Big Bubba.
ReplyDeleteEveryone talks about the Bret-Owen match at Mania 10, but my favorite match of all time is Bret-Owen at Summerslam 1994. Just incredible drama. I remember watching that as a kid and holding my breath every time Owen made a move towards the top of the cage or the door.
ReplyDeleteLol on the haircuts.
ReplyDeleteI thought he looked okay when he went with the shorter look during the summer of 97.
Was coming here to make sure this was posted. Nice to see him getting remembered. What a horrible way to go.
ReplyDeleteOh Owen would have been awesome for 2000. Basically replace him with XPAC and the midcard division is that much better.
ReplyDeleteOwen had a real fall from grace.
ReplyDeleteWrestlemania 2000 would become infinitely more watchable just from his involvement alone.
ReplyDeleteOwen was one of those guys I took for granted when he was wrestling. I knew any match he was in would be good and I found the guy entertaining, but I didn't really know how much he was part of my love for the product until he passed away. I still remember tuning into the pay-per-view via Scramblevision right when Jim Ross told the audience that Owen died.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty surprised when the Allied Powers failed to win the tag titles. I thought that victory was something you could take to the bank back in 1995.
ReplyDeleteThe tag division in 1995 was really, REALLY weak, but as a mark I thought they were unstoppable. The psychology of their matches was that Owen would take a beating and if you were to beat the team, you were going to have to pin Owen. Once Yoko was tagged in, it was game over.
ReplyDeleteThey had two really good RAW matches: a match against Savio Vega & Razor Ramon for the titles in the summer of 1995 and then a match against Men on a Mission.
I'd like to think Owen would've hung around after he retired from the ring and become a color commentator. His "tryout" at the 1996 KOTR showed that he could do that job naturally. A Ross-Owen team in the early 2000s would've been fun.
ReplyDeleteYeah I loved the matches where Owen was the heel in peril. They also had a good one against Kid and Holly too.
ReplyDeleteOwen was the only celebrity death to have a profound effect on me. It took me years before I could watch an Owen match again.
ReplyDeleteI think Owen would have remained in the midcard for the rest of 1999. Maybe he would have feuded with Kurt Angle in early 2000 or he could have jumped to WCW when Jeff Jarrett left.
ReplyDeleteUgh, the thought of Owen in WCW in 2000 depresses me.
ReplyDeleteI know most posts have focused on his wrestling ability, but how can it have taken this long to include Slammy Award winner Owen Hart? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5l4rK72-cI
ReplyDeleteWhenever I think of Owen, I think of silly things like that (skip to about 30 seconds, as I can't find an earlier non-WWE version that showed Owen also shoving a tray full of drinks onto Vader) and the smiles of wrestlers as they tell stories about pranks Owen would pull.
So if you happen to believe in the after life, what match will Owen be wrestling in for his anniversary: I'm gonna say Davey Boy Smith, Brian Pillman and himself vs Eddie Guerrero, Perfect and Rude. That sounds like it would be good.
ReplyDeleteOwen's theme music circa 1995 that sounded like a disco beat was awesome. I remember that the SNES had a GREAT rendition of it in the Raw game.
ReplyDeleteAlso, didn't Triple H tear his quad in the Kiel Center when he did it the second time? I remember when it happened a message board that I read frequently had someone put up a picture of Owen with the phrase "ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH AND IT WAS TIME FOR A CHANGE!" Cracked me up.
I believe that in the afterlife, heaven is a creation of your own making, so Owen would be wrestling whoever you wanted him to be.
ReplyDeleteCan you visit other peoples heavens? Because even if its paradise if I'm alone thats gonna get boring. So who would Owen choose to wrestle in his personal heaven?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't depress me because even if Owen gets saddled with a gimmick where he is dressed as the king of hearts playing card and jobbed out to Russo he would still be alive
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I loved Owen's theme and hated it when he changed it to those godawful sirens in 1998.
ReplyDeleteI was watching Over The Edge that night with my brothers. The youngest of us was 8 years old. When JR announces that "Owen Hart....has died" he started crying. I'll admit that I was dumbfounded, and of course, not into the rest of the show. People to this day chastise Vince and Co. for continuing with the show, but honestly, what are you supposed to do in that situation? It's live TV. I'm sure in retrospect that they might decide to stop the show, but that's a tough call to make at the time, especially when you have cable companies and dollars on the line. I can't recall, but were refunds ever offered to customers?
ReplyDeleteEven his buzz cut, just didn't look right. It was like Helen did them or something.
ReplyDeleteBenoit would probably replace Rude in that match.
ReplyDeleteThe next day in school after he died, they served chicken nuggets for lunch. Always thought that was morbidly funny.
ReplyDeleteIf Owen would have stuck with it, he would have gotten a token World title run or two.
ReplyDeleteLegit curious - what are you basing that belief on?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean Kemper Arena in KC or the Kiel Center in St. Louis? They're both in Missouri (sorry, Val) so it's easy to confuse.
ReplyDeleteA ham sandwich told him.
ReplyDeleteI would have loved that to happen, but doubt it as Vince was just never an Owen guy. Only reason Owen got the push he received in the first place was because Bret went to bat for him.
ReplyDeleteIf Vince wasn't an Owen guy he would have never got that spot in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAnd despite Owen doing an awesome job carrying things in 94, he was never pushed that way again. Owen's moment as a main eventer had passed, only thing we could have hoped for was Owen working MOTYC against Jericho, Benoit, Eddie and Angle.
ReplyDeleteNo way.
ReplyDeleteHe was in all the top angles from 94 until the day the died.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen the list of World Champions? I think I even had a reign.
ReplyDeleteHe was?
ReplyDeleteHis one run on top he didn't do very well and he seemed plugged in the midcard the rest of his career. The one other time they could've pushed him on top he put over HHH. He also seemed like someone who wouldn't want to be world champion given how much of a family man he was.
ReplyDeleteCamp Cornette, Hart Foundation, The aftermath of Montreal, DX and Nation. Even the Blue Blazer stuff was a big part of the show.
ReplyDeleteI've said this before but I could totally see Owen in the Benoit spot in 2004 had he been around.
ReplyDeleteHe was always in the midcard though and he seemed to be fading in 1999. A guy who could put people over and kill time during the show but not a main eventer.
ReplyDeleteI just don't see it.
ReplyDeleteHe was in all the midcard angles, though Owen probably would have worked a main event program with Austin in 98 if it wasn't for the whole neck breaking thing and sadly the people in power probably used that as an excuse to demote Owen (HHH, HBK).
ReplyDeleteWhile he wasn't a top guy, he definitely wasn't just a midcarder. And even if he was fading in 99, Jericho, the Radicalz, and Angle were right around the corner. I'd bet anything he would have had a career renaissance working with them.
ReplyDeleteHis last few PPVs were dicking around with Jarrett in a midcard comedy angle.
ReplyDeleteMain event stables sure, but Owen was never the leader of those groups. Hell with Camp Cornette, Owen never even got to main event against Shawn Michaels on PPV, unlike Bulldog and Vader. Owen was always used as the guy to take the pin during tag matches.
ReplyDeleteAnd the aftermath on Montreal, Owen went from working with HBK to working with HHH and losing to working with X-Pac and Owen couldn't even win that feud.
Thanks Russo!
ReplyDeleteWrestling is fake. He was a major member of two of top heel stables in WWE and getting major TV time. That is a wee bit more meaningful than losing a fake match.
ReplyDeleteOwen would have been motivated in 2000 sure and I'm sure the matches would be awesome, but most likely Owen would have lost most of those matches to build guys like Benoit, Angle and Jericho as the next main eventers. Same thing with the Shamrock feud in 98.
ReplyDeleteThat Benoit reign was designed to get Orton over. Owen being the guy to do it would have played way better had he been an option.
ReplyDeleteWrestling is fake, but wins do matter for the most part. If you lose too many matches fans stop caring eventually.
ReplyDeleteOwen doesn't seem like someone who would've stuck around anyway or be able to stay on top. His one run on top didn't do well and he didn't seem to have the passion for wrestling that top guys have. He was a midcarder with one run who has been elevated by his tragic death
ReplyDeleteYou could argue that, but at the same Vince was never an Owen guy like I said before. Vince would have preferred pushing JBL and Great Khali as world champions over Owen.
ReplyDeleteCountless 4 star matches on PPV. It isn't like he would have been squashed in 3 minutes on Raw.
ReplyDeleteNo they don't. Cut the right promo and you never have to win a match.
ReplyDeleteHe had a passion for wrestling (real wrestling not Vince Russo wrestling), just not a passion for being the top guy. Same with Daniel Bryan, which is surprising given the success Bryan has had.
ReplyDeleteI bet he would have been retired by then but my whole point has been "If". And your last statement is factually wrong.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone pictured Owen as a future world champion on May 22, 1999.
ReplyDeleteOwen was never that strong of a promo guy that he could get over on promos alone. Even though Owen was a midcarder in 98, he could still draw heat, by 1999, all his heat had vanished.
ReplyDeleteI'm not arguing that. I'm arguing Owen never getting that elusive world title.
ReplyDeleteKiel.
ReplyDeleteI'd disagree with Owen not main eventing with HBK. Their match at IYH 6 got arguably just as much build as the Diesel-Bret cage match.
ReplyDeleteI think Owen would have continued working in the WWE until his early 40's because a lot would have changed
ReplyDelete1) Owen would have been motivated again with Benoit, Angle, Eddie, Jericho coming into the company
2) Bret would have reconciled with WWF a lot sooner (perhaps straight after the sale of WCW) and with Bret back in the company again, even as a backstage worker, Owen would have stayed on.
Agreed and you can say the same about Benoit. The business changed a lot over the next few years.
ReplyDeleteSure the build was equal, but Bret-Diesel was the real main event. Most people brought that show to see that match.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with it, btw. I really like Scott's fantasy booking where Owen would have won that match with the enziguri, Shawn would win the title a month later and BAM you have a hot main event program on your hands.
ReplyDelete"After the funeral, at Hart House, while mourners gathered in the living room to each sandwiches and watch my classic match with Davey at Summerslam 1992, one of the paramedics who worked on Owen in his final moments confided in me, with tears in his eyes, that Owen's dying words were 'Tell Bret our match at Wrestlemania was always my favourite, and he deserved to be WWF Champion.'"
ReplyDeleteBaaaaaaaaack body drop!
ReplyDeleteKids today.
ReplyDeleteI'm 34 :(
ReplyDeleteHe should have been more like Bret - he wasn't taking any falls.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/AthenaKissyLoveHart?fref=ts
ReplyDeleteOwen's daughter
They'd have to change the stipulations to do that, though, because that match put HBK's WM 12 title shot on the line.
ReplyDeleteFor a second, I thought she went to Chinlock College.
ReplyDeleteEh, it's wrestling, stipulations aren't set in stone, but yeah another thing this wasn't a main event feud was because this feud was obviously designed to put HBK over (no way anyone would have thought Owen had a chance at winning with the WM12 title shot on the line) and Owen wasn't seen as the same level as Shawn.
ReplyDeleteLoved loved loved the Hart Foundation. Depending on the day, my most favorite faction. Too bad Dynamite wasn't around. Owen Hart was THE SHIT. Loved Owen, the Blue Blazer too. The question is.......was Owen ever going to become World Champion BEFORE the Brand Split? Quick transitional at best, maybe?
ReplyDeleteI would say with confidence that if he was still around and competitive, he would have gotten a Smackdown run with the Big Gold Belt.
RIP BLAZER! That little nugget.
Not really related, but does anyone else think Noelle Foley looks eerily like a skinny female version of her father?
ReplyDeleteI got caught watching porn that night.
ReplyDeleteWell then it'd have to be Bret.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I could see him getting a Christian reign at least, because, I mean, Christian got one. I just don't know how long he would have stuck around, and he may have gone to TNA for the lighter schedule.
ReplyDeleteEh, I stopped giving too much of a shit about feeling "old" around 25 or so.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you were concerned at feeling old in your early 20s is funny to me.
Just my own ideas.
ReplyDeleteI want to believe in an alternate universe where Owen took Lawler's job about 10 years ago, and he and JR are still announcing at ringside. His KOTR 96 performance and other guest color spots were amazing and hilarious in the most kayfabe way possible.
ReplyDeleteHey - that's officially "mid-20s!"
ReplyDelete25 is the final "milestone" birthday in that you can rent a car after that... afterwards it's just like "okay, I'm still an adult. Guess I'll just shut up and go to work for my birthday every year after this." I don't even drive though, so I really stopped giving a shit at 22.
You were jerking off to Owen Hart's death? How could you!
ReplyDeleteIf he did it with tears in his eyes, he would have been paying tribute.
ReplyDeleteNever been a big Owen Hart fan but his death was an awful thing to happen, especially to such a well liked guy.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite Owen stories is the one Foley tells in his first autobiography about how silly Owen would get during house show matches, e.g. making snow angls out of packing peanuts during a garbage match.
ReplyDeleteOwen 3:16, baby.
Looks eerily like him... I guess that makes sense though
ReplyDeleteHe was using the tears as lube
ReplyDeleteThe second time he tore it in Kemper Arena.
ReplyDeleteWhat if I want to see him Wrestle Benoit and Buck Zumhofe in a three way dance?
ReplyDeleteThose Danger sign tights were an odd choice.
ReplyDeleteTHanks.
ReplyDelete