When your brother is Bret Hart and your father is Stu Hart, you know that you are gonna have to wrestle to the best of your ability and then some. It means you’re gonna have to go through severe training until you can pull off every move to perfection, Stu Hart is a harsh teacher, teaching many names such as Lance Storm, Chris Jericho,Edge,Christian and of course Chris Benoit, all of these wrestlers are known for their in ring skills, not one of them can be called green in the ring. Owen was one of 14 children 7 of the 8 brothers became wrestlers, the other became a referee.
Hart started his wrestling career through his fathers wrestling promotion Stampede wrestling, like many of Stu Harts students had done, Owen was reluctant to get in to wrestling and actually wanted to find a good job outside the ring, but being a Hart made that practically impossible. During his stint with Stampede he won the tag titles, beat Shane Douglas to PWI rookie of the year and had a feud with the legendary Dynamite kid, by 1988 Owen was leaving Stampede for Japan, however from his time in Stampede you could already tell the talent that Owen had and the potential to where he could actually get in the business
Whilst in Japan Owen adopted the Jushin Linger gimmick and won the IWGP Junior heavyweight title in the New Japan Pro wrestling promotion, the fact he was only the second Canadian to hold the title after Chris Benoit showed the faith that the bookers at New Japan had in Owens skills, as you can see even early in his career Owen was building up a positive reputation as a talented rookie. The talents of Owen Hart didn’t go unnoticed and soon the WWF came knocking at his door, here Owen debuted the Blue Blazer gimmick, during this period with the WWF he didn’t really see much popularity never rising above the Upper card the WWF had in place. Owen Hart was defeated by Mr Perfect at Wrestlemania and he then left to go work the independants, he lost the Blue Blazers mask on his tour of the indepedants basically saying goodbye to that gimmick.
Owen Hart then popped up in WCW but was never really recognised, it was when the WWF came knocking again that would see Owens career take off, he formed the new Hart Foundation with brother in law Jim Neidhart, after Neidhart left the WWF Owen set out on a singles run which was pretty much uneventful minus at match at Wrestlemania vs Skinner. Owen began to team with Koko.B.Ware, they were never pushed towards the tag titles, the team quiety faded away and Owen begun to help his brother Bret in his feud with Jerry Lawler, this feud mainly took place off WWF television. Owen would be injured in the summer of 1993 and would not be back until the fall. Tension began to rise between Bret and Owen as they crashed in to each other leading to Owen being the only Hart eliminated.
Finally the writers started to do something with Owen after making him team with Bret for a while and raising the tension between them Owen finally snapped and this begun one of his and Brets most remembered feuds. The feud saw Owen go over Bret cleanly at Wrestlemania, showing that big things were in store for him. Albeit Bret won the WWF title later the same night, it shows that Owen had the potential to be in the main event. Owen actually won the title from Bret on an occasion but the result was overturned and Bret retained. Owen rebounded from his loss to Bret by winning the tag titles with Yokozuna, Owens first taste of WWF gold, and a belt he would win many more times during his career. After he finished teaming with Yokozuna Owen began teaming with the Bulldog and again won the tag titles. Tension began to rise between Owen and the Bulldog and they faced each other in the finals for the European title, which the Bulldog won. The two would continue to feud until Bret formed the Hart foundation again.
Owen went on to beat the Rock for the intercontinental title, his first taste of single gold, it seemed that Owen had got stuck at the mid card level and would be in the shadown of his brother for a while yet. Owen and Bulldog lost their titles to Austin and Michaels, Hard and Austin started a feud that ended when Hart botched a piledriver, the botch hurt Austins neck and he never fully recovered, Austin was tripped of the intercontental title and Hart won it back during a tournament beating Faarooq.
Owen again started to feud with Austin and lost the title back to him, he then went on to watch the Monteal screwjob at the same time, this seemed to end any hopes of Hart ever reaching main event status in the WWF, although they released Bulldog and Neidhart after the screwjob but refused to release Owen showing maybe they had big plans for him. Owen was kept off t.v for a while, when he came back he went after Michaels and Triple H, and he began to feud with Triple H for the European title, Owen would go on to win the title. Owen los tthe title back to Triple H a few weeks later and he later joined the nation of domination to feud with DX. After the feud with Dx had finished, OWen briefly feuded with Shamrock who wa sout for revenge after Owen injured him, Hart then went on to form the popular tag team of him and Jeff Jarrett, during this tag team Owen revived the blue blazer gimmick, this would lead to his death, the storyline was hillarious with Owen having ‘retired’ trying to prove neither he or Jarrett were the Blue Blazer, with both showing up next to the Blue Blazer to prove their innocence.
Owen was scheduled to beat the Godfather for the intercontinental title at the over the edge ppv, the plan was for Owen to be lowered in for his entrance from the rafters, like Sting did in WCW, however Owen was released to early and fell 78 feet to his death landing dead on the turnbuckles. Just like that one of the most under rated wrestlers was dead, no world title reign no major main event feud, one of the most talented wrestlers was a legend at mid card level, i have no doubt in my mind that if Owen were still alive today he’d be a world champion by now, he should of been a world champion back then, he was without a doubt one of the best wrestlers and deserved to be above mid card level.
I know most people reading this will think whats the point of this blog, it doesn’t tell me anything that wikipedia couldn’t, well im about to give you something wikipedia doesn’t have, my opinion. If Owen hadn’t died when he did, it hink there is little doubt that with his talent he could have gone on to be WWF champion before he retired, however the only thing that might have been in his way would have been Vince, maybe he would have been to bitter to give the title to Hart after the Montreal screwjob in fear of Owen defecting with the belt at some point, we all know how paranoid Vince gets, the only thing holidng back Owen would of been backstage politics because based on talent he should have been a multi time world champion before he retired if it weren’t for his death. So heres to the king of Harts a respectable man who didn’t want to do Vinces crappy love storylines (who does) who only wanted to spend time with his family, he didn’t even really wanna be in the business, but being a Hart he could escape it, he was under used and unfortunatly the world lost a great person that day a great wrestler, friend and family man
