In August 1994 Owen Hart defeated his brother Bret to become the WWF World Champion. The match was a lumberjack match and whilst the match happened at a house show, there were cameras there to film and the match was released as part of the WWF home video ‘Wham Bam Bodyslam’.
But due to interference from Jim Neidhart on Owen’s behalf the win was overturned. And as history would write it, The King of Harts Owen Hart was never counted as WWF Champion.
Owen Hart would pass away in the ring after a fall from the rafters at the WWF Over the Edge pay-per view in 1999, and as such this was his one moment with the Championship belt.
The question being discussed here today is whether the WWE should re-recognise Owen Hart as a former WWE World Heavyweight Champion? Let’s discuss.
If you take a look at the title history of the WWE World Championship, you’ll see a long list of the who’s who of some of the greatest wrestlers of all time. But it is not a complete list of all the greats as some brilliant wrestlers never won or even competed for the World Championship.
There are wrestlers like Jake the Snake Roberts or Mr Perfect who by modern standards would absolutely be in the main event picture and probably win the big one at some point, but back in the day when championships rarely changed hands there was less opportunity for different wrestlers to be WWF Champion.
Owen Hart is an example of a wrestler where you have to believe if he had debuted in the modern era he would be a world champion. It feels a shame that a wrestler of his calibre never got the nod to be world champion…expect he did.
This has happened a bunch of times with various wrestlers, but Owen is an example of a wrestler who won a championship but whose win was overturned and it never go into the record books.
Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit and the Miz are examples of wrestlers who also won world championships only for the win to be discounted or the match restarted. This usually happens because the geek wrestler cheated in some way and a second referee or authority figure emerges to say that the match must restart. It’s a swerve for the audience, but always feels a shame when a deserving wrestler is announced as world champion and it not actually count.
It doesn’t just happen in the World title picture. Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal celebrated with belts after winning the AEW tag championships, but the match was restarted and the Acclaimed who were the defending champions quickly picked up the win.
Imagine what it must be like for the wrestler playing the part of someone winning a belt but having the knowledge that it’s not going to count a few minutes later. Do they give the celebration their all knowing this may be their only moment to shine with the belt or do they secretly hope the bookers will look at the crowd reaction and make the decision to keep that decision either now or make it happen for real in the future?
Sometimes there are title changes that get reverse days after the fact. The Rockers famously won the tag belts from the Hart Foundation, but during the match a rope broke and because it wasn’t planned and didn’t make for great TV the decision was reversed. The Rockers then never went on to win the tag belts. The Million Dollar Man “bought” the world championship from Andre the Giant who cheated to beat Hulk Hogan with the help of the evil twin referee Earl Hebner pretending to be Dave Hebner. In this case Ted even defended the belt before WWE changed their minds and stripped the Million Dollar Man of the belt.
But there have been loads of times where heels have cheated and the title changes have been allow to stand. So why these and not others? If the WWE can retroactively scrub some title changes from the books, why should they not put one or two back in the book? And can/should this be done for Owen Hart?
There’s been a couple of instances where wrestlers have just been announced as World Champion without winning a match. Triple H and Dolph Ziggler were both announced as Word Heavyweight Champion without wrestling to win the belt.
Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair literally swapped the Raw and Smackdown Women’s Championships without wrestling.
Giving a world championship to someone who didn’t win it ever would be like giving an actor an Oscar for a lifetime achievement award. If when John Cena had given the World Title belt to Mark Henry when The World’s Strongest Man was pretending to retire had actually counted would that have been the worst thing ever? Maybe, but no worse then Triple H just being announced as World Champion.
But this isn’t the case for Owen Hart and his WWF World Heavyweight Championship win. Owen did win by a referee’s decision. He was announced as the Champion. His music played and he was shown posing with the belt.
What if, rather than not including Owen in the list of Champions they instead list him as a Champion and put an asterisk next to him name with the note being that although he won the Championship and was announced as Champion, WWF referees and authorities at the time restarted the match. Simple right?
Well, almost. The one big snag is what about Bret continuing on as World Champion? He didn’t then beat Owen, so should this have a knock on effect and it count that Bret had an additional World Championship win? Or should it just be that the WWE are recognising Owen’s win and not Bret’s loss? That may be confusing for some, but realistically as long as the WWE and Wikipedia acknowledge this decision on their websites it’d just become a piece of trivia that affects no one.
And although Owen Hart’s wife and children don’t have anything to do with the WWE in the same way that other members of the Hart family such as Bret or Nattie do, wouldn’t it still be nice for them to know that Owen is now recognised as a World Heavyweight Champion? Maybe this would leave a bad taste in their mouthes, but for many fans this would be a small gesture to put right the error of never making him world champion whilst he was alive.
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