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Owen Should Have Went to WCW (I just watched OtE99')

3K views 13 replies 11 participants last post by  oleanderson89 
#1 ·
well i knew this day would come. in my goal of rewatching the entire videogrophy and in my goal to relive the past 30 years of wrestling as an older adult, i've finally come to the event I was not looking forward to.... Over the Edge 1999. I don't think I've actually ever rewatched the thing since I saw it as a 13 year old, but man watching it now....it's just so fucking sad. Like it's really hitting me pretty hard. I think now that I've gotten to relive Owen's career, and really see how much fucking enjoyment the guy gave me throughout his entire career......it's so heart breaking. All of the events leading up to it I'm just thinking, shit, so many things SHOULD have gone differently. I kept yelling for Owen to go to WCW with his brother in 1997, i kept yelling for Owen to get a bigger push against DX in 1998, and then in 1999 I became quite sad to see how little the wrestling world cared about Owen. Ughhh, he was having such a hard time adjusting to the AE. I can't believe no one convinced him to go to WCW.

his last match was a tag match with JJ vs Godfather/Val Venis, and the entire match was focused on Debra's chest...not the wrestling...and that's just so damn heartbreaking. I love the attitude era, and I love the sensationalism, but Owen's talent was becoming so insultingly buried here.

accidents happen and i can't place blame on anyone (although a lot of people have their fingerprints all over it)..... it's just a tragedy.

I remember when all of this went down as a 13 year old. I remember at first thinking it was no big deal, or at the very least just some technical snafu, but I'll never forget hearing JR say the words "Owen Hart has died". :( They cut to an interview with Double J right after this happens and seeing him and debra trying to hold it in.. ..

And it's not just him. Re-doing this really shows you how much blood these people put into creating this world for us.


WHY DIDNT OWEN GO TO WCW IN 97 WITH BRET or in 99 when he was being CRIMINALLY UNDERUSED
 
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#9 ·
Well they cannot force people and no wrestling company has ever forced people. If you don't want to stay usually what has been happening is that they just release you with a no-compete clause. In the case of Bret Hart, they released him and he still wanted to get paid for what the WWF owned him so for that to happen, he had to not appear on TV for a while. But I understand he could have appeared earlier in WCW but would not have gotten his WWF money. Being greedy is a two-way street.

I know that after the Screwjob happened a lot of WWF stars were mad at Vince and the WWE. Mick Foley outright left is disgust for a while. Ken Shamrock was mad and of course all of Bret's friends and family. Of course Vince being the devil dog that he is threw a bunch of lies at them about Bret and how Bret was gonna leave with the title(Bret has said many times he would never have done that, he respected the WWF too much for that).

I don't know if any of them asked for a release but one thing is for sure, Davey and Jim were jobbed like crazy after this and they waited till the end of their contract to leave for WCW. But again they could have left if they asked. About Owen it seems like Vince convinced Owen to stay and he said "he would be out of his brother's shadow and it was his time to shine". So not only Owen stayed but when his contract was up he even re-signed with the WWF. I have no idea if WCW was interested though. It may have played a role in this cause maybe they didn't want him. Bischoff said many times that he had no interest in HBK for example. He could have had him when he left the WWF to heal himself. Hogan was the Top guy in WCW and he didn't need to wrestle, he just had to do some promos so Shawn could have done the same thing: no tours, no house shows, almost no wrestling, just talking on TV and some matches on PPV.

Maybe Owen still had faith in the WWF. But the time when he fell to his death he was the Blue Blazer again and his stock was not at its biggest it had been. I presume he would have been tired of this crap booking under a year and asked for his release. If he had lived, I would not have been surprised to see him jump ship to WCW in 2000.

Would have been interesting if Bischoff would have had more of a direct link to the locker room and convince some WWF wrestlers to jump ship when it happened, with him promising them that he would fight for them in court so that they could leave. Imagine a late 97 WWF/Hart Foundation WCW invasion with Bret, Owen, Davey, Jim and you add Shamrock to this and Benoit and Jericho joining them. With them going to war with the nWo.
 
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#4 ·
but i just don't get it. What kind of mega-ironclad contract did Owen Hart have? With so many guys switching companies ALL the time, what kind of contract did Owen have where he basically HAD to stay or else? I'm sure WCW would have gladly gave him a decent payday to relive some Bret vs Owen heat.

And/or why was the WWF so intent on keeping him? Are you telling me if in early 99, when owen was clearly NOT an edgy guy, if Owen said "hey vince i'm thinking of going to wcw", vince would say "you're mine punk"?"

I know I've heard that Owen was not a "rock the boat" kind of guy, so maybe that played it into it...it's just a shame.
 
#8 ·
According to Bret, Bischoff was ready to give Owen a contract equal to his WWF deal. But, Vince wouldn't let him go because he was in a long term deal. Supposedly, Vince Russo ratted out Owen's negotiations and McMahon threatened Bret with a lawsuit if he got in Owen's business again.

So, it ain't Vince saying "no, you're mine punk". It's Vince not wanting to give Bret the satisfaction of "giving him the finger" once again. That was Vince's way of giving Bret the finger. Owen's contract was a pawn to Vince in his real life game of chess with Bret.

Legally, Owen can't move unless Vince moves him. And continued negotiations to move is going to result in a lawsuit and make a bad situation worse...until the worst thing imaginable actually happened.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Vince wouldn't let him out of his contract but I've also heard that he didn't think WCW would use him right, which I doubt they would've.

Furthest he probably would've gotten there is the TV Title and the Tag Team Titles. Still though, it would've been awesome to see him go up against the likes of Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Dean Malenko, Booker T, Rey Mysterio, Eddy Guerrero, Perry Saturn.
 
#6 ·
Owen had previous stints in wcw in the early nineties, perhaps he just preferred wwf or as wether way Bret was used down south and thought against jumping.

I would say if he hadn't of died the reality is by the end of his deal in 1999 he would of been a wcw guy. Owen lived cheap on the road and was good with money he worked to provide for his family and always intended to get in then get out. So with a lucrative offer he'd of no doubt have took and retired at the end of it.
 
#11 ·
I was 15 when that happened. I remember being annoyed that Owen was doing the Blue Blazer gimmick again, he had just did recent as a month earlier and he was unmasked by Steve Blackman, it almost seemed like they were punishing Owen.

How on earth was The Godfather vs The Blue-Blazer suppose to a decent match?

They should have kept Owen in the tag-team division with Jeff and not broke them up and come up with a better idea than some stupid affair with Debra story plot which caused them to break-up since Owen didn't want to do that.

Nowadays WWE wouldn't dare do something as stupid as that. I wish they would do an affair angle between Cesaro and Natalya behind Tyson Kidd's back.
 
#14 · (Edited)
WWE used him terribly. The only reason why they decided not to let him go was to piss Bret off. While part of Owen wanted to finish his career with Vince's operations, he wanted to leave and tried to plead that his brother would disown him (which was a work according to Martha and Bret), this just made Vince all the more interested in retaining him. All these fucks saying that he didn't care about main eventing are just a bunch of turds. Owen's priority was his family but do you think he would have had a problem working in the main event ? of course not. It is pressurizing but if they had presented him as a tough as nails wrestler (which he was), instead of a joke, Owen would still be alive. The only reason why Vince hired those cheap ass riggers (in fact Talbert was only a sidekick to the guy who was helping WCW with Sting's entrance) for Owen's stunt at Over the Edge was that billionaire piece of shit was more interested in saving money than the well being of Owen. Do you honestly think, they would have had that cheap ass $1,000 crew if Austin or Shawn Michaels was up there ? Hell No!!! The guy who did Shawn's entrance in 96 declined to do it cause he thought it was stupid to descend without a safety line with that apparatus. Concerned about the safety of the stunt, they decided to do it for $3,000 instead of $5,000 and Vince's cronies declined.

Lets move on to that garbage Vince Russo. He says "If Owen had said that he was afraid of heights, I would have asked him not to do it, END OF STORY!!". Listen up Russo, that angle you were doing with Owen, didn't excite anybody and wasn't drawing ratings either. Why the fuck did you put the best wrestler in your roster at that point 80ft above the ring ? I'll tell you why cause Russo has no brains for the business and like Cornette says the only reason why he turned to religion was because he was feeling guilty that he was responsible for killing Owen. END OF STORY!

The world not only lost a great wrestler in Owen Hart but a nice guy in a field full of scum.
 
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